ng
that experts should differ considerably in their interpretation of what
was found. Some have regarded the remains as those of a large gibbon,
others as those of a pre-human ape-man, and others as those of a
primitive man off the main line of ascent. According to Sir Arthur
Keith, Pithecanthropus was "a being human in stature, human in gait,
human in all its parts, save its brain." The thigh-bone indicates a
height of about 5 feet 7 inches, one inch less than the average height
of the men of to-day. The skull-cap indicates a low, flat forehead,
beetling brows, and a capacity about two-thirds of the modern size. The
remains were found by Dubois, in 1894, in Trinil in Central Java.

2. The next offshoot is represented by the Heidelberg man (_Homo
heidelbergensis_), discovered near Heidelberg in 1907 by Dr.
Schoetensack. But the remains consisted only of a lower jaw and its
teeth. Along with this relic were bones of various mammals, including
some long since extinct in Europe, such as elephant, rhinoceros, bison,
and lion. The circumstances indicate an age of perhaps 300,000 years
ago. There were also very crude flint implements (or eoliths). But the
teeth are human teeth, and the jaw seems transitional between that of an
anthropoid ape and that of man. Thus there was no chin. According to
most authorities the lower jaw from the Heidelberg sand-pit must be
regarded as a relic of a primitive type off the main line of human
ascent.

[Illustration: A RECONSTRUCTION OF THE JAVA MAN

(_Pithecanthropus erectus._)]

3. It was in all probability in the Pliocene that there took origin the
Neanderthal species of man, _Homo neanderthalensis_, first known from
remains found in 1856 in the Neanderthal ravine near Duesseldorf.
According to some authorities Neanderthal man was living in Europe a
quarter of a million years ago. Other specimens were afterwards found
elsewhere, e.g. in Belgium ("the men of Spy"), in France, in Croatia,
and at Gibraltar, so that a good deal is known of Neanderthal man. He
was a loose-limbed fellow, short of stature and of slouching gait, but a
skilful artificer, fashioning beautifully worked flints with a
characteristic style. He used fire; he buried his dead reverently and
furnished them with an outfit for a long journey; and he had a big
brain. But he had great beetling, ape-like eyebrow ridges and massive
jaws, and he showed "simian characters swarming in the details of his
structure." In most of t