alt="GENEALOGICAL TREE OF MAN'S ANCESTRY." title="" tag="{http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml}img"/> GENEALOGICAL TREE OF MAN'S ANCESTRY.
(A. Keith, The Antiquity of Man, 1915; fig. 187, p. 501.)

The cranial capacity of the Piltdown skull, though variously estimated[14], is certainly greater than that of Pithecanthropus, the general outlines with steeply rounded forehead resemble that of modern man, and the bones are almost without exception typically human. The jaw, however, though usually attributed to the same individual[15], recalls the primitive features of the Mauer specimen in its thick ascending portion and shallow notch, while in certain characters it differs from any known jaw, ancient or modern[16]. The evidence afforded by the teeth is even more striking. The teeth of Pithecanthropus and of Homo Heidelbergensis were recognised as remarkably human, and although primitive in type, are far more advanced in the line of human evolution than the lowly features with which they are associated would lead one to expect. The Piltdown teeth are more primitive in certain characters than those of either the Javan or the Heidelberg remains. The first molar has been compared to that of Taubach, the most ape-like of human or pre-human teeth hitherto recorded, but the canine tooth (found by P. Teilhard in the same stratum in 1913[17]) finds no parallel in any known human jaw; it resembles the milk canine of the chimpanzee more than that of the adult dentition.

It cannot be said that any clear view of pleistocene man can be obtained from these imperfect scraps of evidence, valuable though they are. Rather may we agree with Keith that the problem grows more instead of less complex. "In our first youthful burst of Darwinianism we pictured our evolution as a simple procession of forms leading from ape to man. Each age, as it passed, transformed the men of the time one stage nearer to us—one more distant from the ape. The true picture is very different. We have to conceive an ancient world in which the family of mankind was broken up into narrow groups or genera, each genus again divided into a number of species—much as we see in the monkey or ape world of to-day. Then out of that great welter of forms one species became the dominant form, and ultimately the sole surviving one—the species represented by the modern races of mankind[18]."

We may assume therefore that the earth was mainly peopled by the generalised pleistocene precursors, who moved about, like the other migrating faunas, unconsciously, everywhere following the lines of least resistance, advancing or receding, and acting generally on blind impulse rather than of any set purpose.

That such must have been the nature of the first migratory movements will appear evident when we consider that they were carried on by rude hordes, all very much alike, and differing not greatly from other zoological groups, and further that these migrations took place prior to the development of all cultural appliances beyond the ability to wield a broken branch or a sapling, or else chip or flake primitive stone implements[19].

Herein lies the explanation of the curious phenomenon, which was a stumbling-block to premature systematists, that all the works of early man everywhere present the most startling resemblances, affording absolutely no elements for classification, for instance, during the times corresponding with the Chellean or first period of the Old Stone Age. The implements of palaeolithic type so common in parts of South India, South Africa, the Sudan, Egypt, etc., present a remarkable resemblance to one another. This, while affording a prima facies case for, is not conclusive of, the migrations of a definite type of humanity.

After referring to the identity of certain objects from the Hastings kitchen-middens and a barrow near Sevenoaks, W. J. L. Abbot proceeds: "The first thing that would strike one in looking over a few trays of these implements is the remarkable likeness which they bear to those of Dordogne. Indeed many of the figures in the magnificent 'Reliquiae Aquitanicae' might almost have been produced from these specimens[20]." And Sir J. Evans, extending his glance over a wider horizon, discovers implements in other distant lands "so identical in form and character with British specimens that they might have been manufactured by the same hands.... On the banks of the Nile, many hundreds of feet above its present level, implements of the European types have been discovered, while in Somaliland, in an ancient river valley, at a great elevation above the sea, Seton-Karr has collected a large number of implements formed of flint and quartzite, which, judging from their form and character, might have been dug out of the drift-deposits of the Somme and the Seine, the Thames or the ancient Solent[21]."

It was formerly held that man himself showed a similar uniformity, and all palaeolithic skulls were referred to one long-headed type, called, from the most famous example, the Neandertal, which was regarded as having close affinities with the present Australians. But this resemblance is shown by Boule[22] and others to be purely superficial, and recent archaeological finds indicate that more than one racial type was in existence in the Palaeolithic Age.

W. L. H. Duckworth on anatomical evidence constructs the following table[23].