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HUXLEY 



caverns of Western Europe, discoveries to which 

 several important additions have been made since 

 1863. Comparing these with the skulls of the low- 

 est savages extant, notably the Australian aborigines,, 

 he considered that we are not taken " appreciably 

 nearer to that lower pithecoid form, by the modifica- 

 tion of which man has, probably, become what he 

 is." Where, then, he asks, " must we look for 

 primeval Man ? Was the oldest Homo sapiens plio- 

 cene or miocene, or yet more ancient ? In still older 

 strata do the fossilised bones of an Ape more anthro- 

 poid, or a Man more pithecoid, than any yet known, 

 await the researches of some unborn palaeontologist ? 

 Time will show." 



Time has not yet shown. But in 1892 Dr. 

 Eugene Dubois found in the upper Pliocene beds at 

 Trinil, on the banks of the river Bengavan, in Java, 

 a calvaria or portion of skull, two molar teeth, and a 

 thigh-bone, which he assumed belonged to an animal 

 named by him Pithecanthropus erectus^ or u upright 

 ape-man." The forehead was low and narrow, the 

 inner surface of the skull bore impressions of con- 

 volutions, and M. Dubois estimated that the brain was 

 about twice as large as that of the brain of the largest 

 anthropoid. Although the shape of the thigh-bone 

 warranted the inference that the creature walked erect, 

 it also indicated adaptation to a tree-climbing habit 



