130 Revieivs — Fossil Remains of Man 



interested public no less than a not inconsiderable number of scientific 

 men. Under these circumstances it was highly desirable that a 

 simple statement of the facts, devoid of all technicalities, should be 

 made available in an easily accessible form. The Guide which 

 Dr. Smith Woodward has written supplies this want. For fourpence 

 anyone can now obtain an admirably lucid and concise description, 

 illustrated with a series of photographs and diagrams, of the famous 

 Piltdown fragments, together with an account of the remains of 

 Pithecanthropus, the Heidelberg jaw, and the series of representatives 

 of the Neanderthal race. A sketch of our knowledge of the fossil 

 Primates provides an excellent setting for the notes on the remains of 

 early man, for it serves to explain their zoological rank and horizon. 



After referring to the coming of the " Age of Mammals" the Guide 

 describes the place of the Primates among the Mammalia, and 

 summarizes the present state of our knowledge of the past 

 history of the Order as it is revealed by fossilized remains of 

 Lemuroids, Lemurs, Monkeys, and Apes. The consideration of 

 Pithecanthropus serves to introduce the account of the antiquity of man. 

 The circumstances of Mr. Dawson's discovery of Eoanthropus are 

 then set forth, and an account is given of the objects found in 

 association with it and the reasons for assigning the human remains 

 to an early Pleistocene horizon. 



The concise account of the fragments of the Piltdown skull and the 

 excellent series of illustrations put the reader in possession of all the 

 essential facts, and quite definitely justify the creation of a new genus 

 of the Hominidse to which to assign this representative of a hitherto 

 unknown type of primitive generalized humanity. 



Many books have been written within recent years with the object 

 of explaining and interpreting the remains of fossil man, but most of 

 them are unsatisfactory. Some of them put forward fantastic ideas 

 as to the antiquity of man and the course of human evolution. 

 Others, again, confuse their readers by quoting masses of conflicting 

 statements. This small Guide, brief though it be, is perhaps the best 

 account of the present state of our knowledge that has yet appeared. 

 For it is a simple, sane, and easily understood statement of admitted 

 facts and the inevitable and indisputable inferences to be drawn 

 from them. 



In a work written for the general public, complex technical points 

 have necessarily been explained in simple language, which may 

 perhaps at times offend the scientific purist who likes to hide his 

 ignorance behind high-sounding technical terms — in many cases not 

 meaning very much. For instance, exception has been taken to the 

 statement that "certain parts [of the brain] remain scarcely more 

 developed than they are in a modern child " (p. 14). It would 

 perhaps have been more accurate to express this by saying that the 

 parts of the brain of Eoanthropus corresponding to those areas which 

 in the modern human being attain their full development last of all 

 are conspicuously ill-developed. But it seems to me that in a Guide 

 intended primarily for the general public the simpler explanation 

 given by Dr. Smith Woodward is justifiable, and that such a 

 criticism as I have quoted savours of pedantry. The Guide is not 



