Abstract
BY a happy and fruitful conjunction in comparative study of old and new material, Dr. G. H. R. Koenigs-wald, of Bandoeng, Java, and Prof. Franz Weiden-reich of the Peking Cenozoic Research Laboratory, are able to record in another column of this issue of NATURE (see p. 926) some remarkable observations bearing on the relationship between those early fossil hominids, or precursors of man, Pithecanthropus of Java and Peking man. In the further light now thrown upon the problem of the descent of man by recent discoveries of both Sinanthropus and Pithecanthropus—of the former, some still undescribed, of the latter, some of the more important made only in the current year in response to intensified search—the authors demonstrate by detailed comparison not only the essentially human affinities of Pithecanthropus, which Dubois, its first discoverer, has come to question, but also the very close affinity of Pithecanthropus to Sinanthropus, of whose right to stand in the line of human descent no doubt has over been raised. Further, among the latest Pithecanthropus material to be discovered is an upper jaw, which in the separation of canines from incisors presents a character hitherto regarded as distinctively Simian. The appearance of this character in Pithecanthropus is notable as it has been adduced as an argument in discussion of the Piltdown jaw. By far the most interesting and significant result to emerge is, however, not so much the affinities of the two groups of fossil remains as their differences, in which not only now one now the other exhibits an approach to modern man, but these differences also indicate that the variability, which is so marked a feature in the individual specimens of Sinanthropus, is almost equally striking when the two groups are compared each as a whole. In other words, there is evidence even at this comparatively early stage of human evolution of a variation which may be termed racial. Of the authors’ pregnant allusions to the position of Homo soloensis, no more need be said here than to express a confident hope of further light from an equally fruitful collaboration.
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Pithecanthropus and Peking Man: Comparative Studies. Nature 144, 933 (1939). https://doi.org/10.1038/144933b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/144933b0