The Outline of History: Being a Plain History of Life and MankindWells, H. G. (Herbert George)
History
The Outline of History: Being a Plain History of Life and Mankind
Wells, H. G. (Herbert George)
World history
Upon this question of the Piltdown jaw-bone, it may be of interest to
quote here a letter to the writer from Sir Ray Lankester, discussing the
question in a familiar and luminous manner. It will enable the reader to
gauge the extent and quality of the evidence that we possess at present
upon the nature of these early human and sub-human animals. Upon these
fragile Piltdown fragments alone more than a hundred books, pamphlets,
and papers have been written. These scraps of bone are guarded more
carefully from theft and wilful damage than the most precious jewels,
and in the museum cases one sees only carefully executed _fac-similes_.
“As to the Piltdown jaw-bone, the best study of it is that by Smith
Woodward, who first described it and the canine found later. The jaw is
imperfect in front, but has the broad, flat symphysis of the Apes. G. S.
Miller, an American anthropologist, has made a very good comparison of
it with a chimpanzee’s jaw, and concludes that it is a chimpanzee’s.
(His monograph is in the _Am. Jour. of Phys. Anthrop._, vol. i, no. 1.)
The one point in the Piltdown jaw itself against chimpanzee
identification is the smooth, flat, worn surface of the molars. This is
a human character, and is due to lateral movement of the jaw, and hence
rubbing down of the tubercles of the molars. This is not worth much. But
the serious question is, are we to associate this jaw with the cranium
found close by it? If so, it is certainly not chimpanzee nor close to
the Apes, but decidedly hominid. Two other small fragments of crania and
a few more teeth have been found in the gravel two miles from Piltdown,
which agree with the Piltdown cranium in having superciliary ridges
fairly strong for a human skull, but not anything like the great
superciliary ridges of Apes. The fact one has to face is this; here you
have an imperfect cranium, very thick-walled and of small cubical
contents (1100 or so), but much larger in that respect than any ape’s. A
few yards distant from it in the same layer of gravel is found a
jaw-bone having rather large pointed canines, a flat, broad symphysis,
and other points about the inner face of the ramus and ridges which
resemble those of the chimpanzee. Which is the more likely: (_a_) that
these two novel fragments tending apewards from man were parts of the
same individual; or (_b_), that the sweeping of the Wealden valley has
brought there together a half-jaw and a broken cranium _both_ more
ape-like in character than any known human corresponding bits, and yet
derived from two separate anthropoid beasts, one (the jaw) more simian,
and the other (the cranium) much less so? As to the probabilities, we
must remember that this patch of gravel at Piltdown, clearly and
definitely, is a wash-up of remains of various later tertiary and
post-tertiary deposits. It contains fragments of Miocene mastodon and
rhinoceros teeth. These latter differ entirely in mineral character from
the Eoanthropus jaw and the cranium.
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