which was the ancestral stock from which man was derived. They all show, though in somewhat different degree, intermingled human and ape-like characters.
I.—THE SKULLCAP.
In the form of the skullcap similitude to that of the ape is undoubtedly predominant. Never yet has there been seen so flat and low a human skull, never yet, outside of the true apes, has so strong a projection of the orbital region been found. The skulls of Neanderthal and Spy and all microcephalic skulls are more highly vaulted, especially in the parietal region; the ratio between the central portion of the skull and the orbital part lying in front of the temporal fossa is quite the same as in the apes, differing widely from that of the lowest human skulls, even that of Neanderthal and those of microcephali. Virchow has referred especially to this. It can be seen only on the left side, the right having suffered a notable loss of substance. The part of the wall of the orbit that lies in front of the deepest portion of the temporal fossa and belongs to the zygomatic process (external angular process) of the frontal bone is, in its antero-posterior dimension, about twice as large as that of the most ape-like human skulls. Further, it would be difficult to find in a human skull so strongly developed a torus occipitalis transversus as that of the Javanese skull, and the lower part of the squama temporalis of that specimen retreats outwardly, as it does in the apes.
Those who have followed the history of the Neanderthal skull are aware that there has never existed regarding it such divergence of opinion as to its man- or ape-like qualities as has arisen concerning the Pithecanthropus. The two opposed views in that case were: Ape-like man or diseased man; the native of the Neanderthal has from the very first always been considered as an undoubted, real man. The human character of the Pithecanthropus is, however, very questionable. The skull of the gibbon almost doubled in size would not be very different from it in external appearance.
Its considerably greater size constitutes a significant difference between it and all other skulls of apes. In the length and breadth measurements of the skull the chimpanzee is exactly a mean between it and the largest gibbon. Its cranial capacity I estimated in my above mentioned description, according to a comparison of the external lineal dimensions, as about 1,000 c. cm. Estimating now upon a more recent comparison of the internal linear dimensions with those of gibbons' skulls makes it but little more than 900 c. cm.[1] A capacity of 900 c. cm. is, however, far above anything we know in the skull of apes. The largest skulls of anthropoid apes have, on the average, no greater capacity than about 500 c. cm., and it is very seldom that they have been found to attain the capacity of 600 c. cm.
- ↑ Besides the method of estimating the capacity which I detailed in my last description, and which I again applied after removing the siliceous matter from the
