398 THE ANTIQUITY OF MAN 
and most of us are content to accept the Professor of 
Anatomy in the University of Manchester as our leading 
authority on this matter, then it is certain that Pithecan- 
thropus — that peculiar fossil form of man from Java — 
falls rather below the human limit. His discoverer, Dr 
Eugene Dubois, has estimated that the brain was about 
855 c.c, ; for certain reasons I regard this as rather an 
underestimate — 900 c.c. will probably prove to be nearer 
the truth. The anthropoid apes fall far below the human 
level. A gorilla has been found to have a brain capacity 
of 610 c.c. ; in an exceptional chimpanzee it was as low 
as 290 c.c. In the majority of great anthropoids — orangs, 
chimpanzees, and gorillas — the capacity fluctuates between 
400 and 500 c.c. Amongst modern human races the 
brain is found to vary in size ; it may be as low as 950 
c.c. or as high as 1900 c.c. The late Sir William Flower 
divided human skulls into three sizes — small or micro- 
cephalic, medium or mesocephalic, and large or macro- 
cephalic. In this manner of classifying skulls an individual 
with a brain space of less than 1350 c.c. falls into the micro- 
cephalic group ; if above 1450, into the macrocephalic 
group. Thus, including all the races of mankind in our 
survey, we are prepared to regard those with a brain 
measuring between 1350 c.c. and 1450 c.c. as having 
reached the standard brain size of modern human races. 
Suppose, then, the Piltdown man, who lies thirty or fifty 
thousand generations behind us, were to reappear among 
us in the flesh, to what group would he be attached ? If 
we take Dr Smith Woodward's estimate of 1070 c.c, 
then he is microcephalic and falls almost to the limit 
which lies between the lowest human and the highest 
prehuman brain capacity. Dr Smith Woodward had a 
brain cast made from the Piltdown skull. When that 
cast is measured, it is found to displace 1195 c.c. of 
water ; in round numbers, then, the size of the brain, even 
when the cranial fragments overlap their normal positions, 
measures 1200 c.c. — thus reaching a middle place in the 
small-headed group. As I write, another official recon- 
struction of the skull has been exhibited at a meeting of 
