It is difficult to suggest a physical faculty of Man which is not shared by him with other animals. It is equally difficult to suggest a moral or intellectual faculty of his which is not foreshadowed in them.
Though the present paper is necessarily directed to the early history of Man in the British Islands, I must ask leave to refer by way of preface to the important discovery by Dr. Dubois in Java of remains to which he gave the name Pithecanthropus erectus. Whether we regard the controversy which has arisen over this discovery, or the nature of the remains themselves, they form a fitting introduction to the consideration of the question.
In the neighbourhood of Trinil, in 1891–92, Dr. Dubois unearthed a great number of fossil bones, among which he found the upper part of a skull, a thigh-bone, and two teeth, which resembled those of Man. Great care had been taken in removing the layers of rock one by one, so that it was ascertained that these remains were accompanied by those of animals now extinct. The bones were fossilized, harder than marble, very heavy, and of a chocolate-brown colour.
When the skull is compared with that found in 1857, at Neanderthal, in Prussia, it is observed to be less capacious, less lofty, and in other respects of an inferior type. It may be said, in popular language, to stand as far behind the skull of Neanderthal as that skull, with its low capacity, its prominent eyebrow ridges, and its rapidly receding front, stands behind a normally developed skull of the present day.
The thigh-bone shows a number of peculiarities, the most apparent of which is a large diseased excrescence of bony growth along one side of it. In a paper read at the Liverpool meeting of the British Association in 1896, it was shown that these peculiarities may be found, either alone or in some degree of combination, in thigh-bones derived from existing races of mankind. Whether the thigh-bone belonged to the same individual as the skull is not certain, but it appears to be probable that it did. If so, it would seem that the individual was of short stature.
The teeth are large, and appear from their shape to indicate a greater degree of prognathism in the face than is usual in mankind.
