Page:Smithsonian Report (1898).djvu/547

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PITHECANTHROPUS ERECTUS.
459

Smithsonian Report (1898), 0547.png

Fig. 4.—Family tree of man and apes.

This tree is partly an expansion of that of the primates as given by Haeckel.[1] To Dryopithecus I have, according to Gandry's recent view,[2] given a place between the Cercopithecidæ and the Simiidæ. As I have already stated in my first description, I regard as the progenitor of all anthropoid apes Protohylobates, a highly generalized hypothetical form, which, as well as its nearest living relatives, Hylobates, retained, along with many human peculiarities, yet many characters from its monkey-like ancestors that came lower in the scale. As immediate ancestor of Pithecanthropus I have placed Palæopithecus of the Siwalik strata. In this also, as I have convinced myself after a careful examination of the type specimen in the museum at Calcutta, are the characters of Hylobates mingled with those of man. We first find in Pithecanthropus erectus a form in which the human characters preponderate.


  1. E. Haeckel, Systematische Phylogenie cler Wirbelthiere, Berlin, 1895, p. 601.
  2. A. Gandry, Comptes rendus de l'Académie de Sciences, T. 110, Paris, 1890, pp. 373–376.