140 NEW YORK STATE MUSEUM 



I have not as yet taken account of the famous discovery made in 

 Java in 1891-92 by Dr Eugene Dubois of certain fragmentary 

 bones, a calvarium, a femur and a molar of a being which has 

 received the name of Pithecanthropus erectus. The 

 age of these bones has been discussed at length and is not yet 

 definitely determined, but it does not seem to carry us back to an 

 epoch earlier than the period of transition from the Pliocene to the 

 Pleistocene. They are nevertheless the most ancient anthropomor- 

 phic remains which we possess and I shall have to refer later to 

 their interpretation. 



Up until 1907 we knew the human being who lived in Europe 

 during the Lower Pleistocene only by his industry, but, in the 

 course of the last three years, two sensational discoveries have 

 brought us the first definite proof of the physical characteristics of 

 this being. There was, first of all, the discovery in 1907 of a 

 lower jaw in the sands of Mauer, near Heidelberg; then in 1912 

 the discovery of a portion of the cranium and the lower jaw in the 

 gravels of Piltdown, in Sussex. 



Much more numerous and more important are th6 documents 

 which we possess relating to the man of the Middle Pleistocene. 

 Following the chronological order artd retaining only the undebated 

 and undebatable examples, we may cite: the cranium of Gibraltar, 

 1848; the calvarium of Neanderthal, 1856; the jaw of La Naulette, 

 1866; the cranium and bones of Spy, 1886; the jaw of Malarnaud, 

 1899; the multiple debris of Krapina, 1899; the skeleton of La 

 Chapelle-aux-Saints, 1908; the skeleton of Moustier, 1909; the two 

 skeletons of La Ferrassie, 1909—10; and, finally, the skeleton of 

 La Quina, 191 1. 



From the epoch intermediate between the Middle Pleistocene and 

 the Later Pleistocene there have been reported two skeletons dis- 

 covered in the lower beds of one of the caves of Grimaldi, near 

 Menton, and described by M. Verneau. Finally, the Later or 

 Upper Pleistocene has furnished so many evidences of fossil man 

 that a list of them would be too long to give here. 



This is a summary of the paleontologic human documents which 

 we possess today. Let us now see the data which the study of 

 these precious remains afifords for the determination of the mor- 

 phology of our ancestors. 



A rapid examination shows, first of all, and this is a capital 

 point, that man of the Later Pleistocene had already the characters 

 of living man, or, in other words, to employ the language of the 



