HEIDELBERG MAN 237 
across Neanderthal man of a more primitive type than 
any yet found in Mousterian deposits. The teeth show 
those peculiar features which differentiate them from 
those of men of the modern type — the enlarged pulp 
cavities, the swollen crowns and bodies, the curtailed 
roots (see figs. 50 and 175). These are not primitive 
or simian characters, but the reverse ; they are modifica- 
tions confined, so far as we have yet discovered, to this 
peculiar variety or species of man — Homo neanderthalensis. 
In these same features, man of the modern type — Homo 
sapiens^ as he is named — resembles the apes. Here, then, 
is an important fact — that at the commencement of the 
Pleistocene period that peculiar feature of the teeth 
which characterises the Neanderthal species of men was 
already evolved. It is true that on the last occasion 
I wrote a systematic account of the remains of fossil 
man,^ I still clung to the belief that the Neanderthal 
molars might in the course of further evolution revert 
to the more primitive form, and that Neanderthal man 
might stand to us as a direct ancestor. On the evidence 
now available I see that such a belief is untenable. 
One other feature of the Heidelberg dentition impresses 
the anatomist. At such an early date as the beginning 
of the Pleistocene period he was prepared to find in the 
canine or eye teeth some resemblance to the pointed 
canine teeth of apes. This expectation was founded on 
the form of the canine teeth of modern man, and the 
peculiar manner of their eruption. In the Heidelberg 
dentition the canines are even less ape-like than in 
modern man — they have subsided into the ranks of 
the ordinary teeth. In this we find a second point 
which bears on the antiquity of man. In an early 
species of man the canine teeth had assumed the 
" human " form by the commencement of the Pleistocene 
period. 
The Neanderthal nature of the Heidelberg mandible 
is rendered apparent by such a comparison as that made 
in fig. 82. The body of the Heidelberg jaw, that part 
» Ancient Types of Man, Harper Brothers, 191 1. 
