THE QUATERNARY PERIOD 



375 



Early Ancestral Forms. — Among the most ancient known 

 remains of Man's early ancestral forms, two are of special interest. 

 These are the so- 

 called Pithecan- 

 thropus erectus and 

 Homo heidelber- 

 gensis which are 

 of greater antiquity 

 than any bones of 

 undoubted human 

 beings. 



Pithecanthropus 

 erectus was found in 

 Java in 1891 and, 

 according to its dis- 

 coverer (Dubois), 

 it was of Pliocene 

 age and had an 

 erect attitude. 

 Others, however, 

 who have examined 

 the locality and the 

 remains claim its 



Fig. 232 

 Comparison of skull profiles of lowest types of Men 

 and highest Apes. Papua, modern native of New 

 Guinea; Spy 1 and 2, Men of Spy; Nt, Neander- 

 thal Man; Pe, Pithecanthropus erectus; HI, a 

 Gibbon; At, a modern Chimpanzee. (By Marsh 

 after Du Bois, from Le Conte's "Geology," 

 courtesy of D. Appleton and Company.) 



age to have been not earlier than early Pleistocene, and that there 



is no proof whatever that 

 it had an erect attitude. 

 The actual remains in- 

 clude the upper portion 

 of a skull, a lower jaw, 

 several teeth, and a left 

 thigh bone. A consider- 

 able amount of sediment 

 rested upon the remains. 



So-called Homo heidel- 

 bergensis, represented by a 

 lower jaw with a number 



Flg - 233 of teeth well preserved, 



Restoration of the head of Pithecanthropus wag discovered (1907 ) nea r 



erectus. (After Du Bois, from Norton s x ' . 



"Elements of Geology," by permission Heidelberg, Germany, in a 



of Ginn and Company, Publishers.) sand-pit seventy feet be- 



