REPORT OF THE DIRECTOR I913 149 



extended. Finally, if the bone is placed on a horizontal plane it will 

 be seen that there is a large open space under the median symphysis. 

 All these characters give this jaw more the aspect of an anthropoid 

 than of a human jaw, and it is certain that if it had been deprived 

 of its alveolar border it would have been greatly to the embarrass- 

 ment of paleontologists; but the teeth are distinctly human and the 

 canines no more prominent than the adjoining teeth. 



Again, we find the association of such pithecoid and human 

 characters, in a fashion perhaps still more pronounced, in Eoan- 

 thropus dawsoni; that is to say, in the being whose remains 

 have been discovered at Piltdown. Morphologically, this jaw is the 

 jaw of a chimpanzee, and the recent discovery of the canine tooth 

 notably more developed than the human canine accentuates this 

 resemblance; but the cranium, as far as one is able to judge from 

 the deteriorated condition in which it was found and after some- 

 what varying reconstructions which have been made of it, is much 

 more allied to the cranium of the existing man than to that of 

 Homo n ean d e r th al en s i s . 



With Pithecanthropus erectus the phenomena are 

 inverted. Here, in fact, are a femur and a molar which are clearly 

 human, while the cranium is very far removed from the cranium of 

 H . s a p i e n s . Its aspect recalls that of the cranium of the Middle 

 Pleistocene man, although it exaggerates those characters. The 

 orbital ridge is sharper and consequently more pithecoid, the frontal 

 more depressed, the vault more depressed, the occipital region more 

 prominent and, finally, the cerebral capacity, which in Homo 

 neanderthalensis is 1400 cubic centimeters, in Pithe- 

 canthropus certainly did not exceed 1000 cubic centimeters. 

 In Pithecanthropus we have reached the most ancient 

 known representative of human beings or anthropomorphs which 

 excavations of the last fifty years have brought us. It is now neces- 

 sary for us to inquire how it is possible, in the present state of 

 science, to interpret these documents and with their help to solve 

 the problem of the origin of man. 



Homo neanderthalensis constitutes naturally the key- 

 stone of the whole edifice which we attempt to construct with the 

 elements I have briefly described, because chronologically it is the 

 first positively human being different from living man which has 

 reached us, and especially because it is best known to us. 



The morphological study of this fossil brings out two capital 

 facts : one, the extraordinary homogeneity of the ethnic type which 



