but be found likewise in some other genus. Only an examination of the entire skeleton could give a complete solution to this question.
According to the relative proportions of these parts they can not both have belonged to an ape. For an ape with such a cranial capacity would, as we have seen, have been a giant, whose femur would certainly have been much larger than twice the size of that of a siamang. But a man with a cranial capacity of 900 c.cm. would have a shorter femur; for all men, except microcephali, that have so low a capacity as this have a much smaller stature than that of 165 to 170 cm., which is the height of the individual, as calculated from the length of this femur according to human proportions. This is again an evidence that the individual in question was, in the anatomical sense, neither an ape nor a man.
With the length and breadth measurements of the skull, however, the length of the femur agrees very well, both from a human and anthropoid point of view. A man with a skullcap of these dimensions could well have had a femur of that size, and if we conceive the proportions of a siamang to be doubled, the length and breadth of the skull and the length and breadth of the femur will exactly correspond with that of Pithecanthropus.
Nothing contradicts the view that the possessor of this cranium had a body to which this femur belonged. The skull requires exactly such a femur and no other.
As, therefore, from different points of view, probability speaks most strongly in favor of the common origin of these fragments, it is carrying skepticism too far to longer doubt that both of them, and the teeth as well, belonged to one skeleton.
I believe that it now hardly admits of a doubt that this upright-walking ape-man, as I have called him, and as he is really shown to be after the most searching examination, represents a so-called transition form between men and apes, such as paleontology has often taught us to recognize between other families of mammals; and I do not hesitate now, any more than I formerly did, to regard this Pithecanthropus erectus as the immediate progenitor of the human race. This is my conviction after the most careful testing of the matter, and has only become stronger after having submitted the specimens to many anatomists.
The exact position to be assigned to the ape-man in a system is more or less a matter of taste. According to the anatomical characters ordinarily used to separate the groups of mammals, we must at any rate exclude it from the genus Homo. Unless we considerably change and extend the characters that have hitherto been considered good for the family of the Hominidæ, it can not even be admitted there. Quite the same may be said of the Simiidæ and its species.
The relation of man and of Pithecanthropus to extinct and living apes are here shown in the form of a family tree (fig. 4).
