Pleistocene Skull Found in England

New York Times November 1912

Special Cable to The New York Times.

London, Nov. 23.– An important prehistoric find in England is causing great excitement among scientists generally, and anthropology students in particular. While excavating in Sussex workmen unearthed the fragments of a human skull, which are now being pieced together. The detailed description is withheld until Dec.18, when it will be given at a meeting of the Geological Society.

Experts, however, declare that the skull is that of a paleollithic man, and undoubtedly the earliest evidence of man in this country, dating from the beginning of the pleistocene period.

It was found in association with bones of one of the most ancient types of elephant. The stratum in which it lay was the beach of a very old river bed. The skull belongs roughly to the same age as the famous Heidelberg skull and is quite as early as anything which has been found in Europe.

The skull resembles the Neanderthal specimen, but belongs to a much lower and even more primitive type of mankind than that. Before this discovery the earliest skull found in England was one dug up near Ipswich last year, but the conditions of the Ipswich find leave a loophole for doubt.

This is no doubt, it is said, about the geological age of the Sussex skull. Experts will not venture an opinion as to the date of the Sussex man, but he probably lived millions of years ago.

Human Remains

Found in

England Similar in

Some Details to

Bones of Chimpanzee

FAR OLDER THAN

CAVEMEN

Special Cable to

THE NEW YORK TIMES.

LONDON, Dec. 18, 1912.–At a meeting of the Geological Society this evening the paleolithic human skull and mandible recently discovered on Piltdown Common, Sussex, formed the subject of papers by Charles Dawson, F.G.S., and Dr. Woodward, Keeper of the Geological Department of the British Museum, who were jointly responsible for the recovery and recasting of the skull, which was broken into fragments when it was unearthed by workmen.

Dr. Woodward said the skull proved to be very different from the skull of any class of man hitherto met with. It had the steep forehead of the 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 modern man but more like that of the ape. The brain capacity was only about two-thirds that of the ordinary modern man.

The mandible, Dr. Woodward added, differed remarkably from that of man. It agreed exactly with the mandible of a young chimpanzee. Still, it bore two 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 cavemen already found in Germany, Belgium, and France, that it was difficult at first sight to interpret it.

The new specimen, said Dr. Woodward, was proved by geological considerations to be very much older than the remains of these cavemen. It was interesting to note in this connection that the newly found skull was closely similar in shape to that of a very young chimpanzee, while the skull of the later cavemen had the brows of a full-grown chimpanzee. Therefore the changes which took place in the skull in successive races of early man were exactly similar to the changes which took place in the skull of the ape as it grew from youth to maturity.

Dr. Woodward said he was inclined, therefore, to the theory that the caveman 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 provided the first discovered evidence.

Dr. Woodward, replying to a question as to the approximate date of the skull, told a reporter that it belonged to the Lower Pleistocene period, which could not be computed in terms of years. A dim conception of its antiquity could be gained from the fact that the gravel in which it was embedded must have been carried there by a stream which was now the Ouse, and which had since cut for itself a channel eighty feet deep and a mile distant from the spot. In the gravel, too, were relics of the elephant, mastodon, hippopotamus, and red deer, besides flint implements anterior to those used by the cave dwellers.

New York Times December 1912

Most Remarkable of the Discoveries Due to the Finding of the Piltdown Skull

_______

Is a Real Missing Link

_______

Anything Earlier, if Found, Will Prove to be Almost Entirely Ape, Says Dr. Woodward - Scientists Exited

_______

By Marconi Transatlantic Wireless Telegraph to the New York Times

London, Dec. 19.–Extraordinary interest has been aroused among anthropologists by Dr. A. S. Woodward's paper on the Piltdown skull read at a meeting of the Geological Society yesterday. No other event in the annals of the society has created such a profound sensation among the members.

In some quarters it is even believed that the skull, from certain apelike characteristics, may prove the existence of the "missing link," or the most important of several missing links, in the chain of the evolution of man.

"That this skull, representing a hitherto unknown human species, is the missing link I, for one, have not the slightest doubt," said Dr. Woodward to an interviewer. "This discovery takes us back nearer to the source and origin of the first living creature than any other discovery ever made.

"Hitherto the nearest approach to a species from which we might have been said to descend that had been discovered was the cave-man, but the authorities constantly asserted that we did not spring directly from the cave-man. Where, then, was the missing link in the chain of our evolution?

"To me, at any rate, the answer lies in the Piltdown skull, for we came direct from a species almost entirely ape.

"Of course, there may be more missing links, but if we are to find them we shall have to discover human remains of greater antiquity than those brought to light at Piltdown. Such a discovery, to my mind, would bring us to almost pure ape.

"The most significant thing about the discovery does not so much lie in the fact that the brain is infinitely smaller than that of an ordinary human being, or that the jaw is the jaw of a chimpanzee, but in the fact, proved beyond doubt from the shape of the jaw, that the creature when alive did not possess the power of speech.

"But that it had some brain is certain. Therefore in the evolution of the human species the brain came first and speech was the growth of a later age."

Dr. Woodward seems to be of the opinion that the possessor of the skull did not exceed 5 feet in height, and further that, owing to slight development of the brow ridges and the slenderness of the jaw, it may be the skull of a female.

English Scientists Say the Skull

Found in Sussex Establishes Human Descent from Apes.

THOUGHT TO BE A WOMAN'S

Bones Illustrate a Stage of Evolution Which has Only Been

Imagined Before.

CREATURE COULD NOT TALK

Probably Lived at a Time When Other Species of Human Had

Developed Further Elsewhere

Special Cable to THE NEW YORK TIMES December 22, 1913

LONDON. Dec. 21.–A race of ape-like and speechless man, inhabiting England hundreds of thousands of years ago, when they had for their neighbors the mastodon and other animals now extinct is the missing link in the chain in man's evolution, which leading scientists say they have discovered in what is generally described as "the Sussex skull." To this Dr. Woodward proposes to give the name of "eoanthropus," or "man of dawn."

Prof. Arthur Keith says that the discovery marks by far the most remarkable advance in the knowledge of the ancestry of man ever made in England and supports the view that man was derived not from a single genus or species, but from several different genera. He goes on:

"It gives us a stage in the evolution of man which we have only imagined since Darwin propounded the theory."

Prof. Keith expresses the opinion that the skull is what anthropologists have been seeking for forty years, namely, a tertiary man, mankind of the pliocene age, which was the beginning of the first great glacial period.

"There is no doubt at all," he said, "that this is the most important discovery concerning ancient man ever made in England. It is one of the three most important discoveries of the sort ever made in the world. The other two were the discovery of the individual known as Pithecanthropus, made in Java in 1802 by Prof. Eugene Dubois. The other, which equals it in instructiveness and importance, is the skull discovered at Heidelberg six years ago.

"The Heidelberg skull is the best dated one, for it was found at a depth of eighty feet, in a formation acknowledged by every one to belong to the beginning of the pleistocene period, which immediately preceded the great ice age.

"Regarding the nature of the new discovery in size of brain, it is at least equal to the brains of many individuals in living races, but the character of the brain is extremely primitive, more so than in any living race.

"The next thing to note is that the skull shows a great number of the characteristics which we see in modern man, especially with regard to the occipital region of the skull, the neck and ear passages, and the joint between mandible and skull, whereas in the Neanderthal man, who lived at a much later date than the Sussex woman, (it is most probably the skull of a woman) you get all these apelike characteristics.

"This supports the theory that many of us hold, that in the pleistocene period there were at least two very distinct and independent species of primitive man, and probably many more than two, which future discoveries will reveal.

"I agree with Dr. Smith Woodward that the human individual now discovered is an absolutely new type, and no doubt it is an extremely primitive type. Possibly he has been a little too precipitate in saying it belongs to a new genus of humanity."

Several points of interest have developed from the scientists' examination of the skull, which, by the way, they are inclined to believe belonged to a female. The chief point is the size of the brain cavity, which is estimated by Dr. Woodward at 1,070 cubic centimeters. This compares with 1,000 to 1,200 in aboriginal Australian women and 1,080 in the Gibraltar skull, belonging to the pleistocene period.

In form the brain was flattened, and, as in the modern man, the left forepart of the brain was larger than the right. Another feature to which attention has been drawn is the enormous thickness of the skull. Both these are point of resemblance with the skull of the Neanderthal man.

Attention is drawn to the fact that in a host of details, such as the formation of the ear and the joints of the lower jaw, the skull, unlike that of the Neanderthal man, is of the human as opposed to the anthropoid type. The neck, on the other hand, must have been squat and apelike, and the formation of the chin retreating, like that of a dog.

According to Dr. Woodward, there are two points which definitely and positively mark the skull as human. These are found first in the nature of the hinge for the lower jaw, which agrees absolutely with that in modern man, and differs emphatically from that of apes, and second, in the presence of the two conspicuous sub-conical bosses of bone at the base of the skull, known as the mastoid processes. These are peculiar to the human race, but the bosses of bone in the Sussex man are smaller than in the higher race.

But it is not, Dr. Woodward declares, till we come to an examination of the lower jaw that the full significance of the discovery becomes apparent, for while the brain case is emphatically human the jaw is as emphatically apelike. Found by itself it might and would be regarded as that of an ape with many human features in its general conformation.

This remarkable fragment agrees with the celebrated jaw found about five years ago on Jauer Heidelberg and known as the Heidelberg jaw, but it presents an apelike feature which the less ancient Heidelberg jaw does not. The most striking point of both is the extraordinary receding chin, the jaw sloping backward sharply from the base of the teeth, which had a decided forward thrust.

In the living races of mankind the chin is always more or less conspicuous, the lower border of the jaw standing well in advance of the teeth, which are mounted vertically along its rim.

Other apelike features of the jaw are the absence of the muscular ridge along its inner surface, known as the mylohyoid ridge, affording attachments for the muscles of swallowing and speech. This ridge is always present in the human jaw.

Finally in apes two branches of the lower jaw, where they meet in front behind the teeth, form a sort of platform on which the tongue rests. In man this platform has been suppressed, thus greatly enlarging the cavity of the mouth and rendering speech possible.

It is, therefore, generally agreed that the skull belonged to a race of men who lacked the power of speech.

A prominent anthropologist, who was interviewed, said that the evidence on that point was convincing, the "speech centres" in the brain being so feebly developed that brain power was practically non-existent.

It is also clear that the front teeth, which are missing, must have been very large and protruding, and man with such teeth could not talk. Yet the back teeth must have been human teeth.

As has already been explained in dispatches to THE NEW YORK TIMES, the Sussex skull is not entire, but the fragments discovered are sufficiently complete to give, when fitted together, a fairly accurate picture of a greater portion of the brain-containing part of the skull. The face and the greater part of the forehead are missing, but fortunately half of the lower jaw with the first and second molar teeth in situ was recovered. The front part of the mandible also is missing, but there is enough to show that the chin conformation was identical with that of the anthropoid apes.

Not a single bone of the limbs or trunk was found.

The skull was apparently complete when unearthed by workmen, but not realizing the importance of their find they broke it up into three fragments right away. Charles Dawson, an amateur geologist, heard of the affair by chance, and with the aid of Dr. Woodward recovered as many fragments as possible. They also discovered in the same spot two broken pieces of the molar of the pliocene type of elephant, a molar cusp of a mastodon, teeth of the hippopotamus, castor, and equus, and fragment of an antler of the cervus elaphus.

Mr. Dawson, in telling of the discovery, said the fragments of the skull, like the fossils found with them, were deeply stained and impregnated with iron oxide.

The same stratum also contained samples of eoliths, or the most primitive flint forms ascribed to human workmanship, which occur so plentifully on the Kentish plateau, twenty miles north of the scene of the present discovery. These included two highly worked flints of a type known as chellean, but they are fawn colored, while the other flints were deeply stained like the fossil bones found with them.

The human skull shows no mark of having been rolled and worn like the fossil bones of the pliocene animals that lay near it. Hence Mr. Dawson and Dr. Woodward expressed the opinion that the human fossil bones were not of the same age as the pliocene animals, but belonged to the much later date, indicated by flints, namely, the middle pleistocene period.

This opinion, however, is not shared by some other scientists. Sir Edwin Ray Lankester thinks the age of the skull could not be considered satisfactorily established, and urges the geological society to take the necessary steps to determine exactly the age of the deposit.

Prof. Boyd Dawkins, on the other hand, saw no reason to doubt that the period was that given to it by the first investigators.

A member of the Anthropological Institute suggests that the whole controversy as to whether the skull belongs to the pliocene or pleistocene period will turn on a geological examination of the deposit in which it was embedded.

This anthropologist, after seeing the skull, believes that it is probably older than any other relic of prehistoric man found. There is, he thinks, a point of doubt as to the jawbone. It was not found in the same place as the skull, and he holds it possible that it does not belong to the skull. It is unquestionable apelike and it is not impossible that further examination may show that it does not fit the skull at all.