“Pithecanthropus erectus” and the Evolution of the Human Race

Abstract

THE remarkable advance made by biology during the last twenty years in the study of the Tertiary mammalia, must strike even the most casual onlooker. It is not merely that an exact knowledge has been gained of a vast number of extinct forms, but that amongst these has been discovered a profusion of missing links, rendering possible the construction of ancestral trees, or diagrammatic illustrations of the successive stages through which existing animals may have been evolved from a common stock. Some of these “trees” may prove to be mere intellectual weeds, which to-day are, and to-morrow are cast into the oven; but others are of robuster growth, finding a firm support in geology, which has been able in many cases to certainly fix the order in which successive branches of the tree have budded forth. It is to be regretted that geology has not been able to do more than this; could it but succeed in the construction of a scale of past time, what fascinating prospects in the study of evolution would be opened out! The construction of such a scale is beset, however, by grave—possibly insurmountable—difficulties, as will readily appear from the following attempt.