Diversions of a NaturalistLankester, E. Ray (Edwin Ray), Sir
History
Diversions of a Naturalist
Lankester, E. Ray (Edwin Ray), Sir
Natural history
[12] The human lower jaw found at Moulin-Quignon fifty years ago by
workmen who brought it to M. Boucher de Perthes, was dismissed after
much study and examination by the most competent anatomists at the time
as being a comparatively recent specimen. I do not know whether it has
been preserved. I have a flint implement found with it which was given
to me in 1862 by M. de Perthes as genuine. It is a forgery, and the jaw
was fraudulently buried with it and others in order to deceive M. de
Perthes and earn a pecuniary reward for the forgers.
It would be highly important were we able to arrive at a satisfactory
conclusion as to what age must be attributed to the Piltdown jaw and
skull. Did we know their age their true significance as a link between
man and ape would be more easily estimated. The gravel in which they
were found contains a handful, as it were, of the sweepings of the land
surface of the great Weald valley of Sussex of all ages and periods
since the emergence of the chalk from the ocean floor--an immense lapse
of time, amounting probably to millions of years! In this sparse and
inconspicuous patch of gravel we find fragments of teeth of mastodon
and elephant and rhinoceros of Miocene and Pliocene age; we also find
bones of quite late kinds of mammals of the Pleistocene period; we also
find two kinds of roughly chipped flint instruments belonging the one
to an earlier and the other to a later age. All are mixed up together
in the gravel. When we come to the question as to which of these
remains are of animals which were the contemporaries of Eoanthropus,
all we can say is that Eoanthropus, the creature whose jaw was found
at Piltdown, may have lived as late as the latest or as early as the
earliest of the animals whose remains are associated with it. The
Eoanthropus remains are not so heavily mineralized, it seems to me, as
are the fragments of teeth of Miocene age found with them. At the same
time, we have no ground for assuming that this creature made either
the earlier or the later type of flint implements found with it, or was
capable of such manufacture. I see no reason for supposing, whatever
may be the age which we may have to attribute to Eoanthropus, that that
creature was capable of flaking flints to a desired shape or of making
fire or had developed the use of articulate speech. Nor is there any
evidence to show that the humanly cut elephant-bone recently found at
Piltdown by Mr. Dawson was cut by Eoanthropus. It is more probable that
this was done by a more highly developed creature of the genus Homo.
In fact, the only ground which at present justifies the association
of Eoanthropus with the Hominidæ or human series rather than with the
Simiidæ or ape series--derived from a common ancestry--is the man-like
rather than ape-like size of the brain, which we must attribute to
Eoanthropus on the assumption, which is at present a reasonable one,
that the half-jaw and the incomplete skull found near each other at
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