between human skulls more or less affected by microcephaly and the skull of Trinil would not contradict the hypothesis according to which this last would represent an ancestral race. This resemblance, on the contrary, would be perfectly conformable to the theory of evolution, and it exists. Without going beyond civilized races, we know that complete microcephaly carries man back to a level with the monkeys. It is then solely the poverty of our collections which has kept us from finding, among the lowest human races, skulls as pithecoid as that of Trinil. The skulls presented by Sir W. Turner, in his interesting memoir on the subject, approach it only partially. It is the same with the Sambaqui skull which Professor A. Nehring of Berlin has just confronted with that of Trinil.[1]
Crania approaching more nearly to that from Trinil under the double aspect of form and of capacity will certainly be found, but they will be crania very inferior to the average of their race; they will be the microcephalous, the abnormals.
Nothing would better serve to show that the species of Pithecanthropus and the human species penetrate into each other and are mutually bound together. The bond would be still more complete if we should find some day, by virtue of inverse operation, a whole fossil series of the race Pithecanthropus erectus, of which the superior extremity would accord morphologically with the average of our lowest races.
To invalidate the legitimate and probable hypothesis of Mr. Dubois, it would be necessary to show that the skull of Trinil is a simple monstrosity without ethnologic signification. This chance would be mathematically possible, since the race of Trinil must have had, as others, its microcephalous individuals; and it is for that reason that the opinion opposed to that of Mr. Dubois can pride itself, until there has been further investigation, in one possibility as against thousands of contrary possibilities. The improbability of a case of submicrocephaly coincident with a stature at least medium seems to me still greater since I have seen the two molars of Trinil, for teeth too large and too long for a normally developed savage would attest, in case of human microcephaly, one more singularity; a microcephaly which would have exaggerated, not only the volume of the teeth with reference to the skull, but also the absolute volume of the teeth beyond the ethnic maximum.
The hypothesis of a case of microcephaly being cast aside, two others remain.
1st. During the Pliocene epoch, there lived in Java a human race intermediate between the lowest of known races and anthropoids.
- ↑ Ein Pithecanthropus-ähnlicher Menschenschädel, etc. (Naturwissenschaftliche Wochenschrift, 17, Nov. 1895.)
