Z. Manouvrier — Pithecanthropus erectus. 213 



Akt. XXI Y. — On Pithecanthropus erectus; by Professor 

 L. Manouvrier of the Paris School of Anthropology.* 



Extracts selected from two articles : " The Pithecanthropus erectus and the 

 Theory of Evolution" (Revue Scientifique, 4 me ser., t. v), and "Response to the 

 Objections against the Pithecanthropus" (Bull, de la Soc. d'Anthrop. de Paris, 

 4 me ser., t. vii). Translated by George Grant MacCurdy, M.A. 



The Revue has already said a few words about an important 

 scientific event which I now propose to discuss more fully. 



It is a question of the discovery in Tertiary strata near 

 Trinil, Java, of bones which seem to have belonged to a being 

 intermediate between man and the anthropoids. This could 

 be a precursor and perhaps an immediate ancestor of the human 

 species, the link, heretofore lacking, of the chain which, accord- 

 ing to the theory of evolution, ought to unite without interrup- 

 tion Homo sapiens with the rest of the animal kingdom. The 

 author of this discovery is Mr. Eugene Dubois, physician in 

 the Dutch army. The occasion was a vast geologic explora- 

 tion made in Java, from 1890 to 1895, under the auspices of 

 the government of Holland. 



Such good fortune did not come to Mr. Dubois by hazard. 

 He was attracted to the Indian archipelago in the hope of find- 

 ing there, by means of important excavations about to be 

 undertaken, the famous Missing Link theoretically foreseen, the 

 existence of which should antedate Quaternary times. Certain 

 hypotheses even considered the " lies de la Sonde " as a pos- 

 sible cradle of the human race. Mr. Dubois, then, was guided 

 by theoretic views ; and if he has been fortunate in his research 

 he has merited it by his competence as geologist and anatomist, 

 also by the talent with which he has known how to turn his 

 discovery to account. 



It is all very well to find an inscription, it is another thing 

 to decipher it. This latter task, as will be seen farther on, 

 presented great difficulties which Mr. Dubois has overcome in 

 a most creditable manner. 



A very incomplete skull, two molar teeth picked up at a 

 meter's distance from the skull, and a femur lying at some fif- 

 teen meters' distance, the whole enveloped in an earthy gang, 

 very hard, and occurring in a bed which included other remains 

 of a Pleistocene fauna to day for the most part extinct — such 

 are the pieces of a more or less human appearance of which 

 the specific determination was in question. It is obvious that 



* Two illustrated papers on the Pithecanthropus erectus have already appeared in 

 this Journal, both by Professor 0. C. Marsh, who from the drst regarded this 

 new form as intermediate between man and the higher apes. See vol. xlix, p. 144, 

 February, 1895; and vol. i, p. 475, June, 1896.— Ed. 



Am. Jour. Sol— Fourth Series, Yol. IV, No. 21.— Sept., 1897. 

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