SKULLS AND PREHISTORY
THE science of Anthropology has always had a peculiar fascination for the non-technical reader, and more than ever at present owing to the interest focused on it from two widely different sources : the astounding episode of Dayton, which reawakened the scientific- religious controversy of evolution, and the discovery of various fossil remains in Africa, Palestine and elsewhere. Anthropology, though comparatively new, is a vigorous science, and these discoveries have given it an especial impetus. Few things can be more intriguing to the biologist than to speculate on our human ancestors, the modes of evolution they have exhibited, and their jour- neyings over vast distances. For example, the travels of the first men to Australasia with their dogs, the first of domesticated animals, would make an epic worthy of the tongue of a Homer. THE science of Anthropology has always had a peculiar fascination for the non-technical reader, and more than ever at present owing to the interest focused on it from two widely different sources : the astounding episode of Dayton, which reawakened the scientific- religious controversy of evolution, and the discovery of various fossil remains in Africa, Palestine and elsewhere. Anthropology, though comparatively new, is a vigorous science, and these discoveries have given it an especial impetus. Few things can be more intriguing to the biologist than to speculate on our human ancestors, the modes of evolution they have exhibited, and their jour- neyings over vast distances. For example, the travels of the first men to Australasia with their dogs, the first of domesticated animals, would make an epic worthy of the tongue of a Homer.
The fact that the difficulties of spanning the chasm of time are very great adds but a stimulus, and, indeed, these difficulties are tremendous : the evidence must be sought for in such diverse fields, and is often so meagre. The three main sources are fossil remains, of which skulls arc the most important, man-made implements such as flint knives and scrapers, and the geological evidence as to the age of the strata in which they were found. The importance of skulls in the chain of evidence is due to the amount of information which can he obtained from them, both regarding the physical type of their erstwhile possessors, and their brain power. The brain of the higher mammals is convoluted or divided into lobes, just as if a flat sheet of putty had been crumbled up into an ovoid mass ; and certain of these convolutions have been 'identified as the control areas of various functions- such as sensation or movement of the limbs, sight, auditory, memory and the like, and the inner surface of the skull shows markings which correspond with them. Special development of any of these areas would indicate cor- responding ability of that function, and it has been advanced as a proof of the ultra-simian character of the Taungs skull that the expansion of the parietal lobe shows that its possessor had greater " handiness " than is found in the apes.
Other salient points of the skull bones are that they vary greatly in shape in different races, and that the size of the ridges and rough areas, to which the muscles are attached, gives a very good measure of the musculature of the individual, so that the facial configuration can be reconstructed. In zoological classification the skull is perhaps the most important characteristic, and the whole scheme of vertebrates can be built up on a systematic description of the skulls alone.
The number of very ancient skulls that have been found; is small, and they have usually been named after the place in which they were discovered. Among the earlier discoveries were the extraordinary remains found in 1866 at Solutre in France of a layer of horse bones, which was a sort of kitchen midden of a pre-Neolithic people, some 19,000 years ago, and which is estimated to represent some 100,000 animals. Further excavation of the ground in 1923 resulted in the discovery of several skeletons of a round-headed type, and evidence of cere- monial burial. These skeletons are the first representa- tives of the round-headed peoples which now occupy such a large proportion of Europe.
In 1888 a skeleton was discovered at Galley Hill in Kent, which gave rise to a controversy that has not been settled yet. If the geological evidence is to be believed, then it is a hundred thousand years old, but anatomically the Galley Hill man approximates to the modern type, and it is certain that at a much later date, i.e., in Pleistocene times, the Neanderthal man flourished in Europe. This race is the great puzzle of anthropology, for its origin and fate is quite unknown, although the theories regarding it are legion. They were a large- brained people, but of a more primitive, or at least different, type from Modern man. Their remains have been found in several places throughout Western Europe, and Very recently Mr. Turville-Petre discovered in Palestine the Galilee skull, which is similar to the European Neanderthal man, and which has already become famous since it proves these people were more widely spread than was before believed.
Other recent discoveries are the controversial Piltdown skull in England (1911), the Talgai skull of Australia, brought to light in 1914, the Boskop in South Africa in 1913, the Rhodesian man found in 1921, who is con- sidered to have been a cousin of the Neanderthal race, and the Taungs skull discovered in South Africa last year. (The latter, with a reconstruction of the face, is exhibited at Wembley.) Considerable disagreement has arisen already with regard to this specimen. In the opinion of Professor Dart, of Johannesburg, it is a pre- human, ultra - simian type, between the anthropoid apes and Homo sapiens, i.e., a " missing link." Sir Arthur Keith believes it to belong to the gorilla chimpanzee group, and to be not older than Pleistocene times, and therefore not a human ancestor.
This last example may give some hint of the difficulties investigators in this field have to face, for when two such eminent authorities come to opposite conclusions on the same evidence, the natural conclusion is that the evidence is not entirely satisfactory. To the biologist working in other departments, indeed, none of the evidence from structure would be really satisfactory, because it is insufficient in amount. The research worker soon becomes painfully familiar with the wide extension of variation in individuals in even an inbred race, and regards investigations done on a few animals with the greatest scepticism. The growth of biometrics, or biological statistics, under the able leadership of Professor Karl Pearson, has done still more to convince the biologist of this.
No biologist would wish to belittle the valuable researches of the anthropologists, especially as one remem- bers the paucity of their material, but it is surely not too much to remind them of the danger of regarding an individual specimen as the typical mean of a group, and therefore the danger of building too much upon it. We look to the anthropologist to solve the question of human evolution, but we require a greater amount of evidence than is available at the present time.
W. P. K.
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