American Journal of Physical Anthropology 1922

[337] During his recent trip to Europe, and thanks to the courtesy of Dr. Smith Woodward, the writer was able to submit the original of the lower jaw of Piltdown to a detailed personal examination. This revealed a number of features which have either not been mentioned as yet or have not been enough accentuated in previous reports, and which throw further and it seems conclusive light upon the mooted question as to the human or non-human nature of the specimen.

The examination of the original bone impressed one once more with the great difference that exists between the study of a cast however well made and that of the original. It is very probable that some of the statements made about the jaw and the teeth and some of the conclusions arrived at by some authors, would not have been made had they been able to study the jaw itself.

The first strong impression which the specimen conveys is that of normality, shapeliness and relative gracility of build rather than massiveness. When, after studying the specimen for a good part of two days, the observer took in hand the thick Piltdown skull, there was a strong feeling of incongruity and lack of relationship, and this feeling only grew on further study. As a rule there exists a marked correlation between the massiveness of the skull–particularly if as in this case the upper facial parts were involved in the same–and the lower jaw. A finely chiseled mandible of medium or sub-medium strength belongs as a rule to a skull that is characterized in the same way, and vice versa. To connect the shapely, wholly normal Piltdown jaw with the gross, heavy Piltdown skull into the same individual seems very difficult. After prolonged handling of both the jaw and the skull there remained in the writer a strong impression that the two may not belong together, or that if they do the case is totally exceptional

The next important question in connection with the jaw was whether or not it is human. All possible pains were taken to determine this point, regardless both of the skull and of previously expressed opinions. The details of this study will follow. But it may as well be said at once that all the results of the study point to the specimen being very early human or that of an advanced human precursor, and not anthropoid.

[337] Other questions were whether the canine tooth found near the jaw belonged to it or not; and if it did not whether it could have belonged perhaps to the upper jaw of the same being or a being of the same variety. Upon these questions no absolute certainty could be reached, but the indications are that the jaw possessed a relatively large canine, and a further study of the tooth admits of the possibility that it belonged not merely to the same individual, but that after all it may be the lower right canine of the jaw. Mr. Miller, who in the writer's knowledge subjected the available data as well as the casts to a most careful study ¹, was at a disadvantage due to the impossibility of studying the originals.

Detailed Observations

The Jaw: The specimen is in a very good state of preservation. Besides the well known lack of condyle and the alveolar arch anterior to the first molar, there is no other damage except a slight abrasion of the middle portion of the posterior border of the ramus.

The specimen is not heavy in weight nor massive in structure; it is marked in fact by relatively moderate build, strikingly at odds with both the first and second Piltdown skulls which in all their parts are decidedly thick. There is no perceptible correspondence between the jaw and the skulls.

The ascending ramus gives the writer the following measurements: Height along the middle to lowest point of notch–6.1 cm., ² minimum breadth (allowing for slight damage to the posterior border) 4.25 cm. The angle is close to 112^o. These measurements show little that could be regarded as biologically distinctive and could be duplicated in man as well as in some chimpanzees.

The ramus, finely formed, is of only moderate strength. Both the processes, coronid and condyloid (the condyle itself is lost), were of about medium human development and quite human in form. This is particularly true of the coronoid, which is sharper and pointing somewhat more forward than it generally is in the chimpanzee.

The notch between the condyloid and coronoid processes is broad and typically human in form; in chimpanzees it is as a rule less broad, its posterior portion predominates in length and it has lesser inclination than the anterior part. . . .

[341] The minimum thickness of the body (at first molar) of the Piltdown jaw is 1.45 cm. This is above the average of both human and chimpanzee jaws, but is occasionally equalled and even exceeded in both. There is therefore nothing distinctive in this respect.

The external surface of the body shows the usual somewhat indistinct oblique line. There is nothing characteristic in it for either man or chimpanzee. This external surface shows also however, an important feature that has so far failed to receive due attention. This is a basal ridge forming a boundary between the external surface proper of the bone, and the inferior flattening that gradually enlarging proceeds under the fore part of the jaw where it forms a shelf such as exists ore or less in ape and other jaws that have a negative chin. The ridge above this shelf is not found in modern man except rudimentarily. It is already rather rudimentary in the Mauer jaw. It is well marked in the Piltdown jaw, and it is occasionally fairly well marked in an adult chimpanzee. It is caused by the shelf but even more so by the large and long canine eminence due to a large canine. It does not exist, or exists only in traces wherever the canine tooth is small as in the chimpanzee females and the young, or in modern man. Its presence in the Piltdown jaw seems a very strong indication that the jaw possessed a relatively large canine tooth; and this, with other considerations, increases the probability that the Piltdown canine belonged to the jaw, or at lest to the same or a like skeleton.

The development of the sub-mentoneal shelf in the Piltdown jaw equals that of most chimpanzees–except, as already mentioned, in the solidity of the structure which in this case was plainly less than in any of the apes. A shelf of this nature is found in one of the ancient human jaws, though they all show traces of it. In this feature, [342] and in the indicated presence of a relatively larger than human canine, the jaw stands apart from all those of early man that have so far been discovered, and it is correspondingly nearer to the chimpanzee or some related ancient anthropoid form. But neither of these features can be taken as conclusively diagnostic of a chimpanzee nature of the jaw. All that we would seem to be justified in saying is that in these respects, as well as in one or two others, the bone resembles more that of an ape than man. But as we cannot but believe that the human lower jaw in its evolution must have passed through such stages, these features do not legitimately hinder us, if other characteristics so urge, from placing the jaw in the line of early man or his precursors. .. . .

[346] A detailed study of the Piltdown jaw shows this to be a truly remarkable specimen, and the more it is understood the more valuable it appears as a material proof of man's antiquity.

The jaw is more primitive than any other known jaw relating to early man. It still had a marked sub-mentoneal shelf, in all probability a large canine, and teeth of ancestral pre-human form. It resembles more or less in a number of points the jaws of the chimpanzee, but it differs from these in a whole series of points of importance, such as the form of the notch, type of coronal process, subdued musculature, markedly reduced internal massiveness of body especially near symphysis, and in the most important characteristics of the teeth, namely, height of crown, height of enamel, nature of "cingulum" and stoutness of cusps–in all of such features it is nearer or like human.

It appears to the author that in view of all this it is no longer possible to regard the jaw as that of a chimpanzee or any other anthropoid ape; but that it is the jaw of either a human precursor or very early man. Dr. Smith Woodward's designation of this form as "Eoanthropus"–a being from the dawn of the human period–seems very appropriate.

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1 See Miller (G. S.).–The Piltdown Jaw. Am. J. Phys. Anthrop., 1918, I, No. 1.

2 The condyle, as well known, is missing; with the condyle and measured in the usual way (see A. Hrdlicka, Anthropometry, Wistar Inst., Phila., 1921), the height of the ascending ramus would be about 7.0 cm. or slightly over.

with their Bearing on the Piltdown Jaw and on Man's Phylogeny

Ales Hrdlicka

American Journal of Physical Anthropology 1923

[193] The Piltdown Molars vs. Those of Modern Man

Further consideration of the highly interesting teeth of the Piltdown jaw ¹ led the writer to examine and take careful measurements on teeth of principal racial groups of man of to-day, on those of other lower jaws of Early Man, and finally also on those of the anthropoid and other apes. . . .

[216] Summary and Conclusions

The peculiar molars of the Piltdown jaw connect, though in respect to their length and crown index, only at the base of the range of variation, with the teeth of man to-day.

They connect more closely with the more ancient teeth of Early Man and may without violence be included among them.

They do not connect with the teeth of any of the living forms of anthropoid apes, though in general these are nearer to them than most man's teeth in the crown index.

In relative, and in one case even in absolute proportion, they resemble very closely the teeth from the Bohmerz Alb attributed to Dryopithecus rhenanus, particularly one of the lower molars; but in morphological details they differ from these, being more human.

The only conclusion that appears justified from these further as from previous studies is, that the Piltdown teeth, primitive as they are in some respects, are already human or close to human. Their characteristics speak for their belonging either to a very early man or his very near precursor.

The close relation of the Piltdown molars to some of the late Miocene or early Pliocene human-like teeth of the Bohnerz Alb, as well as to those of the Ehringsdorf jaws, while not conclusive alone, raises legitimately the query as to whether man may not have evolved altogether in western Europe.

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1 See this Journal, 1922, V, No. 4.

Ales Hrdlicka

Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections 1930

. . . .

[65] The Original Find . . . .

[66] During the 15 years since the first report, a whole literature has grown up about these finds, due to their fragmentary condition, the insufficiency for definite conclusions, and the most disturbing apparent morphological incongruity of the specimens. It is another case where a desire to reach conclusions from insufficient and problematic material has led to a cloud of speculation and opinion, where substantial definite deductions are impossible.

As with the Pithecanthropus, so with the Eoanthropus, both in the discoveries and in subsequent history, there is much romance and psychology, besides prehistory.

The preservation of the find is due essentially to Mr. Dawson; and its history illustrates the usefulness and need, especially in the Old World, of scientific supervision of excavations. Mr. Dawson's original statement is as follows (Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc., 1913, Vol. 69, pp. 117 et seq. ): . . . .

[68] Additional Finds

In 1915, before the same Geological Society, London, Mr. Dawson and Dr. Woodward report "On a bone implement from Piltdown" (Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc., Vol. 71, pp. 144-149, l pl., 1 fig., 1915). . . .

[70] Recapitulation

The Specimens . . . . Locality, dates and discoverers. . . . Main circumstances of discovery . . [71] Geological age . . . . The Skeletal Remains . . . . The first skull. . . .[72] Preservation .

. . . Massiveness . . . . Age . . . . Sex . . . . Form . . . . Associations . . . . Significance . . . [73] Size . . . . Other measurements . . . . [74] The nasal bones . . . . [75] The Brain. . . .

[76] The Lower Jaw . . . .

[78] No such jaw, or even an approach to it, has ever before or since been found with such a skull. The two apparently did not belong to the same being nor even to the same species of beings. In other early remains, especially in one of the Spy skulls, at La Quina, and in the La Ferrassie specimens, it was the jaw rather than the skull that showed a form advancing towards the modern. The probabilities of the discovery speak apparently all for, the morphological features of the specimens all against, an organic association of the skull with the jaw.

The inevitable results of this disharmony were, from the start, expressions of dissenting opinions, which culminated when in 1915 and again in 1918, after a serious study of the cast of the fragment, Gerrit S. Miller, Jr., identified the jaw as that of Pan vetus, a fossil chimpanzee. . . .

The skulls do not conform morphologically to their apparent antiquity and evolutionary grade. Were it not for their thickness–which experience teaches is an individual, or abnormal, rather than racial character–they could not on their own evidence be separated from modern crania.

The very primitive jaw, with its primitive teeth, does not conform at all tot he skulls. It and its teeth are true to its apparent geological age and evolutionary grade, the skulls are not. Its fitting to the skull in the reconstruction may, or may not, be correct.

The similarity of mineralization of the different specimens has seemingly not yet been fully determined. But even if it should be found identical, as is probable, the evidence of it one way or the other would not be conclusive. Mineralization, it need hardly be repeated, is a geophysical and geochemical process that is not ever progressive, but has its shorter or longer time limits; and two or more bones, though introduced into given conditions of widely different times, may nevertheless reach similar degrees of mineralization if the time of inclusion in both cases has been sufficient for the consummation of the changes. This is one of the a, b, c's of natural processes, yet one that very often is forgotten in the presence of remains that show similar color, weight, and mineral alteration. The similar "fossilization" of the Piltdown bones cannot therefore be determinative, one way or the other.

Thus the original main problem, the genetic and chronological association of the jaw and the teeth with the two skulls, remains much as it was soon after their discovery, and no amount of thought, discussion, or even reexamination of the specimens can promise, it seems, for the present, definite conclusions. The only hope, as in so many other cases in these lines, lies in new and sufficient discoveries.

In view of all this it must be plain that any far-fetched deductions from the Piltdown materials are not justified. This applies particularly to the superficially attractive conclusions that the Piltdown [90] remains demonstrate the existence in the early Pleistocene, long before the Neanderthal and even the Heidelberg forms, of men with practically modern-sized and modern-formed skulls and brains and directly ancestral to Homo sapiens or recent man. This hypothesis is a proposition that would change the whole face and trend of human prehistory, and that against all other and better substantiated evidence in this line. Such a theory, all science will agree, could only be established as a fact by the most ample and satisfactory material demonstration, which is quite impossible in the present case.

Additional Literature

The principal original publications on the Piltdown remains have been quoted in the course of the preceding account of the specimens. For the many other contributions see references in the works quoted, especially those in Gerrit S. Miller's papers, including his "The Controversy over Human 'Missing Links,'" Smithsonian Report for 1928.

Homo Heidelbergensis . . . .