370 SECTIONAL TRANSACTIONS.—C. 
evidence of posture and gait. The femur of the Java man is shaped so like to that 
of modern man that we must suppose his gait and carriage of body were as in us. 
Although we do not know the thigh bone of Piltdown man or of Peking man, yet their 
skulls are so human that we do not hesitate to ascribe to them limb bones which were 
equally human. We also know the limb bones of Neanderthal man. His carriage 
was upright but his gait must have been different from ours, for his femur is different. 
We may therefore hold it as proved that before the end of the pliocene period man 
had attained perfect plantigrade progression. The debate which now centres round 
man’s evolution is concentrated on the date at which, and the mode by which, man 
came by his lower limbs and peculiar carriage of body. We must therefore search 
older geological records for the evolution of man’s carriage of body. The later records 
of the pliocene yield us little ; but the older half of the pliocene and the younger half 
of the miocene give us a great deal; the adjacent halves of these two periods I will 
refer to as the ‘ age of the great anthropoids.’ Alas! When we search the records 
of the great anthropoid age, although we find parts of jaws and teeth representing at 
least a score of diverse anthropoid apes, several of which may be ancestral to 
pleistocene man, we have only two fossil limb bones to guide us as to the posture or 
gait of these extinct anthropoids. One of these is an imperfect humerus—the arm 
bone of a Dryopithecus—the other a femur of a smaller European anthropoid which 
Dubois named Pliohylobates eppelsheimensis—a pliocene relative of the modern 
Siamang of Sumatra. Of the great anthropoids—not a segment of a thigh bone— 
only fragments of jaws and teeth. How uncertain jaws and teeth can be as a guide 
to posture and humanity of body in the higher primates the four following instances 
will exemplify. A fossil tooth, obtained from pleistocene strata at Taubach (near 
Weimar), Germany, was assigned to an extinct form of humanity by one set of experts 
and to a great extinct ape (Dryopithecus) by another equally skilled set of experts. 
Discoveries subsequently made near Taubach revealed identical teeth socketed in a 
human jaw—that of a member of the extinct Neanderthal species (Ehringsdorf man). 
A fossil tooth, almost certainly from the same strata as yielded the remains of 
Sinanthropus (Peking man) was submitted in 1903 to Prof. Max Schlosser, who has 
made a special study of teeth of higher primates. He had to leave the diagnosis 
open; it was simian as well as human in its character; it might be the tooth of an 
ape or it might be of an early form of man. Dr. Davidson Black’s discoveries prove 
that it was human. The lower jaw and teeth of Piltdown man have been regarded— 
and still are by certain experts—as those of an extinct form of chimpanzee—so hard 
is it to draw a line between the teeth and jaws of the earlier forms of man and the 
teeth and jaws of the higher kinds of extinct anthropoid apes. Or, take the case of 
the Taungs anthropoid (Australopithecus). Prof. Dart has succeeded in freeing the 
jaws and exposing the molar pattern of this extinct primate ; the molar pattern is 
the most human yet discovered in any ape. If only the teeth and jaws had been 
found they would have been assigned to an early member of the human family. 
The teeth and jaws alone give uncertain guidance as to whether any given fossil 
form is to be assigned to the family of man or that of the Great Anthrepoids. How 
are we to explain this remarkable resemblance in tooth and jaw of pleistocene man 
to miocene anthropoid? By independent acquisition or by inheritance from a 
common stock? I agree with Dr. W. K. Gregory in explaining the resemblance as 
an inheritance from a common stock. The great anthropoids of the miocene period, 
and the early pleistocene forms of man, are descendants of a common stock and that 
stock, were it living now, we should assign not to the human family but to that. of 
the Great Anthropoids—with the gorilla, chimpanzee and orang. 
All that we know of the great anthropoids of the upper miocene and lower pliocene 
periods is founded on the discovery of isolated teeth and fragments of jaws, carrying 
teeth. Let us glance at these fossil remains to see if among them we can recognise 
the ancestral form of either man, gorilla, chimpanzee or orang. In ancient Europe 
there were at least three kinds of great anthropoids—all assigned to one genus— 
Dryopithecus. In the Siwalik deposits of northern India Dr. Pilgrim and others have 
found fossil jaws and teeth which they have assigned to thirteen difierent species of 
great anthropoid. Six of these species are regarded as Dryopitheques, four as 
Sivapitheques and two as Palzopitheques. When we examine this assemblage of 
fossil jaws and teeth, representing at least sixteen different kinds of extinct anthropoid 
ape, can we find amongst them any shaping towards a human form? Hardly one 
more than another. Several might be prehuman. Tf would not be surprised if several 
of the teeth at present assigned to two of the European dryopitheques—darwinit 
SE A a eee ee ee 
