232 L. Manouvrier — Pithecanthropus erect us. 



to have been about parallel to the quantitative progress from 

 the anthropoid precursor to civilized man. But it is not possi- 

 ble to introduce here this very complex question with the neces- 

 sary developments. 



It would not be absurd to try upon the gibbon an experi- 

 ment conformable to our hypotheses. Without going so far 

 as to wish to reproduce the formation of a new Pithecanthro- 

 pus* we might attempt to picture what would happen to the 

 attitude in placing the gibbon under conditions favorable to the 

 transformation of its habits of locomotion. 



As an intermediate form between man and monkeys, it is 

 difficult to image anything more satisfactory than the skull of 

 Trinil. If this skull, as is probable, is not exceptional for its 

 race, we can count upon finding other specimens approaching 

 still more nearly, either to man or to the monkey. But what 

 the race of Trinil has not yet furnished, have not the lowest 

 human races furnished in abundance ? Do there not exist 

 human crania, inferior compared with the average of their 

 race, which show to us all the transitions theoretically desirable 

 between man and the Pithecanthropus f All the inferior 

 human crania which it would be possible to show as approach- 

 ing the form of Trinil by certain characters would make up 

 very well for the absence of the better specimens of the race 

 Pithecanthropus. But it will be difficult to find, among 

 normal human skulls, specimens as pithecoid as that of Trinil. 

 We see frequently in a race such and such individual charac- 

 ters recalling an ancestral type, for it is easier to descend than 

 to ascend in matters of evolution ; but the pathologic arrests 

 of development supervening during the embryonic stage only 

 are capable of giving rise to a whole ensemble of characters 

 recalling a remote phase of phylogenic evolution. Microceph- 

 alous idiots only, even among the lowest human races, pre- 

 sent such an ensemble of characters which come to realize a 

 morphologic type inferior to that of Pithecanthropus itself. 



The distance existing between the Pithecanthropus and 

 normal man must be considered as a necessary result from the 

 point of view of evolution. It is the superior portion of the 

 intermediate race which can have survived and formed an 

 inferior human race. This latter must then present characters 

 superior to the average of its ancestors, even independently of 

 the progress that this human race can have realized since the 

 Pliocene epoch. The existence of human crania presenting 

 at once the ensemble of the cranial characters of Pithecan- 

 thropus has not yet been demonstrated, unless we take into 

 account the microcephaly more or less accentuated, that is to 

 say, a veritable anomaly by arrest of development. But we 

 cannot represent a race by an abnormal skull, and it will be 

 noted in the present instance that the resemblance existing 



