504 THE ANTIQUITY OF MAN 
fossil skull hitherto found. If this view be accepted, 
the Piltdown type has become modified into the later 
Mousterian (Neanderthal) type by a series of changes 
similar to those passed through by the early apes, 
as they evolved into the typical modern apes, and 
corresponding with the stages in the developmen: of 
the skull in the existing ape individual. It tends to 
support the theory that Mousterian man was a degenerate 
offshoot of early man, and probably became extinct ; 
while surviving man may have arisen directly from tne 
primitive source of which the Piltdown skull provides 
the first discovered evidence." Dr Smith Woodward's 
answer to our question, then, is that Eoanthropus does 
not necessarily stand in the direct Hne which leads on 
to modern man, but represents more closely than any 
human form yet discovered the common ancestor from 
which both the Neanderthal and modern types have 
been derived. 
We have seen that Eoanthropus in the size and shape 
of brain, and in the conformation of the skull, has a 
very high degree of resemblance to modern man. The 
characters of the teeth and mandible, on the other hand, 
were more simian than in any other form of man. The 
eyebrow ridges, so far as we can judge from the parts 
preserved, were also peculiar. On the other hand, we find 
in the skull of Neanderthal man numerous features which 
are also found in the skulls of anthropoid apes, particu- 
larly in the gorilla and chimpanzee. In many ways the 
Neanderthal skulls and brain casts are more simian, more 
primitive, than the corresponding Piltdown specimens. 
In the Neanderthal type of man we find the canine teeth 
reduced and the chin region of the mandible assuming a 
non- simian conformation as in the modern type of man. 
To explain the curious distribution of characters in those 
three types of man we have to postulate such a generic 
tree as is shown in fig. 187. There the Pliocene human 
stem, from which we have derived the Neanderthal and 
modern types, is also seen to give origin to the Piltdown 
type. 
