G. G. Mac Curdy — Significance of the Piltdown Skull. 317 



brow ridges, the small area for the insertion of the temporal 

 muscles, the rather insignificant mastoid processes, and the 

 slender lower jaw, point to a member of the female sex. Dr. 

 "Woodward regards the skull as belonging to a hitherto 

 unknown species of Homo, for which he proposes the name 

 JEoan th rop us daiosonii. 



A study of the cast of the cranial cavity would seem to 

 justify this appellation. This has been done thoroughly by 

 Professor G. Elliot Smith, one of the highest authorities on 

 the human brain, who iinds that while it bears a remarkable 

 similarity to the brain cases of Gibraltar and La Quina, both 

 paleolithic and supposedly feminine, the Piltdown brain case 

 is smaller and more primitive in form than these. The most 

 striking feature is the " pronounced gorilla-like drooping of the 

 temporal region, due to the extreme narrowing of its posterior 

 part, which causes a deep excavation of its under surface." 

 This feeble development of that portion of the brain which is 

 known to control the power of articulate speech is most signifi- 

 cant. To Professor Smith the association of a simian jaw with 

 a cranium more distinctly human is not surprising. The evo- 

 lution of the human brain from the simian type involves a 

 tripling of the superficial area of the cerebral cortex ; and 

 " this expansion was not like the mere growth of a muscle with 

 exercise, but the gradual building-up of the most complex 

 mechanism in existence. The growth of the brain preceded 

 the refinement of the features and the somatic characters in 

 general." 



The associated worked flints have been compared with the 

 so-called eoliths from the North and South Downs. Accord- 

 ing to Sir Ray Lankester, " many of the flints in this Piltdown 

 gravel have been worked by early man into rough implements. 

 They are of flat shape, often triangular in area, and show a 

 coarse but unmistakable flaking of human workmanship." He 

 considers them ruder and earlier than any flint implements that 

 can be rightly called Chellean. 



Scientists have often remarked on the paucity of human 

 remains that could with certainty be referred to a very early 

 epoch, a condition which more than anything else has kept in 

 check the science of prehistoric anthropology. After all there 

 is no evidence quite so incontrovertible as the presence of 

 man's own skeletal remains. We may justly differ on the 

 question as to whether or not a given flint is an artifact ; not 

 so in case of a human skull. When the skull is found asso- 

 ciated with rudely flaked flints, the nature of which might be 

 questioned if occurring alone, the burden of proof is at once 

 shifted from those who believe them to have been utilized by 

 man to those who would call them the work of Nature. On 



Am. Jour. Sci.— Fourth Series, Vol. XXXV, No. 207.— March, 1913. 



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