Page:The American Journal of Science, series 4, volume 4.djvu/239

Rh diaphysis, indicates certainly a biped attitude. But it does not present a single character permitting one to attribute it to any other species than the human. Yet that invalidates in no way the general conclusion of Mr. Dubois, because on the hypothesis, where an anthropoid race would have passed from the attitude of a climber to the attitude biped, the transformation of the femur ought to have preceded that of the skull.

The tooth (3d upper molar) is too large sized, its roots too divergent to admit of its being attributed to man. I have been able to find only one human tooth (in a New Caledonian skull) which presents at once so large a crown and of which the principal axis is at the same time directed from before backward, but this is a third lower molar and its roots are not spreading. On the other hand, the grinding surface of the fossil tooth from Java differs much from the known teeth of anthropoids. It should then be considered as having belonged either to an anthropoid race, or to a human, no longer living.

The skull, according to Mr. Dubois' calculations confirmed by my own, has a capacity of from 900 to 1000cc. This capacity exceeds by about 400cc the maximum found among the largest anthropoids. On the other hand, it is too small to be compatible with a normal human intelligence, save among individuals of very small stature having a cranial capacity relatively large with reference to their stature and with reference to the average of their race. But, even discarding the teeth and femur about which there is some doubt, the morphologic characters of the cranium from Java suffice to denote a cerebral volume relatively very weak. The skull then must have belonged either to a normal individual of a race intermediate between the grand anthropoids and man, or to an abnormal man, to an imbecile, microcephalous for his race. This last supposition has the disadvantage of admitting the extraordinary encounter of an anomaly; if such an encounter is, strictly speaking, possible, it is hardly probable. In short, at least, a skull morphologically intermediate is in question. It is not certain that this skull represents the normal state of a fossil human race equally intermediate, but it is still less certain that it is a question of a simple anomaly. Consequently, the hypothesis of Mr. Dubois is scientifically legitimate.

Such were my first conclusions in January, 1895. But very different conclusions were reached at about the same time in Germany and in England.

At the Berlin Society of Anthropology, the question was examined by Kraüse, Waldeyer, Virchow, Luschan, and Nehr-