CHAPTER XXX THE MISSING LINK UNTIL the discovery of the wonderful fossil jaw in the gravel of Piltdown, near Lewes in Sussex, a favourite view as to the probable relationship of man and existing apes was, that if you could trace back the pedigree of man and of the chimpanzee into remote antiquity far back in the Tertiary period--probably in the early Miocene--you would arrive at a smallish creature with, proportionately to its size, larger jaws and teeth than any modern man, yet smaller than those of the living man-like apes, and with a brain not two-thirds the size of that of the least developed of modern savages, yet larger (in proportion to its general bulk) than that of the gorilla, chimpanzee, orang, and gibbons. This hypothetical creature would represent, it was held, the common ancestor of the two great "strains" or "stocks" one of which in the course of gradual modification gave rise to our living "humanity," and various non-surviving offshoots on the way; whilst the other gave rise to the company of great apes, with their tremendous jaws and dog-teeth, their small brains, and great bony skull-crests for the attachment of huge jaw muscles. It was insisted that the obvious and immediate suggestion when once man's descent from animal ancestry was admitted, namely, that man has taken his rise from the most man-like animals we know--the great apes--is erroneous. The public was warned that they must not jump to such a conclusion; it was too obvious, too facile. The "celebrated ape of the Darwin shape," which popular songs made familiar to a wide public, was declared to be only a remote rustic, not to say brutalized, cousin of humanity, not in the direct line happily! Our real ancestors, it was declared, were mild, intelligent little creatures, animals, it is true, but animals which hastened to separate their mixed qualities in two divergent lines of descent--(1) the intelligent, mild-mannered clan who ceased to climb trees, and walked uprightly on the soles of their feet, whilst their teeth grew smaller and smaller, and their brains grew bigger and bigger; and (2) the violent tree-climbing members of the family, who refused to stand up, and acquired bigger and bigger jaws and teeth, whilst their brains remained small, their temper morose, and their conduct violent. [Illustration: FIG. 23.--Comparison of the right half of the lower jaw of A, Modern European; B, Eoanthropus from Piltdown; and C, Chimpanzee. The size of the drawings is two-thirds of the linear dimensions of the actual specimens. The dotted outline in B represents the part which was wanting in the original specimen and was thus re-constructed by Dr. Smith Woodward. _X_ in A is the bony chin or "mental protuberance"; in B and C it marks that part of the jaw which would become the mental protuberance were the palisade or line of teeth retracted as in A.]