CREATION BY EVOLUTION
actual ape-like ancestors of man. None of them were larger than a chimpanzee or small gorilla.
The fossil we call Pithecanthropus (“ape-man’’), from a late Tertiary deposit at Trinil, in Java, is distinctly larger—as large as an average man. It is known by the top of a skull, some molar teeth, and a long, straight thigh-bone. The skull is shaped like that of a gibbon, having immense bony brow ridges, but it is nearly large enough to have contained a human brain, and an impression of the brain cavity shows that it had a few human characteristics. Some authorities, indeed, regard Pithecanthropus as an overgrown gibbon; others believe that it belongs to the same family as man. Better specimens are needed to determine exactly its relationships.
The earliest undoubted men are known only by remains of skeletons from Europe, which show some peculiarities of apes. Eoanthropus (the “dawn-man”) is represented by parts of a skull and lower jaw from a river deposit at Piltdown, Sussex, and is especially interesting as approaching an ape in the shape of its lower jaw and front teeth. It has as good a forehead as any modern man, and the size of the brain case is well above that of the lowest existing savages; but the skull lacks the beautiful dome-shape of the ordinary modern human skull, and the neck must have been unusually thick. The shape of the bony chin is unlike that of man and is almost identical with that of a young chimpanzee. Indeed, the whole of the bone of the lower jaw is remarkably ape-like, and it is shown to be human only by two of the molar teeth, which remain in their sockets. The canine teeth are much larger than those of modern man, and the canine of the lower jaw interlocks with its opposing tooth, as in the apes. The only other known human skull that apparently makes some approach to the same form is a fossil
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