PITHECANTHROPUS EKECTUS. 453 



gibbons. 1 By laying bare the sulcus transversus we have obtained a 

 more fixed point of departure for measuring the height of the skullcap 

 as an expression of the relative extent of the cerebrum. Accordingly, 

 we find that the skull of Pithecanthropus was almost as highly vaulted 

 as that of the Spy and Neanderthal men, remaining, however, far below 

 the vaulting of the skulls of recent men. The exceptionally highly 

 vaulted skull of Hylobates agilis, inclosed, however, a cerebrum that 

 reached nearly to the upward curve of the Neanderthal man. The 

 remaining apes fall in regular series. Cunningham's microcephalous 

 boy Joe has a flatter brain than the gibbon and the chimpanzee. 



The breadth indices of the skulls represented here are about the 

 same; therefore the height of each profile curve is an approximate 

 measure for the relative sizes of the cerebrums. 



If, then, the former possessor of this cranium was not an ape, and if 

 he possibly walked erect, must he then have been a man? 



I think that the ape-like form of the skullcap and its capacity, too 

 small for a man, can not be brought to harmonize with such a concep- 

 tion. Even Cunningham, who has examined the skull, and is con- 

 vinced that it is human, finds that its ape-like characters greatly 

 predominate, and that there is nothing human about it except its 

 excessive size for an ape. Virchow has also, after a personal examina- 

 tion of the skullcap, very clearly adjudged it, in Ley den and Berlin, as 

 the skull of an ape. So experienced a craniologist as Hamy, in Paris, 

 said, after examining the same, that he never would have supposed it 

 to be human. On the contrary, the most ape-like human skulls that 

 are anywhere known, the Neanderthal, the Spy, and the Australian 

 skulls, were not considered by any as apes. It was only questioned 

 concerning these skulls whether or not their resemblance to the 

 pithecoids should lead us to give to that race a higher phylogenetic 

 significance. 



According to the conception which we have of the human skull, the 

 Java skullcap is certainly not a human relic. 



But the size also is not adapted to that of the human skull. For it is 

 quite inadmissible to suppose that we are here dealing with a micro- 

 cephalous skull, not only on account of the great improbability of such 

 a view, but also because its form is quite different. We are certainly 

 acquainted with normal human skulls of an equally small capacity; but 



1 As I have been able to remove only a quite small portion of the siliceous matter 

 from the cavity of the skullcap, I, as well as others, had erroneously (as now 

 appears, misled by its different position on the right and left sides) taken the lower 

 edge of the sulcus transversus for its upper one. I now find that it lies considerably 

 higher than I had at first supposed. On the other hand it appears from an examin- 

 ation of a large series of gibbon skulls that the average distance from the superior 

 curved line is somewhat greater than I had previously stated. My present data are 

 therefore more correct than those given in the Verhandlungen der Berliner Gesell- 

 schaft fiir Anthropologic 1895, p. 731. The similarity to the gibbon is therefore 

 much greater. 



