30 THE EVOLUTION OF MAN 



The skull is not fossilized, except that its animal matter has 

 been lost, and the associated animals are all recent, so that two 

 of our criteria of age fail us in attempting to fix other than 

 late Pleistocene or even the Recent period for the time when 

 this man lived. The position of the remains in a cavern is not 

 so trustworthy as usual, for while buried under tons of 

 mineralized bones, they may well have been intruded by means 

 of a shaft-like cave. 



The cranium itself is not remarkable, either for its form or 

 estimated content, which, as Keith tells us, falls between a 

 modern English and an ancient French (La Chapelle) skull. 

 This is as yet an estimate, as the matrix had not been removed 

 from the interior of the skull at the time of the latest pub- 

 lished description. We are therefore at present ignorant of 

 any especial features which a brain-cast may reveal. Judging 

 from the position of the foramen magnum, the head was well 

 balanced on the neck, and this, together wth the straight shin 

 and the character of the ends of the thigh bone, imply a fully 

 erect posture in no sense Neandertaloid. 



The facial region, however, departs radically from what we 

 have seen in that it shows a very primitive character in con- 

 trast with the more advanced cranium. The brows are im- 

 mensely prominent, so much so that they dwarf the forehead 

 above and give it a flattened look that closer scrutiny does not 

 bear out. The nose was broad and flattened but human, and 

 the palate so broad and rounded that it is less ape-like than in 

 the modern negro. The lower jaw must have been of enor- 

 mous strength and size to offset it. Smith Woodward tried 

 the Heidelberg jaw on the skull but found it too short and 

 narrow. The Piltdown jaw, on the other hand, he found too 

 large, and to be further excluded from comparison by the 

 prominent canines which in the Rhodesian man are not dis- 

 tinctively developed. The teeth as a whole are strongly 

 rooted, although badly worn, and subjected to caries, a disease 



