THE BRAIN OF FOSSIL MAN 399 
the Geological Society, held on the 17th of December 
19 13, exactly a year after the famous one mentioned in a 
former chapter. In the new official reconstruction the 
hinder end of the skull has been opened out to a very 
considerable extent. As amended, the cranial capacity 
cannot fall much short of 1300 c.c. Thus we see the 
brain capacity of this very ancient man, even in official 
hands, steadily climbing from the bottom to the top of 
the microcephalic group of humanity. 
The reader will now begin to see why I have taken so 
much care to verify and prove every step taken in the 
reconstruction of the Piltdown skull. If my methods are 
right, if the laws which hold good for skulls in general 
are applicable at Piltdown, then we must promote this 
early Pleistocene or late Pliocene man to a still higher 
group. In the previous chapter we found from the 
measurements of the skull that the brain capacity should 
be about 1400 c.c. The original reconstruction assigns 
the Piltdown individual, as regards mere size of brain, to 
the small-headed group ; my one gives him or her a good 
place in the medium-headed group. In either case, the 
important fact remains that so long ago as the beginning 
of a former geological period a form of mankind had 
come well within the human standard of brain size. We 
could have no better assurance that the antiquity of man 
is very great. 
Size of brain, as we have already admitted, is a very 
imperfect index of mental ability. We know that certain 
elements enter into the formation of the brain which take 
no direct part in our mental activity. A person who has 
been blessed with a great, robust body and strong, massive 
limbs requires a greater outfit of nerve tracts and nerve 
cells for the purposes of mere animal administration than 
the smaller person with trunk and limbs of a moderate 
size. Dr Eugene Dubois^ and the writer'- have made 
' Report of the Fourth International Con<rress of Zoologists, Cambridge, 
1898, p. 78. Koninklijke Akad. van Wetctisch. te Amsterdam, 1914, 
vol. XVI. p. 647. 
- foiirn. Anat. and Physiol., 1S95, vol. ix. p. 282. 
