PITHECANTHROPUS ERECTUS. 449 



which was the ancestral stock from which man was derived. They all 

 show, though in somewhat different degree, intermingled human and 

 ape-like characters. 



I. — THE SKULLCAP. 



In the form of the skullcap similitude to that of the ape is undoubt- 

 edly predominant. Never yet has there been seen so flat and low a 

 human skull, never yet, outside of the true apes, has so strong a projec- 

 tion of the orbital region been found. The skulls of Neanderthal and 

 Spy and all microcephalic skulls are more highly vaulted, especially in 

 the parietal region ; the ratio between the central portion of the skull 

 and the orbital part lying in front of the temporal fossa is quite the 

 same as in the apes, differing widely from that of the lowest human 

 skulls, even that of Neanderthal and those of microcephali. Virchow 

 has referred especially to this. It can be seen only on the left side, the 

 right having suffered a notable loss of substance. The part of the wall 

 of the orbit that lies in front of the deepest portion of the temporal fossa 

 and belongs to the zygomatic process (external angular process) of the 

 frontal bone is, in its antero-posterior dimension, about twice as large as 

 that of the most ape-like human skulls. Further, it would be difficult 

 to find in a human skull so strongly developed a torus occipitalis trans- 

 versus as that of the Javanese skull, and the lower part of the squama 

 temporalis of that specimen retreats outwardly, as it does in the apes. 



Those who have followed the history of the Neanderthal skull are 

 aware that there has never existed regarding it such divergence of 

 opinion as to its man- or ape-like qualities as has arisen concerning the 

 Pithecanthropus. The two opposed views in that case were: Ape-like 

 man or diseased man ; the native of the Neanderthal has from the very 

 first always been considered as an undoubted, real man. The human 

 character of the Pithecanthropus is, however, very questionable. The 

 skull of the gibbon almost doubled in size would not be very different 

 from it in external appearance. 



Its considerably greater size constitutes a significant difference 

 between it and all other skulls of apes. In the length and breadth 

 measurements of the skull the chimpanzee is exactly a mean between 

 it and the largest gibbon. Its cranial capacity I estimated in my 

 above mentioned description, according to a comparison of the external 

 lineal dimensions, as about 1,000 c. cm. Estimating now upon a more 

 recent comparison of the internal linear dimensions with those of gib- 

 bons' skulls makes it but little more than 900 c. cm. 1 A capac ty of 

 900 c. cm. is, however, far above anything we know in the skull of apes. 

 The largest skulls of anthropoid apes have, on the average, no greater 

 capacity than about 500 c. cm., and it is very seldom that they have 

 been found to attain the capacity of GOO c. cm. 



'Besides the method of estimating the capacity which I detailed in my last 

 description, and which I again applied after removing the siliceous matter from the 

 SM 98 29 



