Patriarchal Bones
Fortunately, although these patriarchal bones are very
scanty--two teeth, a thigh-bone, and the skull-cap--we are now in
a position to form some idea of the nature of their living owner.
They have been subjected to so searching a scrutiny and
discussion since they were found in Java in 1891 and 1892 that
there is now a general agreement as to their nature. At first
some of the experts thought that they were the remains of an
abnormally low man, and others that they belonged to an
abnormally high ape. The majority held from the start that they
belonged to a member of a race almost midway between the highest
family of apes and the lowest known tribe of men, and therefore
fully merited the name of "Ape-Man" (Pithecanthropus). This is
now the general view of anthropologists.
The Ape-Man of Java was in every respect entitled to that name.
The teeth suggest a lower part of the face in which the teeth and
lips projected more than in the most ape-like types of Central
Africa. The skull-cap has very heavy ridges over the eyes and a
low receding forehead, far less human than in any previously
known prehistoric skull. The thigh-bone is very much heavier than
any known human femur of the same length, and so appreciably
curved that the owner was evidently in a condition of transition
from the semi-quadrupedal crouch of the ape to the erect attitude
of man. The Ape-Man, in other words, was a heavy, squat,
powerful, bestial-looking animal; of small stature, but above the
pygmy standard; erect in posture, but with clear traces of the
proneness of his ancestor; far removed from the highest ape in
brainpower, but almost equally far removed from the lowest savage
that is known to us. We shall see later that there is some recent
criticism, by weighty authorities, of the earlier statements in
regard to the brain of primitive man. This does not apply to the
Ape-Man of Java. The average cranial capacity (the amount of
brain-matter the skull may contain) of the chimpanzees, the
highest apes, is about 600 cubic centimetres. The average cranial
capacity of the lowest races of men, of moderate stature, is
about 1200. And the cranial capacity of Ape-Man was about 900
It is immaterial whether or no these bones belong to the same
individual. If they do not, we have remains of two or three
individuals of the same intermediate species. Nor does it matter
whether or no this early race is a direct ancestor of the later
races of men, or an extinct offshoot from the advancing human
stock. It is, in either case, an illustration of the intermediate
phase between the ape and man The more important tasks are to
trace the relationship of this early human stock to the apes, and
to discover the causes of its superior evolution.
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