Solution Manual for Criminology Theories Patterns and Typologies 11th

Edition by Siegel ISBN 1133049648 9781133049647

Full link download
Solution Manual https://testbankpack.com/p/solution-manual-for-criminology-theories-
patterns-and-typologies-11th-edition-by-siegel-isbn-1133049648-9781133049647/

CHAPTER TWO
The Nature and Extent of Crime

CHAPTER OBJECTIVES
After reading this chapter, the student should be able to:

1. Be familiar with various forms of crime data

2. Know the problems associated with collecting data
3. Be able to discuss recent trends in the crime rate
4. Be familiar with the factors that influence crime rates
5. Compare crime rates under different ecological conditions
6. Be able to discuss the association between social class and crime
7. Know what is meant by the term aging out process
8. Recognize that there are age, gender, and racial patterns in crime
9. Be familiar with Wolfgang, Figlio and Sellin’s pioneering research on
chronic offending
10. Understand the suspected causes of chronicity

SUMMARY
Criminologists measure crime trends and rates using the Uniform Crime Report
(UCR), the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS), and self report surveys. These
are primary sources of crime data. Secondary sources, such as cohort research,
observational research, and meta-analysis, supplement primary data sources and are used
by criminologists to identify specific crime problems and trends, to examine the lives of
criminal offenders, and to assess the effectiveness of crime control efforts.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation publishes the UCR that contains data provided
by law enforcement agencies across the country. Once compiled, data are reported as Part
I and Part II crimes. Part I crimes include murder and nonnegligent manslaughter,
forcible rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, larceny, motor vehicle theft and
arson. Part II crimes are all other offenses not included in Part I. Crime data in the UCR
are expressed three ways: as raw figures and arrests made, rates per 100,000 people, and
changes in the number and rate of crime over time. The main weaknesses impacting the
validity of the UCR are that not all crimes are reported, law enforcement practices that
distort reporting, and methodology issues. The FBI is looking to eventually replace the
UCR with the National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS) that was started in
1982 and collects information on 22 categories and 46 specific offenses and includes
more comprehensive information than the UCR.
Instructor’s
Chapter 2: The
Manual
Nature and Extent of Crime

The National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) is designed to overcome the

problems of the UCR by including crimes not reported to the police. Sponsored by the
Bureau of Justice Statistics and the Census Bureau, the NCVS includes information from
a large nationally representative sample and reports the victimization experiences of
individuals and households. Weaknesses associated with the NCVS include underreporting,
overreporting, and misinterpretation of events. Due to budget constraints, the NCVS’s
sample size and methodology have recently been altered. Consequently, the NCVS now
has to combine multiple years of data in order to comment on change over time.
Like the NCVS, self-report surveys help to illuminate the “dark figure of crime.” Most
of these studies focus on delinquency and youth crime. One of the most important self-
report surveys is the Monitoring the Future study that is considered the national standard
to measure substance abuse trends among American teens. The main weaknesses of
self-report surveys are: 1) a lot of trivial offenses are included in self- reports, 2)
participants may exaggerate, be confused, or forget; 3) subjects may not candidly admit
illegal acts, and 4) the “missing cases” phenomenon. Although the data from the UCR, the
NCVS, and self-report surveys are not completely in sync, the crime patterns and trends
they indicate are quite similar.
Secondary data sources include cohort research, experimental research, observational
and interview research, meta-analysis, data mining, and crime mapping. Cohort research
involves observing a group of people who share a like characteristic over time. Most
experimental research in criminology is quasi-experimental as “true” experiments are
difficult and expensive to conduct. There are also ethical and legal roadblocks to
manipulating subjects’ lives, and they require extended follow-up to verify results. Meta-
analysis involves gathering data from a number of previous studies. Data-mining is a type
of meta-analysis using multiple advanced computational methods to analyze large data
sets from one or more data sources. Criminologists are now using crime mapping to
create graphic representations of the spatial geography of crime.
Crime rates have risen and fallen over the many years our nation has been in existence.
A number of factors affect crime trends, including the age distribution of the population,
the economy, social malaise, abortion, the availability of guns, gangs, drug usage, the
media, medical technology, justice policy, and crime opportunities. Overall, there has been
a significant downward trend in the rate of crime for more than a decade, including a decline
in juvenile crime. Most currently, the violent crime rate has risen slightly but it is unknown
if this trend is short or long-term. Property crime rates have declined in recent years,
although the drop has not been as dramatic as the decrease in the violent crime rate. These
trends are apparent in the UCR and are confirmed by the NCVS. Self-report surveys,
however, indicate that crime rates are more stable than the UCR indicates. Crime trend
projections for the future are mixed.
Crime has followed several predictable patterns over the years. Most crimes occur
during the warm summer months of July and August. Murders and robberies, however,
are also frequent in December and January. Traditionally, the association between crime
and temperature has been thought to be an inverted U-curve with crime rising with
temperature then beginning to decline around 85 degrees. Crime rates are also highest in

26
Instructor’s
Chapter 2: The
Manual
Nature and Extent of Crime

urban areas and in the southern and western United States. Although crime rates are highest
in inner city high poverty areas, there is little support for the idea that crime is

27
Instructor’s
Chapter 2: The
Manual
Nature and Extent of Crime

primarily a lower-class phenomenon. One reason may be that the methods used to
measure social class vary widely. A second reason may be that the association between
social class and crime may be more complex than a simple linear relationship.
Age is inversely related to crime – younger people commit more crime than their older
peers. Aging out refers to the process by which offenders reduce the frequency of their
offending behavior as they age. Aging out may be a function of the natural history of the
life cycle. Some criminologists contend that the population may contain different sets of
criminals: one group whose criminal behavior declines with age, another whose criminal
behavior remains constant through maturity.
Firearms play a dominant role in criminal activity and impact crime trends and
justice policy. The banning of firearms, even if only handguns, is controversial. Some
experts propose strict gun control, and there is research to suggest defensive gun use
deters crime. However, some criminologists question the benefits of carrying a handgun,
and research also shows that defensive gun use may be more limited than believed.
Primary and secondary sources of crime data confirm that male crime rates are
higher than those of females. Over the years, a variety of reasons have been given for this
phenomenon such as the masculinity hypothesis, the chivalry hypothesis, socialization
and development, and liberal feminist theory. Self-report studies indicate that the pattern
of female criminality is similar to that of male criminality. Recent data also indicate that
female crime rates are rising faster than male crime rates and that females are joining gangs
in record numbers.
Minorities are involved in a disproportionate share of criminal activity, and racial
differences in the crime rate remain an extremely sensitive issue. However, research
indicates no relationship between race and self-reported delinquency. Some of the
reasons for high minority levels of criminal activity may be true racial differences in the
crime rate, racial bias in justice processing including increases in social control that
police direct at minority group members (racial threat hypothesis), racism and
discrimination, institutional racism, economic disparity, social disparity, and family
dissolution. If social and economic obstacles are removed, convergence of majority and
minority crime rates is possible.
Most offenders commit a single crime and discontinue after arrest. Nevertheless, as
Wolfgang, Figlio, and Sellin found, there is a small group responsible for the majority of
all crimes. The offenders in this group are called chronic offenders or career criminals. The
chronic offender has been the central focus of crime control policy resulting in “get tough”
measures like “three strikes” and “truth in sentencing” legislation.

CHAPTER OUTLINE
I. Introduction

II. Primary Sources of Crime Data

A. Official Record Research
1. Records of government agencies
a. Examine crime rates and trends

28
Another document from Scribd.com that is
random and unrelated content:
20,000 years ago as the end of glacial and the commencement of recent
or postglacial time. He bases his estimates on the sediments of the Yoldia
Sea in Sweden. His method consists in the actual counting of certain
seasonally-laminated clay layers, presumably left behind by the receding
ice sheet of the continental glacier. The melting is registered by annual
deposition, in which the thinner layers of finer sand from the winter
flows alternate with thicker layers of coarser material from the summer
flows. In warm years, the layers are thicker, in colder years they are
thinner, so that these laminated Pleistocene clays constitute a
thermographic as well as a chronological record. De Geer began his
study of Pleistocene clays in 1878, and in 1920 he led an expedition to
the United States, for the purpose of extending his researches. (Cf.
Science, Sept. 24, 1920, pp. 284-286.) At that time, he claimed to have
worked out the chronology of the past 12,000 years. His figure of 20,000
years for postglacial time, while very displeasing to that reckless foe of
scientific caution and conservatism, Henry Fairfield Osborn, tallies very
well with the estimates of Sollas and Wright. H. Obermaier, basing his
computation on Croll’s theory that glaciation is caused by variations in
the eccentricity of the earth’s orbit about the sun, which would bring
about protracted winters in the hemisphere having winter, when the earth
was farthest from the sun (with consequent accumulation of ice), gives
30,000 years ago as the date of the first appearance of man on earth.
Father Hugues Obermaier, it may be noted, like Abbé Henri Breuil, is
one of the foremost authorities on the subject of prehistoric Man. Both
are Catholic priests.
All such computations of the age of man are, of course, uncertain and
theoretical. Evolutionists calculate it in hundreds of thousands, and even
millions, of years. After giving such a table of recklessly tremendous
figures, Osborn has the hypocritical meticulosity to add that, for the sake
of precision (save the mark!) the nineteen hundred and some odd years
of the Christian era should be added to his figures. But, even according
to the most conservative scientific estimates, as we have seen, man is
said to have been in existence for 30,000 years, and the prevalence of
right-handedness among men is as old as the human race. One would
expect, then, to find modern man equipped with a gigantic right arm and
a dwarfed left arm. In other words, man should exhibit a condition
comparable to that of a lobster, which has one large and one small chela.
Yet, in spite of the fact that the comparative inaction of the human left
hand is supposed to have endured throughout a period of, at least, 30,000
years, this state of affairs has not resulted in the faintest trace of atrophy
or retrogression. Bones, muscles, tendons, ligaments, nerves, blood
vessels, and all parts are of equal size in both arms and both hands.
Excessive exercise may overdevelop the musculature of the right arm,
but this is an individual and acquired adaptation, which is never
transmitted to the offspring, e.g. the child of a blacksmith does not
inherit the muscular hypertrophy of his father. Disuse, therefore, has not
the efficacy which Lamarck and Darwin ascribed to it.
In fine, it must be recognized, once for all, that organisms are not-
molded on a Lamarckian basis of use, nor yet on a Darwinian basis of
selected utility. Expediency, in other words, is not the sole governing
principle of the organic world. Neither instinctive habitude nor the
struggle for existence succeeds in forcing structural adaptation of a
predictable nature. Animals with different organic structure have the
same instincts, e.g. monkeys with, and without, prehensile tails alike
dwell in trees; while animals having the same organic structure may have
different instincts, e.g. the rabbit, which burrows, and the hare, which
does not, are practically identical in anatomical structure. Again, some
animals are highly specialized for a function, which other animals
perform without specialized organs, as is instanced in the case of moles,
which possess a special burrowing apparatus, and prairie-dogs, which
burrow without a specialized apparatus. Any system of evolution, which
ignores the internal or hereditary factors of organic life and strives to
explain all in terms of the environmental factors, encounters an
insuperable obstacle in this remorseless resistance of conflicting facts.
Another flaw in the Darwinian argument from rudimentary organs is
that it confounds, in many cases, apparent, with real inutility (or absence
of function). Darwin and his followers frequently argued out of their
ignorance, and falsely concluded that an organ was destitute of a
function, merely because they had failed to discover its utility. Large
numbers, accordingly, of highly serviceable organs were catalogued as
vestigial or rudimentary, simply because nineteenth century science did
not comprehend their indubitable utility. With the advance of present-day
physiology, this list of “useless organs” is being rapidly depleted, so that
the scientific days of the rudimentary organ appear to be numbered. At
any rate, in arbitrarily pronouncing many important and functioning
organs to be useless vestiges of a former stage in the history of the race,
the Darwinians were not the friends of Science, but rather its reactionary
enemies, inasmuch as they sought to discourage further investigation by
their dogmatic decision that there was no function to be found. In so
doing, however, they were merely exploiting the ignorance of their times
in the interest of a preconceived theory, which whetted their appetite for
discovering, at all costs, the presence in man of functionless organs.
Their anxiety in this direction led them to consider the whole group of
organs constituting a most important regulatory and coördinative system
in man and other vertebrates as so many useless vestigial organs. This
system is called the cryptorhetic system and is made of internally-
secreting, ductless glands, now called endocrine glands. These glands
generate and instill into the blood stream certain chemical substances
called hormones, which, diffusing in the blood, produce immediate
stimulatory, and remote metabolic effects on special organs distant from
the endocrine gland, in which the particular hormone is elaborated. As
examples of such endocrine glands, we may mention the pineal gland
(epiphysis), the pituitary body (hypophysis), the thyroid glands, the
parathyroids, the islelets of Langerhans, the adrenal bodies (suprarenal
capsules), and the interstitial cells of the gonads. The importance of these
alleged useless organs is now known to be paramount. Death, for
instance, will immediately ensue in man and other animals, upon
extirpation of the adrenal bodies.
The late Robert Wiedersheim, it will be remembered, declared the
pineal gland or epiphysis to be the surviving vestige of a “third eye”
inherited from a former ancestor, in whom it opened between the parietal
bones of the skull, like the median or pineal eye of certain lizards, the
socket of which is the parietal foramen formed in the interparietal suture.
If the argument is based on homology alone, then the coincidence in
position between the human epiphysis and the median optic nerve of the
lizards in question has the ordinary force of the evolutionary argument
from homology. But when one attempts to reduce the epiphysis to the
status of a useless vestigial rudiment, he is in open conflict with facts; for
the pineal body is, in reality, an endocrine gland generating and
dispersing a hormone, which is very important for the regulation of
growth in general and of sexual development in particular. Hence this
tiny organ in the diencephalic roof, no larger than a grain of wheat, is not
a functionless rudiment, but an important functioning organ of the
cryptorhetic system. We have no ground, therefore, on this score for
inferring that our pineal gland functioned in former ancestors as a
median eye comparable to that of the cyclops Polyphemus of Homeric
fame.
 In like manner, the pituitary body or hypophysis, which in man is a
small organ about the size of a cherry, situated at the base of the brain,
buried in the floor of the skull, and lying just behind the optic chiasma,
was formerly rated as a rudimentary organ. It was, in fact, regarded as
the vestigial remnant of a former connection between the neural and
alimentary canals, reminiscent of the invertebrate stage. “The
phylogenetic explanation of this organ generally accepted,” says Albert
P. Mathews, “is that formerly the neural canal connected at this point
with the alimentary canal. A probable and almost the only explanation of
this, though an explanation almost universally rejected by zoölogists, is
that of Gaskell, who has maintained that the vertebrate alimentary canal
is a new structure, and that the old invertebrate canal is the present neural
canal. The infundibulum, on this view, would correspond to the old
invertebrate œsophagus, the ventricle of the thalamus to the invertebrate
stomach, and the canal originally connected posteriorly with the anus.
The anterior lobe of the pituitary body could then correspond to some
glandular adjunct of the invertebrate canal, and the nervous part to a
portion of the original circumœsophageal nervous ring of the
invertebrates.” (“Physiological Chemistry,” 2nd ed., 1916, pp. 641, 642.)
This elaborate piece of evolutionary contortion calls for no comment
here. We are only interested in the fact that this wild and weird
speculation was originally inspired by the false assumption that the
hypophysis was a functionless organ. As a matter of fact, it is the source
of two important hormones. The one generated in its anterior lobe is
tethelin, a metabolic hormone, which promotes the growth of the body in
general and of the bony tissue in particular. Hypertrophy and
overfunction of this gland produces giantism, or acromegaly
(enlargement of hands, feet, and skull), while atrophy and underfunction
of the anterior lobe results in infantilism, acromikria (diminution of
extremities, i. e. hands, feet, head), obesity, and genital dystrophy (i. e.
suppression of secondary sexual characters). The posterior lobe of the
pituitary body constitutes, with the pars intermedia, a second endocrine
gland, which generates a stimulatory hormone called pituitrin. This
hormone stimulates unstriated muscle to contract, and thereby regulates
the discharge of secretions from various glands of the body, e. g. the
mammary glands, bladder, etc. Hence the hypophysis, far from being a
useless organ, is an indispensable one. Moreover, it is an integral and
important part of the cryptorhetic system.
 The same story may be repeated of the thyroid glands. These consist
of two lobes located on either side of the windpipe, just below the larynx
(Adam’s apple), and joined together across the windpipe by a narrow
band or isthmus of their own substance. Gaskell homologized them with
a gland in scorpions, and Mathew says that, if his surmise is correct, “the
thyroid represents an accessory sexual organ of the invertebrate.” (Op.
cit., p. 654.) They are, however, endocrine glands, that generate a
hormone known as thyroxin, which regulates the body-temperature,
growth of the body in general, and of the nervous system in particular,
etc., etc. Atrophy or extirpation of these glands causes cretinism in the
young and myxoedema in adults. Without a sufficient supply of this
hormone, the normal exercise of mental powers in human beings is
impossible. The organ, therefore, is far from being a useless vestige of
what was formerly useful.
George Howard Parker, the Zoölogist of Harvard, sums up the case
against the Darwinian interpretation of the endocrine glands as follows:
“The extent to which hormones control the body is only just beginning to
be appreciated. For a long time anatomists have recognized in the higher
animals, including man, a number of so-called ductless glands, such as
the thyroid gland, the pineal gland, the hypophysis, the adrenal bodies,
and so forth. These have often been passed over as unimportant
functionless organs whose presence was to be explained as an
inheritance from some remote ancestor. But such a conception is far from
correct. If the thyroids are removed from a dog, death follows in from
one to four weeks. If the adrenal bodies are excised, the animal dies in
from two to three days. Such results show beyond doubt that at least
some of these organs are of vital importance, and more recent studies
have demonstrated that most of them produce substances which have all
the properties of hormones.” (“Biology and Social Problems,” 1914, pp.
43, 44.)
Even the vermiform appendix of the cæcum, which since Darwin’s
time has served as a classic example of a rudimentary organ in man, is,
in reality, not a functionless organ. Darwin, however, was of opinion that
it was not only useless, but positively harmful. “With respect to the
alimentary canal,” he says, “I have met with an account of only a single
rudiment, namely, the vermiform appendage of the cæcum. ... Not only is
it useless, but it is sometimes the cause of death, of which fact I have
lately heard two instances. This is due to small hard bodies, such as
seeds, entering the passage and causing inflammation.” (“Descent of
Man,” 2nd ed., ch. I, pp. 39, 40.) The idea that seeds cause appendicitis
is, of course, an exploded superstition, the hard bodies sometimes found
in the appendix being fecal concretions and not seeds—“The old idea,”
says Dr. John B. Deaver, “that foreign bodies, such as grape seeds, are
the cause of the disease, has been disproved.” (Encycl. Americana, vol.
2, p. 76.) What is more germane to the point at issue, however, is that
Darwin erred in denying the utility of the vermiform appendix. For,
although this organ does not discharge in man the important function
which its homologue discharges in grain-eating birds and also in
herbivorous mammals, it subserves the secondary function of lubricating
the intestines by means of a secretion from its muciparous glands.
Darwin gives the semilunar fold as another instance of a vestigial
organ, claiming that it is a persistent rudiment of a former third eyelid or
membrana nictitans, such as we find in birds. “The nictitating
membrane, or third eyelid,” he says, “with its accessory muscles and
other structures, is especially well developed in birds, and is of much
functional importance to them, as it can be rapidly drawn across the
whole eyeball. It is found in some reptiles and amphibians, and in certain
fishes as in sharks. It is fairly well developed in the two lower divisions
of the mammalian series, namely, in the monotremata and marsupials,
and in some higher mammals, as in the walrus. But in man, the
quadrumana, and most other mammals, it exists, as is admitted by all
anatomists, as a mere rudiment, called the semilunar fold.” (Op. cit., ch.
I, pp. 35, 36.) Here Darwin is certainly wrong about his facts; for the so-
called third eyelid is not well developed in the two lower divisions of the
mammalian series (i.e. the monotremes and the marsupials) nor in any
other mammalian type. “With but few exceptions,” says Remy Perrier,
“the third eyelid is not so complete as among the birds; (in the mammals)
it never covers the entire eye. For the rest, it is not really perceptible
except in certain types, like the dog, the ruminants, and, still more so, the
horse. In the rest (of the mammals) it is less developed.” (“Elements
d’anatomie comparée,” Paris, 1893, p. 1137.) Moreover, Darwin’s
suggestion leaves us at sea as to the ancestor, from whom our
“rudimentary third eyelid” has been inherited. His mention of birds as
having a well developed third eyelid is not very helpful, because all
evolutionists agree in excluding the birds from our line of descent. The
reptiles are more promising candidates for the position of ancestors, but,
as no trace of a third eyelid could possibly be left behind in the imperfect
record of the fossiliferous rocks (soft parts like this having but slight
chance of preservation), we do not really know whether the palæozoic
reptiles possessed this particular feature, or not. Nor can we argue from
analogy and induction, because not all modern reptiles are equipped with
third eyelids. Hence the particular group of palæozoic reptiles, which are
supposed to have been our progenitors, may not have possessed any third
eyelid to bequeath to us in the reduced and rudimentary form of the plica
semilunaris. If it be replied, that they must have had this feature, because
otherwise we would have no ancestor from whom we could inherit our
semilunar fold, it is obvious that such argumentation assumes the very
point which it ought to prove, namely: the actuality of evolution.
Rudiments are supposed to be a proof for evolution, and not, vice versa,
evolution a proof for rudiments.
Finally, the basic assumption of Darwin that the semilunar fold is
destitute of function is incorrect; for this crescent-shaped fold situated in
the inner or nasal corner of the eye of man and other mammals serves to
regulate the flow of the lubricating lacrimal fluid (which we call tears).
True this function is secondary compared with the more important
function discharged by the nictitating membrane in birds. In the latter,
the third eyelid is a pearly-white (sometimes transparent) membrane
placed internal to the real eyelids, on the inner side of the eye, over
whose surface it can be drawn like a curtain to shield the organ from
excessive light, or irritating dust; nevertheless, the regulation of the flow
of lacrimal humor is a real function, and it is therefore entirely false to
speak of the semilunar fold as a functionless rudiment.
The coccyx is likewise cited by Darwin as an example of an inherited
rudiment in man. “In man,” he says, “the os coccyx, together with certain
other vertebræ hereafter to be described, though functionless as a tail,
plainly represents this part in other vertebrate animals.” (Op. cit., ch. I, p.
42.) That it serves no purpose as a tail, may be readily admitted, but that
it serves no purpose whatever, is quite another matter. As a matter of
fact, it serves for the attachment of several small muscles, whose
functioning would be impossible in the absence of this bone. Darwin
himself concedes this; for he confesses that the four vertebræ of the
coccyx “are furnished with some small muscles.” (Ibidem.) We may,
therefore, admit the homology between the human coccyx and the tails
of other vertebrates, without being forced to regard the latter as a useless
vestigial organ. It may be objected that the attachment of these muscles
might have been provided for in a manner more in harmony with our
ideas of symmetry. To this we reply that Helmholtz criticized the human
eye for similar reasons, when he said that he would remand to his
workshop for correction an optical instrument so flawed with defects as
the human eye. But, after all, it was by the use of these selfsame
imperfect eyes that Helmholtz was enabled to detect the flaws of which
he complained. When man shall have fully fathomed the difficulties and
obstructions with which organic morphogeny has to contend in
performing its wonderful work, and shall have arrived at an elementary
knowledge of the general laws of morphogenetic mechanics, he will be
more inclined to admire than to criticize. It is a mistake to imagine that
the finite works of the Creator must be perfect from every viewpoint. It
suffices that they are perfect with respect to the particular purpose which
they serve, and this purpose must not be narrowly estimated from the
standpoint of the created work itself, but from that of its position in the
universal scheme of creation. All such partial views as the Helmholtzian
one are false views.
Another consideration which Darwin and his partisans have failed to
take into account is the possibility of an ontogenetic, as well as a
phylogenetic, explanation of rudimentary organs. That is to say,
rudimentary organs might, so far as a priori reasons are concerned, be
the now useless vestiges of organs formerly developed and functional in
the fœtus, and need not necessarily be interpreted as traces of organs that
functioned formerly in remote racial ancestors. That there should be such
things as special fœtal organs, which atrophy in later adult life, is a
possibility that ought not to excite surprise. During its uterine existence,
the fœtus is subject to peculiar conditions of life, very different from
those which prevail in the case of adult organisms—e.g. respiration and
the digestive process are suspended, and there is a totally different kind
of circulation. What, then, more natural than that the fœtus should
require special organs to adapt it to these special conditions of uterine
life? Such organs, while useful and functional in the earlier stages of
embryonic development, will, so soon as birth and maturity introduce
new conditions of life, become superfluous, and therefore doomed, in the
interest of organic economy, to ultimate atrophy and degeneration, until
nothing is left of them but vestigial remnants.
The thymus may be cited as a probable instance of such an organ. This
organ, which is located in front of the heart and behind the breastbone, in
the region between the two lungs, consists, at the period of its greatest
development in man, of a two-lobed structure, 5 cm. long and 4 cm.
wide, with a thickness of 6 mm. and a maximum weight of 35 grams. It
is supplied with numerous lymphoid cells, which are aggregated to form
lymphoid follicles (cf. Gray’s “Anatomy,” 20th ed., 1918, pp. 1273,
1274; Burton-Opitz’ “Physiology,” 1920, p. 964). This organ is a
transitory one, well developed at birth, but degenerating, according to
some authors, after the second year of life (cf. Starling’s “Physiology,”
3rd ed., 1920, p. 1245); according to others, however, not until the period
of full maturity, namely, puberty. (Cf. Gray’s “Anatomy,” loc. cit.) W. H.
Howell cites both opinions, without venturing to decide the matter (cf.
his “Physiology,” 8th ed., 1921, pp. 869, 870). It was at one time
classified as a rudimentary or functionless organ. Later on, however, it
was thought by certain observers to be an endocrine gland, yielding a
secretion important for the growth of young mammals. This took it out
of the class of useless vestigial organs, but the recent discovery that it is
indispensable to birds as furnishing a secretion necessary for the
formation of the tertiary envelopes (egg membrane and shell) of their
eggs, has tended to revive the idea of its being a vestigial organ inherited
from the lower vertebrates.
Thus Dr. Oscar Riddle, while admitting that the thymus gland in man
has some influence on the growth of the bones, contends that the newly-
discovered function of this gland in birds is much more important, since
without it none of the vertebrates, excepting mammals, could reproduce
their young. “It thus becomes clear,” he says, “that though the thymus is
almost without use in the human being, it is in fact a sort of ‘mother of
the race.’ The higher animals could not have come into existence without
it. For even while our ancestors lived in the water, it was the thymus of
these ancestors which made possible the production of the egg-envelopes
within which the young were cradled and protected until they were ready
for an independent life.” (Science, Dec. 28, 1923, Suppl. XIII, XIV.)
This conclusion, however, is far too hasty. For, even if we disregard as
negligible the minor function, that Riddle assigns to the thymus in man,
there remains another possibility, which H. H. Wilder takes into account,
namely, that the thymus may, in certain cases, be a temporary substitute
for the lymphatic vessels. Having called attention to certain determinate
channels found in some of the lower vertebrates, he tells us that these
“can well be utilized as adjuncts of the lymphatic system until their
function can be supplied by definite lymphatic vessels.” He then resumes
his discussion of the lymph nodules in mammals as follows: “Aside from
the solitary and aggregated nodules, both of which appear to be centers
of origin of lymphocytes, there are numerous other places in which the
cellular constituents of the blood are developed. Many of these, as in the
case of the aggregated nodules of the intestines, are developed within the
wall of the alimentary canal and are therefore endodermic in origin.
These include the tonsils, the thymus, and thyroid glands, the associated
epithelial bodies, and, perhaps, the spleen.... In their function as
formative nidi for the cellular elements of the blood these organs form
physiologically important auxiliaries to the vascular system as a whole,
but belong elsewhere in their anatomical developmental affinities.”
(“History of the Human Body,” 2nd ed., 1923, p. 395—italics mine.)
This being the case, it is much more reasonable to interpret the thymus
as an ontogenetic (embryonic), rather than a phylogenetic (racial)
rudiment. It has been observed that, in the case of reptiles which lack
definite lymphatic glands (which function in man as formative centers of
lymphocytes or white blood corpuscles), the thymus is extraordinarily
developed and abounds in lymphoid cells. It has also been observed that
the formation of lymphocytes in the lymphatic glands is regulated by the
digestive process; for, after digestion, the activity of these glands
increases and the formation of leucocytes is accelerated. Since, then, the
lymphatic glands appear to require the stimulus of the digestive process
to incite them to action, it is clear that in the fœtus, which lacks the
digestive process, the lymphatic glands will not be stimulated to action,
and that the task of furnishing lymphocytes will devolve upon the
thymus. After birth, the digestive process commences and the lymphatic
glands become active in response to this stimulus. As the function of
forming lymphocytes is transferred from the thymus to the lymphatic
glands, the former is gradually deprived of its importance, and, in the
interest of organic economy, it begins to atrophy, until, at the end of the
child’s second year, or, at latest, when the child has reached sexual
maturity, nothing but a reduced vestige remains of this once functional
organ. “The thymus,” says Starling, “forms two large masses in the
anterior mediastinum which in man grow up to the second year of life
and then rapidly diminish, so that only traces are to be found at puberty.
It contains a large amount of lymphatic tissue and is therefore often
associated with the lymphatic glands as the seat of the formation of
lymph corpuscles.... In certain cases of arrested development or of
general weakness in young people, the thymus has been found to be
persistent.” (“Physiology,” 3rd ed., 1920, p. 1245.)
In the light of these facts, it is utterly unreasonable to regard the
thymus as a practically useless rudiment inherited from the lower
vertebrates. “That they have an important function in the young animal,”
says Albert Mathews, “can hardly be doubted.” (“Physiological
Chemistry,” 1916, p. 675.) In fact, the peculiar nature of their
development in the young and their atrophy in the adult forces such a
conclusion upon us. The thymus, therefore, is, in all probability, an
ontogenetic, and not a phylogenetic, rudiment. It might conceivably be
exploited as a biogenetic recapitulation of a reptilian stage in man, just as
the so-called fish-kidney of the human embryo is exploited for
evolutionary interpretation. The principles by which such a view may be
refuted have been given previously. But, in any case, it is folly to
interpret the thymus as a rudiment in the racial, rather than embryonic
sense. Moreover, the possibility of an ontogenetic interpretation of
rudiments must not be restricted to the thymus, but must be accepted as a
general and legitimate alternative for the phylogenetic interpretation.
In the last place, it remains for us to consider the Darwinian argument,
based upon so-called rudimentary organs, from the standpoint of the
science of genetics. Darwin, as we have remarked elsewhere, was
ignorant of the non-inheritability of those inconstant individual
variations now known as fluctuations. He was somewhat perplexed,
when Professor L. Meyer pointed out the extreme variability in position
of the “projecting point” on the margin of the human ear, but he still
clung to his original contention that this “blunt point” was a surviving
vestige of the apex of the pointed ears found in donkeys and horses, etc.
“Nevertheless,” he says, “in some cases my original view, that the points
are vestiges of the tips of formerly erect and pointed ears, still seems to
be probable.” (“Descent of Man,” 2nd ed., ch. I, p. 34.) Darwin, as
Ranke points out, was mistaken in homologizing his famous “tubercule”
with the apex of bestial ears. “The acute extremity of the pointed animal
ear,” says this author, “does not correspond to this prominence
designated by Darwin, but to the vertex of the helix.” (“Der Mensch,” II,
p. 39.) The feature in question is, moreover, a mere fluctuation due to the
degree of development attained by the cartilage: hence its variability in
different human beings. In very extreme cases, fluctuations of this sort,
may be important enough to constitute an anomaly, and, as anomalies are
often interpreted as atavisms and reversions to a primitive type, it may be
well to advert to this subject here.
Dwight has an excellent chapter on anatomical variations and
anomalies. (Cf. “Thoughts of a Catholic Anatomist,” 1911, ch. IX.) He
tells us that “a thigh bone a little more bent, an ear a little more pointed,
a nose a little more projecting ... a little more or a little less of anything
you please—this is variation.” “An anatomical anomaly,” he says, “is
some peculiarity of any part of the body which cannot be expressed in
terms of more or less, but is distinctly new.” He divides the latter into
two classes, namely: those which consist in the repetition of one or more
elements in a series, e.g. the occurrence of supernumerary legs in an
insect, and those which consist in the suppression of one or more
elements in a series, e.g. the occurrence of eleven pairs of ribs in a man.
Variations and anomalies are fluctuational or mutational, according as
they are based on changes in the soma alone, or on changes in the germ
plasm. Variations, however, are more likely to be non-inheritable
fluctuations, and anomalies to be inheritable mutations. We shall speak
of the latter presently. In the meantime we may note that the main trouble
with interpreting these anatomical irregularities as “reversive” or
“atavistic” is that they would connect man with all sorts of quite
impossible lines of descent. “In my early days of anatomy,” says Dwight,
“I thought that I must be very ignorant, because I could not understand
how the occasional appearance in man of a peculiarity of some animal
outside of any conceivable line of descent could be called a reversion, as
it soon became the custom to call it.... It was only later that I grasped the
fact that the reason I could not understand these things was that there
was nothing to understand. It was sham science from beginning to end.”
(Op. cit., p. 209.) By way of anomaly, almost any human peculiarity can
occur in animals, and, conversely, any bestial peculiarity in man, but the
resemblance to man of an animal outside of the alleged line of human
descent represents a grave difficulty for the theory of evolution, and not
an argument in its favor.
The human body is certainly not a mosaic of heterogenetic organs, i.e.
a complex of structures inherited from any and every sort of animal,
whether extant or extinct; for such a vast number and variety of ancestors
could not possibly have coöperated to produce man. Prof. D. Carazzi, in
his Address of Inauguration in the Chair of Zoölogy and Comparative
Anatomy at the University of Padua, Jan. 20, 1906, excoriated with
scathing irony the sham Darwinian science, of which Dwight complains.
“But even in the serious works of pure science,” says the Italian
zoölogist, “we read, for example, that the over-development of the
postauricular muscles sometimes observed in man is an atavistic
reminiscence of the muscles of the helix of the ear of the horse and the
ass. And so far so good, because it gives evidence of great modesty in
recognizing as our ancestors those well-deserving and long-eared
quadrupeds. But this is not all; there appear at times in a woman one or
more anomalous mammary glands below the pectoral ones; and here,
too, they insist on explaining the anomaly as a reversion to type, that is,
as an atavistic reminiscence of the numerous mammary glands possessed
by different lower mammals; the bitch, for example....
“But the supernumerary mammary glands are not a reversion to type;
anomalous mammary glands may appear upon the median line, upon the
deltoid, and even upon the knee, regions far-distant from the ‘milk-line.’
So with regard to the postauricular muscles we must say that according
to the laws of Darwinism the cases of anomalous development are not
interpretable as reversions to type. All these features are not
phylogenetic reminiscences, but anomalies of development, of such a
nature that, if we should wish to make use of them for establishing the
line of human descent, we would have to say that man descends from the
swine, from the solipeds and even from the cetaceans, returning, namely,
to the old conception of lineal descent, that is, to Buffon’s idea of the
concatenation of creatures.” (“Teorie e critiche nella moderna biologia,”
1906.)
Darwin’s doctrine, however, on the origin and significance of
rudimentary organs has been damaged by genetic analysis in a yet more
serious fashion. In fact, with the discovery that anomalous suppression
and anomalous duplication of organs may result from factorial mutation,
this Darwinian conception received what is tantamount to its deathblow.
Darwin, it will be remembered, was convinced that the regression of
organs was brought about by “increased disuse controlled by natural
selection.” (Cf. “Origin of Species,” 6th ed., ch. V.) Such phenomena, he
thought, as the suppression of wings in the Apteryx and the reduction of
wings in running birds, arose from their “inhabiting ocean islands,”
where they “have not been exposed to the attacks of beasts, and
consequently lost the power of using their wings for flight.” (“Descent of
Man,” 6th ed., ch. I, p. 32.) In some cases, he believed that disuse and
natural selection had coöperated ex aequo to produce results of this
nature, e.g. the reduction of the eyes in the mole and in Ctenomys; for
this reduction, he claims, has some selection-value, inasmuch as
reduction of the eyes, adhesion of the lids, and covering with hair tends
to protect the unused and useless eye against inflammation. In other
cases, however, he is inclined to discount the idea that suppression of
organs is an “effect of long-continued disuse,” and to regard the
phenomenon as “wholly, or mainly, due to natural selection,” e.g. in the
case of the wingless beetles of the island of Madeira. “For during
successive generations,” he reasons, “each individual beetle which flew
least, either from its wings having been ever so little less developed or
from indolent habit, will have had the best chance of surviving from not
being blown out to sea; and, on the other hand, those beetles which most
readily took to flight would oftenest have been blown to sea, and thus
destroyed.” In a third class of instances, however, he assigns the
principal rôle to disuse, e.g. in the case of the blind animals “which
inhabit the caves of Carniola and Kentucky, because,” as he tells us, “it is
difficult to imagine that eyes, though useless, could be injurious to
animals living in darkness.” Hence he concludes that, as the obliteration
of eyes has no selection-value, under the circumstances prevailing in
dark caves, “their loss may be attributed to disuse.” (Cf. “Origin of
Species,” 6th ed., ch. V, pp. 128-133.)
Morgan’s comment on these elaborate speculations of Darwin is very
caustic and concise. Referring to factorial mutations, which give rise to
races of flies having supernumerary and vestigial organs, he says: “In
contrast to the last case, where a character is doubled, is the next one in
which the eyes are lost. This change took place at a single step. All the
flies of this stock, however, cannot be said to be eyeless, since many of
them show pieces of eye—indeed the variation is so wide that the eye
may even appear like a normal eye unless carefully examined. Formerly
we were taught that eyeless animals arose in caves. This case shows that
they may also arise suddenly in glass milk bottles, by a change in a
single factor.
“I may recall in this connection that wingless flies also arose in our
cultures by a single mutation. We used to be told that wingless insects
occurred on desert islands because those insects that had the best
developed wings were blown out to sea. Whether this is true or not, I will
not pretend to say, but at any rate wingless insects may also arise, not
through a slow process of elimination, but at a single step.” (“A Critique
of the Theory of Evolution,” 1916, pp. 66, 67.)
In directing attention to the fact that a permanent and inheritable
reduction of organs to the vestigial state can result from mutation, we do
not, of course, intend to exclude the possible occurrence of somatic
atrophy due to lack of exercise rather than to germinal change. Thus the
blind species of animals in caves may, in some instances, be persistently
blind, because of the persistent darkness of the environment in which
they live, and not by reason of any inherited factor for blindness. Darwin
gives one such instance, namely, that of the cave rat Neotoma. To test
such cases, the blind animals would have to be bred in an illuminated
environment. If, under this condition, they failed to develop normal eyes,
the blindness would be due to a germinal factor, and would be inherited
in an illumined, no less than a dark, environment.
In any case, a mutation which suppresses a character is not, as we
have seen, a specific change, but merely one of the varietal order, which
does not result in the production of a genuine new species. The factorial
mutant with a vestigial wing or eye belongs to the same species as its
wild or normal parent stock. Moreover, neither disuse nor natural
selection has the slightest power to induce mutations of this kind. If
mutation be the cause of the blindness of cave animals, then their
presence in such caves must be accounted for by supposing that they
migrated thither because they found in the cave a most suitable
environment for safety, foraging, etc. Darkness alone, however, could
never induce germinal, but, at most, merely somatic blindness. The
Lamarckian factor of disuse and the Darwinian factor of selection have
been definitely discredited as agents which could bring about
hereditarily-transmissible modifications.

§ 4. Fossil Links

All efforts, then, to establish, by means of anatomical and

embryological homologies, the lineal descent of man from any known
type of monkey or ape have ended in ignominious failure. Comparative
anatomy and embryology can, at most, only furnish grounds for
extremely vague and indefinite speculations regarding the descent of
man, but they can never become a basis for specific conclusions with
respect to the phylogeny of Homo sapiens. Every known form of ape,
whether extant or extinct, is, as we have seen, far too specialized in its
adaptation to arboreal life to pass muster as a feasible ancestor. The only
conceivable manner in which the human body could be related to simian
stock is by way of collateral descent, and the only means of proving such
descent is to adduce a series of intermediate fossil types connecting
modern men and modern apes with this alleged common ancestor of
both. “The ascent (sic) of man as one of the Primates,” says Henry
Fairfield Osborn, “was parallel with that of the families of apes. Man has
a long line of ancestry of his own, perhaps two million or more years in
length. He is not descended from any known form of ape either living or
fossil.” (The Ill. London News, Jan. 8, 1921, p. 40.)
This theory of a hypothetical primate ancestor of man, which is
supposed to have inhabited the earth during the earlier part of the
Tertiary period, and to have presented a more man-like appearance than
any known type of ape, was first propounded by Karl Snell in 1863. It
was popularized at the beginning of the present century by Klaatsch, who
saw in it a means of escape from the absurdities and perplexities of the
theory of lineal descent—“the less,” says the latter, “an ape has changed
from its original form, just so much the more human it appears.” This
saying is revamped by Kohlbrugge to read: “Man comes from an original
form much more like himself than any existing ape.” Kohlbrugge’s
comment is as follows: “The line of descent of man thus receives on the
side of the primates a quite different form from its previous-one. Such
new hypotheses as those of Hubrecht and Klaatsch seem, therefore,
fortunate for nature-philosophers, because evolution always failed us
when we compared known forms in their details, and led us only to
confusion. But if one works with such distant hypothetical ancestors, one
escapes much disillusioning.” (Quoted by Dwight, op. cit., p. 195.)
One thing, at any rate, is certain, namely: that we do not possess any
fossils of this primitive “large brained, erectly walking primate,” who is
alleged to have roamed the earth during the eocene or oligocene epoch.
The Foxhall Man, whose culture Osborn ascribes to the Upper Pliocene,
is far too recent, and, what is worse, far too intelligent, to be this Tertiary
Ancestor. The Pithecanthropus erectus, likewise, is excluded for reasons
which we shall presently consider. Meanwhile, let it be noted, that we
have Osborn’s assurance for the fact that we are descended from a brainy
and upright oligocene ancestor, as yet, however, undiscovered.
But the situation is more hopeful, if we hark back to a still more
remote period, whose remains are so scarce and fragmentary, as to
eliminate the possibility of embarrassment arising from intractable
details. “Back of this,” says Osborn, “ ... was a prehuman arboreal
stage.” (Loc. cit.) Here, then, we are back again in the same old rut of
tree-climbing simian ancestry, whence we thought to have escaped by
abandoning the theory of lineal descent; and, before we have time to
speculate upon how we got there, Prof. Wm. Gregory of the American
Museum is summoned by Osborn to present us with specimens of this
prehuman arboreal stage. This expert, it would seem, favored up till the
year 1923 the fossil jaw of the Propliopithecus as representing the
common root, whence the human race diverged, on one side, and the
races of anthropoid apes, on the other. (Cf. Osborn’s Museum-leaflet of
1923 on “The Hall of the Age of Man,” p. 29.) On April 14, 1923,
however, Gregory announced the deposition of Propliopithecus and the
enthronement of the jaw of Dryopithecus. This sudden accession of
Dryopithecus to the post of common ancestor of apes and men was due
to the discovery by Dr. Barnum Brown of three fossil jaws of
Dryopithecus in the Miocene deposits of the Siwalik beds in northern
India. By some rapturous coincidence, the three jaws in question happen
to come from three successive “horizons,” and to be representative of
just three different stages in the evolution of Dryopithecus. Doctor
Gregory finds, moreover, that the patterns of the minute cracks and
furrows on the surviving molar teeth correspond to those on the surface
of the enamels of modern ape and human teeth. Hence, with that
ephemeral infallibility, which is characteristic of authorities like Doctor
Gregory, and which is proof against all discouragement by reason of past
blunders, the one who told us but a year ago that the cusps of all the teeth
of Propliopithecus “are exactly such as would be expected in the
common starting point for the divergent lines leading to the gibbons, to
the higher apes, and to man” (loc. cit.), now tells us that both we and the
apes have inherited our teeth from Dryopithecus, who had heretofore
remained neglected on the side-lines. In 1923, apparently, Dr. Gregory
was unimpressed with the crown patterns of Dryopithecus, whose jaw he
then excluded from the direct human line. (Cf. Museum-leaflet, p. 5.)
Now, however, that the new discoveries have brought Dryopithecus into
the limelight, and, particularly because these jaws were found in
Miocene deposits, Gregory has shifted his favor from Propliopithecus to
Dryopithecus. (Cf. Science, April 25, 1924, suppl. XIII.)
When palæontologists are obliged to do a volte face of this sort, one
ought not to scoff. One ought to be an optimist, and eschew above all the
spirit of the English statesman, who, on hearing a learned lecture by
Pearson on the question of whether Man was descended from hylobatic,
or troglodytic stock, was guilty of the following piece of impatience: “I
am not particularly interested in the descent of man ... this scientific
pursuit of the dead bones of the past does not seem to me a very useful
way of spending life. I am accustomed to this mode of study; learned
volumes have been written in Sanscrit to explain the conjunction of the
two vowels ‘a’ and ‘u’. It is very learned, very ingenious, but not very
helpful.... I am not concerned with my genealogy so much as with my
future. Our intellects can be more advantageously employed than in
finding our diversity from the ape.... There may be no spirit, no soul;
there is no proof of their existence. If that is so, let us do away with
shams and live like animals. If, on the other hand, there is a soul to be
looked after, let us all strain our nerves to the task; there is no use in
digging into the sands of time for the skeletons of the past; build your
man for the future.” (Smithson. Inst. Rpt. for 1921, pp. 432, 433.) It is to
be hoped, however, that this reactionary spirit is confined to the few, and
that the accession of this new primitive ancestor will be hailed with
general satisfaction. At any rate, we can wish him well, and trust that the
fossilized jaw of Dryopithecus will not lose caste so speedily as that of
Propliopithecus.
Propliopithecus, or Dryopithecus? Hylobatic, or troglodytic affinities?
Such questions are scarcely the pivots on which the world is turned!
Nevertheless, we rejoice that Doctor Gregory has again settled the
former problem (provisorily, at least) to his own satisfaction. More
important, however, than that of the dentition of Dryopithecus, is the
crucial question of whether or not Palæontology is able to furnish
evidence of man’s genetic continuity with this primitive pithecoid root.
Certainly, no effort has been spared to procure the much desired proofs
of our reputed bestial ancestry. The Tertiary deposits of Europe, Asia,
Africa, America, and the oceanic islands have been diligently ransacked
for fossil facts that would be susceptible to an evolutionary
interpretation. The aprioristic criterion that all large-brained men are
recent, and all small-brained men with recessive chins are necessarily
ancient, has always been employed in evaluating the fossil evidence.
Notwithstanding all endeavors, however, to bring about the
consummation so devoutly desired, the facts discovered not only fail to
support the theory of collateral descent, but actually militate against it.
For assuming that man and the anthropoid apes constitute two distinct
lines of evolution branching out from common Tertiary or pre-Tertiary
stock, palæontology should be able to show numerous intermediate fossil
forms, not alone for the lateral branch of the apes, but also, and
especially, for the lateral line connecting modern men with the common
root of the primate tree. But it is precisely in this latter respect that the
fossil evidence for collateral descent fails most egregiously.
Palæontology knows of many fossil genera and species of apes and
lemurs, that might conceivably represent links in a genetic chain
connecting modern monkeys with Tertiary stock, but it has yet to
discover so much as a single fossil species, much less a fossil genus,
intermediate between man, as we know him, and this alleged Tertiary
ancestor common to apes and men.
Not even catastrophism can be invoked to save this irremediable
situation; for any catastrophe that would have swept away the human
links would likewise have swept away the ape links. The presence of
many genera and species of fossil apes, in contrast to the absence of any
fossil genus or species of man distinct from Homo sapiens, is
irreconcilable with the theory of collateral descent. Such is the dilemma
proposed to the upholders of this theory by Wasmann, in the 10th chapter
of his “Die Moderne Biologie” (3rd edition, 1906), a dilemma, from
which, as we shall see, their every attempt to extricate themselves has
failed most signally.
“But what,” asked Wasmann, “has palæontology to say concerning
this question? It tells us that, up to the present, no connecting link
between man and the ape has been found; and, indeed, according to the
theory of Klaatsch, it is absurd to speak of a link of direct connection
between these two forms, but it tells us much more than this. It shows us,
on the basis of the results of the most recent research, that we know the
genealogical tree of the various apes, a tree very rich in species, which
extends from the present as far back as the hypothetical primitive form
assigned to the earliest part of the Tertiary period; and, in fact, in Zittel’s
work, “Grundzüge der Paläontologie” (1895), not less than thirty genera
of fossil Pro-simiæ and eighteen genera of genuine fossil apes are
enumerated, the which have been entombed in those strata of the earth
that intervene between the Lower Eocene and the Alluvial epoch, but
between this hypothetical primitive form and man of the present time we
do not find a single connecting link. The entire genealogical tree of man
does not show so much as one fossil genus, or even one fossil species.”
(Op. cit., italics his.) A brief consideration of the principal fossil remains,
in which certain palæontologists profess to see evidence of a transition
between man and the primitive pithecoid stock, will serve to verify
Wasmann’s statement, and will reveal the fact that all the alleged
connecting links are distinctly human, or purely simian, or merely
mismated combinations of human and simian remains.
 (1) Pithecanthropus erectus: In 1891 Eugène Dubois, a Dutch army
surgeon, discovered in Java, at Trinil, in the Ngawa district of the
Madiun Residency, a calvarium (skull-cap), 2 upper molars and a femur,
in the central part of an old river bed. The four fragments, however, were
not all found in the same year, because the advent of the rainy season
compelled him to suspend the work of excavation. “The teeth,” to quote
Dubois himself, “were distant from the skull from one to, at most, three
meters; the femur was fifteen meters (50 feet) away.” (Smithson. Inst.
Rpt. for 1898, p. 447.) Dubois judged the lapilli stratum, in which the
bones were found, to be older than the Pleistocene, and older, perhaps,
than the most recent zones of the Pliocene series. “The Trinil ape-man,”
says Osborn, “ ... is the first of the conundrums of human ancestry. Is the
Trinil race prehuman or not?” (Loc. cit., p. 40.) Certainly, Lower
Pleistocene, or Upper Pliocene represents too late a time for the
appearance of the upright primate, whence we are said to have sprung.
Even Miocene would be too late a date for our alleged divergence from
the primitive arboreal stock.
Of the capacity of the calvarium, Dubois says: “I found the above-
mentioned cavity measured 550 c.cm. The cast of the cavity of the
Neanderthal skull taken to the same plane measures 750 c.cm.” (Loc. cit.,
p. 450, footnote.) His first estimate of the total cranial capacity of
Pithecanthropus was 1000 c.cm., but, later on, when he decided to
reconstruct the skull on the basis of the cranium of a gibbon (Hylobates
agilis) rather than that of a chimpanzee (Troglodytes niger), he reduced
his estimate of the cranial capacity to 900 c.cm. Recently, it is rumored,
he has increased the latter estimate, as a sequel to his having removed by
means of a dentist’s tool all the siliceous matter adhering to the skull-
cap. As regards shape, the calvarium seems to resemble most closely the
cranial vault of gibbon. This similarity, as we have seen, led Dubois to
reconstruct the skull on hylobatic lines—“the skull of Hylobates agilis,”
says Dubois, “ ... strikingly resembles that of Pithecanthropus.” (Loc.
cit., p. 450, footnote.) The craniologist Macnamara, it is true, claims that
the skull-cap most closely approximates the Troglodyte type. Speaking
of the calvarium of Pithecanthropus, the latter says: “The cranium of an
average adult male chimpanzee and the Java cranium are so closely
related that I believe them to belong to the same family of animals—i.e.
to the true apes.” (Archiv. für Anthropologie, XXVIII, 1903, pp. 349-
360.) The large cranial capacity, however, would seem to favor Dubois’
interpretation, seeing that gibbons have, in proportion to their bodies,
twice as large a brain as the huge Troglodyte apes, namely, the
chimpanzee and the gorilla. The maximum cranial capacity for any ape is
from 500 to 600 c.cm. Hence, with 900 c.cm. of cranial capacity
estimated by Dubois, the Pithecanthropus stands midway between the
ape and the Neanderthal Man, a human dwarf, whose cranial capacity
Huxley estimated at 1,236 c.cm. This consideration, however, does not
of itself entitle the Pithecanthropus to be regarded as a connecting link
between man and the anthropoid apes. In all such comparisons, it is the
relative, and not the absolute, size of the brain, which is important. The
elephant for example, has as large a brain as a man, but the elephant’s
brain is small, in comparison to its huge body. The brain of a mouse is
insignificant, as regards absolute size, but, considered in relation to the
size of the mouse’s body, it is as large as, if not larger than, that of an
elephant, and hence the elephant, for all the absolute magnitude of its
brain, is no more “intelligent” than a mouse. As we have already seen,
man’s brain is unique, not for its absolute size, but for its weight and
enormous cortical surface, considered with reference to the
comparatively small organism controlled by the brain in question. It is
this excess in size which manifests the specialization of the human brain
for psychic functions. The Weddas, a dwarf race of Ceylon, have a far
smaller cranial capacity than the Neanderthal Man, their average cranial
capacity being 960 c.cm., but they are human pigmies, whereas the
Pithecanthropus, according to Richard Hertwig, was a giant ape. “The
fragments,” says Hertwig, “were regarded by some as belonging to a
connecting link between apes and man, Pithecanthropus erectus Dubois;
by others they were thought to be the remains of genuine apes, and by
others those of genuine men. The opinion that is most probably correct is
that the fragments belonged to an anthropoid ape of extraordinary size
and enormous cranial capacity.” (“Lehrbuch der Zoologie,” 7th ed.)
Prof. J. H. McGregor essays to make a gradational series out of
conjectural brain casts of a large ape, the Pithecanthropus and the
Neanderthal Man, in the ratio of 6: 9: 12, this ratio being based upon the
estimated cranial capacities of the skulls in question. In a previous
chapter, we have seen that such symmetrically graded series have little
force as an argument for common descent. In the present instance,
however, the gradation gives a wrong impression of the real state of
affairs. If Doctor McGregor had taken into account the all-important
consideration of relative size, he would not have been able to construct
this misleading series. This consideration, however, did not escape
Dubois himself, and in his paper of Dec. 14, 1896, before the Berlin
Anthropological Society, he confessed that a gigantic ape of hylobatic
type would have a cranial capacity close to that of Pithecanthropus, even
if we suppose it to have been no taller than a man. (Cf. Smithson. Inst.
Rpt. for 1898, p. 350.) The admission is all the more significant in view
of the fact that Dubois was then endeavoring to exclude the possibility of
regarding Pithecanthropus as an anthropoid ape.
The teeth, according to Dubois, are unlike the teeth of either men or
apes, but according to Virchow and Hrdlička, they are more ape-like than
human. The femur, though unquestionably man-like, might conceivably
belong to an ape of the gibbon type, inasmuch as the upright posture is
more normal to the long-armed gibbon than to any other anthropoid ape,
and its thighbone, for this reason, bears the closest resemblance to that of
man. According to the “Text-Book of Zoölogy” by Parker and Haswell,
the gibbon is the only ape that can walk erectly, which it does, not like
other apes, with the fore-limbs used as crutches, but balanced exclusively
upon its hind-limbs, with its long arms dangling to the ground—“The
Gibbons can walk in an upright position without the assistance of the
fore-limbs; in the others, though, in progression on the surface of the
ground, the body may be held in a semi-erect position with the weight
resting on the hind-limbs, yet the assistance of the long fore-limbs acting
as crutches is necessary to enable the animal to swing itself along.” (Op.
cit., 3rd ed., 1921, vol. II, p. 494.) The Javanese femur is rounder than in
man, and is, in this, as well as other respects, more akin to the thighbone
of the gibbon. “After examining hundreds of human femora,” says
Dubois, “Manouvrier could find only two that had a somewhat similar
shape. It is therefore a very rare form in man. With the gibbon a similar
form normally occurs.” (Loc. cit., pp. 456, 457.) Whether the thighbone
really belonged to an erectly walking animal has not yet been definitely
settled. To decide this matter, it would be necessary to apply the
Walkhoff x-ray method, which determines the mode of progression from
the arrangement of the bone fibers in frontal, or other, sections from the
femur. This test, however, has not hitherto been made. Nor should the
significance of the fact that the thighbone was found at a distance of
some fifty feet away from the skull-cap be overlooked, seeing that this
fact destroys, once and for all, any possibility of certainty that both
belonged to the same animal.
In conclusion, therefore, we may say that the remains of
Pithecanthropus are so scanty, fragmentary, and doubtful, as to preclude
a reliable verdict on their true significance. As Virchow pointed out, the
determination of their correct taxonomic position is impossible, in the
absence of a complete skeleton. Meanwhile, the most probable opinion is
that they represent the remains of a giant ape of the hylobatic type. In
other words, the Pithecanthropus belongs to the genealogical tree of the
apes, and not to that of man. In fact, he has been excluded from the direct
line of human descent by Schwalbe, Alsberg, Kollmann, Haacke,
Hubrecht, Klaatsch, and all the foremost protagonists of the theory of
collateral descent. (Cf. Dwight, op. cit., ch. VIII.) Professor McGregor’s
series consisting of an ape, the Pithecanthropus, Homo neanderthalensis,
and the Crô-Magnon Man fails as an argument, not only for the general
reason we have discussed in our third chapter, but also for two special
reasons, namely: (1) that he completely ignores the chronological
question of the comparative age of the fossils in his series, and (2) that
he has neglected to take into account the consideration of the body-brain
ratio. For as Prof. G. Grant MacCurdy puts it, “We must distinguish
between relative (cranial) capacity and absolute capacity.” (Smithson.
Inst. Rpt. for 1909, p. 575.) In justice to Professor McGregor, however, it
should be noted that he proposes his interpretation in a purely provisory
and tentative sense, and does not dogmatize after the fashion of Osborn
and Gregory.
After the year 1896, Dubois appears to have withdrawn the relics of
Pithecanthropus from further inspection on the part of scientific men,
and to have kept them securely locked up in his safe at Haarlem,
Holland. (Cf. Science, June 15, 1923, suppl. VIII.) Since all existing
casts of the skull-cap of Pithecanthropus are inaccurate, according to the
measurements originally given by Dubois, anthropologists were anxious
to have access to bones, in order to verify his figures and to obtain better
casts. (Cf. Hrdlička, Smithson. Inst. Rpt. for 1913, p. 498.) His obstinate
refusal, therefore, to place the Javanese remains at the disposal of
scientists was bitterly resented by the latter. Some of them accused him
of having become “reactionary” and “orthodox” in his later years, and
others went so far as to impugn his good faith in the matter of the
discovery. (Cf. W. H. Ballou’s article, North American Review, April,
1922.) A writer in Science says: “It has been rumored that he was
influenced by religious bigotry” and refers to the bones as a “skeleton in
the closet.” (Cf. loc. cit.) Dubois’ own explanation, however, was that he
wished to publish his own finds first. Recently, he seems to have yielded
to pressure in the matter, since he permitted Hrdlička, McGregor, and
others to examine the fragments of Pithecanthropus. (Cf. Science, Aug.
17, 1923, Suppl. VIII.) Meanwhile, too, his opinion has changed with
reference to these bones, which he now regards as the remains of a large
ape of the hylobatic type, and not of a form intermediate between men
and apes. This opinion is, in all likelihood, the correct one.
(2) The Heidelberg Man: In a quarry near Mauer in the Elsenz Valley,
Germany, on Oct. 21, 1907, a workman engaged in excavating drove his
shovel into a fossilized human jaw, severing it into two pieces. Herr
Joseph Rösch, the owner of the quarry, immediately telegraphed the
news of the find to Prof. Otto Schoetensack of the neighboring
University of Heidelberg. The Professor arrived on the scene the
following day, and “once he got hold of the specimen, he would no more
let it out of his possession.” (Cf. Smithson. Inst. Rpt. for 1913, p. 510.)
He took it back with him to Heidelberg, where he cleaned and repaired
it. The crowns of four of the teeth broken by the workman’s shovel were
never recovered. The Heidelberg jaw was found at a depth of about 79
feet below the surface (24.1 meters). Fossil bones of Elephas antiquus,
Rhinoceros etruscus, Felis leo fossilis, etc., are said to have been
discovered at the same level. The layer in which it was found has been
classed by some as Middle Pleistocene, by others as Early Quaternary;
for “there seems to be some uncertainty as to the exact subdivision of the
period to which it should be attributed.” (Hrdlička, loc. cit., p. 516.) No
other part of the skeleton except the jaw was discovered.
The teeth are of the normal human pattern, being small and vertical.
Prof. Arthur Keith says they have the same shape as those of the
specimen found at Spy. The jaw has an ape-like appearance, due to the
extreme recessiveness of the chin. It is also remarkable for its
massiveness and the broadness of the ascending rami. Its anomalous
character is indicated by the manifest disproportion between the
powerful jaw and the insignificant teeth. “One is impressed,” says Prof.
George Grant MacCurdy of Yale, “by the relative smallness of the teeth
as compared with the massive jaw in the case of Homo heidelbergensis.”
(Smithson. Inst. Rpt. for 1909, p. 570.) “Why so massive a jaw,” says the
late Professor Dwight, former anatomist at Harvard, “should have such
inefficient teeth is hard to explain, for the very strength of the jaw
implies the fitness of corresponding teeth. Either it is an anomaly or the
jaw of some aberrant species of ape.” (Op. cit., p. 164.) This fact alone
destroys its evidential force; for, by way of anomaly, almost any sort of
feature can appear in apes and men, that is, human characters in apes and
simian characters in man. “Thus it is certain,” says Dwight, “that animal
features of the most diverse kinds appear in man apparently without
rhyme or reason, and also that they appear in precisely the same way in
animals far removed from those in which they are normal. It is hopeless
to try to account for them by inheritance; and to call them instances of
convergence does not help matters.” (Op. cit., pp. 230, 231.)
Kramberger, however, claims that, with the exception of the extremely
recessive chin, the features of the Heidelberg jaw are approximated by
those which are normal in the modern Eskimo skull. (Cf. Sitzungbericht
der Preuss. Akad. der Wissenschaften, 1909.) Prof. J. H. McGregor holds
similar views. He claims that the greater use of the jaw in uncivilized
peoples, who must masticate tough foods, tends to accentuate and
increase the recessiveness of the chin. It is also possible that the
backward sloping of the chin may have been intensified in certain
primitive races or varieties of the human species as a result of factorial
mutation. We would not, however, be justified in segregating a distinct
human species on the basis of minor differences, such as the
protuberance or recessiveness of chins. On the whole, we are hopelessly
at sea with reference to the significance of the Heidelberg mandible.
Taxonomic allocation must be grounded on something more than a jaw,
otherwise it amounts to nothing more than a piece of capricious
speculation.
(3) Eoanthropus Dawsoni: Dec. 18, 1912, is memorable with
evolutionary anthropologists as the day on which Charles Dawson
announced his discovery of the famous Dawn Man. The period of
discovery extended from the years prior to 1911 up to Aug. 30, 1913,
when the canine tooth was found by Father Teilhard de Chardin. The
locality was Piltdown Common, Sussex, in England. The fragments
recovered were an imperfect cranium, part of the mandible, and the
above-mentioned canine tooth. The stratified Piltdown gravel, which
Dawson assigns to the Lower Pleistocene or Glacial epoch, had been
much disturbed by workmen, “who were digging the gravel for small
repairs.” (Dawson.) The discoverer first found a fragment of a parietal
bone. Then several years later, after the gravels had been considerably
rainwashed, he recovered other fragments of the skull. All parts of the
skeletal remains are said to have been found within a radius of several
yards from the site of the initial discovery. The skull was reconstructed
by Dr. A. Smith Woodward and deposited in the British Museum of
Natural History at South Kensington. Eoliths were found in the same
gravel as the skull.
Of the skull, according to Woodward, four parts remain, which,
however, were integrated from nine fragments of bone. “The human
remains,” he says, “comprise the greater part of a brain-case and one
ramus of the mandible, with two lower molars.” Of Woodward’s
reconstruction, Keith tells us that “an approach to symmetry and a
correct adjustment of parts came only after many experimental
reconstructions” (cf. “Antiquity of Man,” p. 364), and he also remarks
that, when Woodward undertook to “replace the missing points of the
jaws, the incisor and canine teeth, he followed simian rather than human
lines.” (Op. cit., p. 324.) Here we may be permitted to observe that, even
apart from the distorting influence of preconceived theories, this business
of reconstruction is a rather dubious procedure. The absence of parts and
the inevitable modification introduced by the use of cement employed to
make the fragments cohere make accurate reconstruction an
impossibility. The fact that Woodward assigned to the lower jaw a tooth
which Gerrit Miller of the United States Museum assigns to the upper
jaw, may well give pause to those credulous persons, who believe that
palæontologists can reliably reconstruct a whole cranium or skeleton
from the minutest fragments. Sometimes, apparently, the “experts” are at
sea even over so simple a question as the proper allocation of a tooth.
Woodward, however, was fully satisfied with his own artistic work on
Eoanthropus; for he says: “While the skull, indeed, is evidently human,
only approaching a lower grade in certain characters of the brain, in the
attachment for the neck, the extent of the temporal muscles and in the
probable size of the face, the mandible appears to be almost precisely
that of an ape, with nothing human except the molar teeth.” (Cf.
Smithson. Inst. Rpt. for 1913, pp. 505, 506.) Of the cranial capacity
Woodward gives the following estimate: “The capacity of the brain-case
cannot, of course, be exactly determined; but measurements both by
millet seed and water show that it must have been at least 1,070 cc.,
while a consideration of the missing parts suggests that it may have been
a little more (note the parsimoniousness of this concession!). It therefore
agrees closely with the capacity of the Gibraltar skull, as determined by
Professor Keith, and equals that of the lowest skulls of the existing
Australians. It is much below the Mousterian skulls from Spy and La
Chapelle-aux-Saints.” (Loc. cit., p. 505.)
 Where Doctor Woodward came to grief, however, was in his failure to
discern the obvious disproportion between the mismated cranium and
mandible. As a matter of fact, the mandible is older than the skull and
belongs to a fossil ape, whereas the cranium is more recent and is
conspicuously human. Woodward, however, was blissfully unconscious
of this mésalliance. What there is of the lower jaw, he assures us, “shows
the same mineralized condition as the skull” and “corresponds
sufficiently well in size to be referred to the same individual without any
hesitation.” (Loc. cit., p. 506.)
For this he was roundly taken to task by Prof. David Waterston in an
address delivered by the latter before the London Geological Society,
Dec., 1912. Nature, the English scientific weekly, reports this criticism
as follows: “To refer the mandible and the cranium to the same
individual would be equivalent to articulating a chimpanzee foot with the
bones of a human thigh and leg.” Prof. J. H. McGregor of Columbia,
though he followed Woodward in modeling the head of Eoanthropus
now exhibited in “The Hall of the Age of Man,” told the writer that he
believed the jaw and the skull to be misfits. Recently, Hrdlička has come
out strongly for the separation of the mandible from the cranium,
insisting that the former is older and on the order of the jaw of the fossil
ape Dryopithecus, while the skull is less antique and indubitably human.
The following abstract of Hrdlička’s view is given in Science, May 4,
1923: “Dr. Hrdlička,” we read, “holds that the Piltdown jaw is much
older than the skull found near it and to which it had been supposed to
belong.” (Cf. suppl. X.) Hrdlička asserts that, from the standpoint of
dentition, there is a striking resemblance between the Piltdown jaw and
that of the extinct ape Dryopithecus rhenanus. He comments, in fact, on
“the close relation of the Piltdown molars to some of the Miocene or
early Pliocene human-like teeth of this fossil ape.” (Ibidem.) Still other
authorities, however, have claimed that the jaw was that of a
chimpanzee.
To conclude, therefore, the Eoanthropus Dawsoni is an invention, and
not a discovery, an artistic creation, not a specimen. Anyone can combine
a simian mandible with a human cranium, and, if the discovery of a
connecting link entails no more than this, then there is no reason why
evidence of human evolution should not be turned out wholesale.
(4) The Neanderthal Man (No. 1): The remains of the famous
Neanderthal Man were found in August, 1856, by two laborers at work
in the Feldhofer Grotte, a small cave about 100 feet from the Düssel
river, near Hochdal in Germany. This cave is located at the entrance of
the Neanderthal gorge in Westphalia, at a height of 60 feet above the
bottom of the valley. No competent scientist, however, saw the bones in
situ. Both the bones and the loam, in which they were entombed, had
been thrown out of the cave and partly precipitated into the ravine, long
before the scientists arrived. Indeed, the scientific discoverer, Dr. C.
Fuhlrott, did not come upon the scene until several weeks later. It was
then too late to determine the age of the bones geologically and
stratigraphically, and no petrigraphic examination of the loam was made.
The cave, which is about 25 meters above the level of the river,
communicates by crevices with the surface, so that it is possible that the
bones and the loam, which covered the floor of the cave, may have been
washed in from without. Fuhlrott recovered a skull-cap, two femurs, both
humeri, both ulnæ (almost complete), the right radius, the left pelvic
bone, a fragment of the right scapula, five pieces of rib, and the right
clavicle. (Cf. Hugues Obermaier’s article, Smithson. Inst. Rpt. for 1906,
pp. 394, 395.) “Whether they (the bones) were really in the Alluvial
loam,” says Virchow, “no one saw.... The whole importance of the
Neanderthal skull consists in the honor ascribed to it from the very
beginning, of having rested in the Alluvial loam, which was formed at
the time of the early mammals.” (Quoted by Ranke, “Der Mensch,” II, p.
485.) We know nothing, therefore, regarding the age of the fragmentary
skeleton; for, as Obermaier says: “It is certain that its exact age is in no
way defined, either geologically or stratigraphically.” (Loc. cit., p. 395.)
The remains are no less enigmatic from the anthropological
standpoint. For while no doubt has been raised as to their human
character, they have given rise to at least a dozen conflicting opinions.
Thus Professor Clemont of Bonn pronounced the remains in question to
be those of a Mongolian Cossack shot by snipers in 1814, and cast by his
slayers into the Feldhofer Grotte. The same verdict had been given by L.
Meyer in 1864. C. Carter Blake (1864) and Karl Vogt (1863) declared
the skull to be that of an idiot. J. Barnard Davis (1864) claimed that it
had been artificially deformed by early obliteration of the cranial sutures.
Pruner-Bey (1863) said that it was the skull of an ancient Celt or
German; R. Wagner (1864), that it belonged to an ancient Hollander;
Rudolf Virchow, that the remains were those of a primitive Frieslander.
Prof. G. Schwalbe of Strassburg erected it into a new genus of the
Anthropidæ in 1901. In 1904, however, he repented of his rashness and
contented himself with calling it a distinct human species, namely, Homo
primigenius, in contradistinction to Homo sapiens (modern man). As we
shall see presently, however, it is not a distinct species, but, at most, an
ancient variety or subspecies (race) of the species Homo sapiens,
differing from modern Europeans only in the degree that Polynesians,
Mongolians, and Hottentots differ from them, that is, within the limits of
the one and only human species. Other opinions might be cited (cf.
Hrdlička, Smithson. Inst. Rpt. for 1913, p. 518, and H. Muckermann’s
“Darwinism and Evolution,” 1906, pp. 63, 64), but the number and
variety of the foregoing bear ample testimony to the uncertain and
ambiguous character of the remains.
The skull is that of a low, perhaps, degenerate, type of humanity. The
facial and basal parts of the skull are missing. Hence we are not sure of
the prognathism shown in McGregor’s reconstruction. The skull has,
however, a retreating forehead, prominent brow ridges and a sloping
occiput. Yet, in spite of the fact that it is of a very low type, it is
indubitably human. “In no sense,” says Huxley, “can the Neanderthal
bones be regarded as the remains of a human being intermediate between
men and apes.” (“Evidence of Man’s Place in Nature,” Humb. ed., p.
253.) D. Schaaffhausen makes the same confession—“In making this
discovery,” he owns, “we have not found the missing link.” (“Der
Neanderthaler Fund,” p. 49.) The cranial capacity of the Neanderthal
skull, as we have seen, is 1,236 c.cm., which is practically the same as
that of the average European woman of today. In size it exceeds, but in
shape it resembles, the dolichocephalic skull of the modern Australian,
being itself a dolichocephalic cranium. Huxley called attention to this
resemblance, and Macnamara, after comparing it with a large number of
such skulls, reaches this conclusion: “The average cranial capacity of
these selected 36 skulls (namely, of Australian and Tasmanian blacks) is
even less than that of the Neanderthal group, but in shape some of these
two groups are closely related.” (Archiv. für Anthropologie, XXVIII,
1903, p. 358.) Schwalbe’s opinion that the Neanderthal Man constitutes a
distinct species, though its author has since abandoned it (cf. Wasmann’s
“Modern Biology,” Eng. ed., 1910, p. 506), will be considered later, viz.
after we have discussed the Men of Spy, Krapina and Le Moustier, all of
whom have been assigned to the Neanderthal group.
(5) Neanderthal Man (No. 2): This specimen is said to be more recent
than No. 1. Its discoverers were Rautert, Klaatsch, and Koenen. It
consists of a human skeleton without a skull. It was found buried in the
loess at a depth of 50 centimeters. This loess had been washed into the
ruined cave, where the relics were found, subsequently to its deposition
on the plateau above. The bones were most probably washed into the
cave along with the loess, which fills the remnant of the destroyed cave.
The upper plateau of the region is covered with the same loess. The site
of the second discovery was 200 meters to the west of the Neanderthal
Cave (i.e. the Feldhofer Grotte). The bones were either washed into the
broken cave, or buried there later. We have no indication whatever of
their age.
(6) The Man of La Naulette: In 1866, André Dupont found in the
cavern of La Naulette, valley of the Lesse, Belgium, a fossil lower jaw,
or rather, the fragment of a lower jaw, associated with remains of the
mammoth and rhinoceros. The fragment was sufficient to show the
dentition, and to indicate the absence of a chin. “Its kinship with the man
of Neanderthal,” remarks Professor MacCurdy very naïvely, “whose
lower jaw could not be found, was evident. It tended to legitimatize the
latter, which hitherto had failed of general recognition.” (Smithson. Inst.
Rpt. for 1909, p. 572.)
(7) The Men of Spy: In June of 1886 two nearly complete skeletons,
probably of a woman and a man, were discovered by Messrs. Marcel de
Puydt and Maximin Lohest in a terrace fronting a cave at Spy in the
Province of Namur, Belgium, 47½ feet above the shallow bed of the
stream Orneau. The bones were found at a depth of 13 feet below the
surface of the terrace. The remains were associated with bones of the
rhinoceros (Rhinoceros tichorhinus), the mammoth (Elephas
primigenius), and the great bear (Ursus spelaeus). There were also stone
implements indicating Mousterian industry, and the position of one of
the skeletons shows that the bodies were buried by friends. The present
valley of the Orneau was almost completely formed at the time of the
burial. The exact age of the bones cannot be determined nor can these
cave deposits be correlated with the river drift and the loess. The cultural
evidences are said to be Mousterian, and Mousterian culture is assigned
by Obermaier to the Fourth, or last, Glacial period.
Prof. Julien Fraipont of the University of Liége announced the
discovery of these palæolithic skeletons Aug. 16, 1886. Skeleton No. 1
has weaker bones and is thought to be that of a woman; No. 2 shows
signs of strong musculature and is evidently that of a man. Of No. 1 we
have the cranial vault, two portions of the upper jaw (with five molars