A PALÆOLITHIC HUMAN SKULL
by Anon
Chamber's' Journal - Seventh Series (March 29th 1913)
The discovery of a palæolithic human skull and mandible by Mr Charles Dawson near Piltdown Common, in the parish of Fletching, Sussex, is regarded by Nature as the most important discovery of its kind hitherto made in England. It was found in gravel deposited by the river Ouse at a time when that river flowed at a level of eighty feet above its present course. The gravel consists largely of iron-stained flints, amongst which were also discovered fragments of the molar tooth of a Pliocene elephant and a water-worn cusp of the molar of a mastodon. Teeth of the hippopotamus, beaver, and horse, and part of the antler of a red deer, were also found, with several unabraded ealry Palæolithic implements. Dr Arthur S. Woodward, of the Geological Department of the British Museum, who described the skull before the Geological Society of London from a restored model, said it proved to be very different from the skull of any class of man hitherto met with. It had the steep forehead of a modern man, with scarcely any brow-ridges, and the only external appearance of antiquity was found in the occiput, which showed that in this early form the neck was shaped not like that of a modern man, but more like that of an ape. The brain capacity was only about two-thirds of that of an ordinary modern man. The mandible differed remarkably from that of a man, and agreed exactly with the madible of a young chimpanzee. It still bore two of the molar teeth, which were human in shape; if these were removed it would be impossible to decide that the jaw was human at all. The skull differed so much from those of the cave-men already found in Germany, Belgium, and France that it was difficult at first to interpret it. All the cave-men hitherto found were characterised by very low foreheads and very prominent brow-ridges, resembling those of a full-grown ape. The new specimen was proved by geological considerations to be very much older than the remains of these cave-men. The skull was very similar to that of a young chimpanzee, while the skull of the later cave-men had the brows of the full-grown chimpanzee. Dr Woodward said that the changes which took place in the shape of a skull in successive races of early man were exactly similar to the changes which took place in the skull of an ape as it grew from youth to maturity. He inclined, therefore, to the theory that the cave-man was a degenerate offshoot of early man, and probably became extinct, while surviving modern man might have arisen directly from the primitive source of which the Piltdown skull proved the first discovered evidence.