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comparative anthropology, is chiefly the work of Anders and Gustaf Retzius and
Professor Albert Lindström.
Even the general European palæoanthropology has been considered with
great interest here in Sweden. Among others Gaston Backman, at present pro*
fessor in Riga, has by means of diligent authorship helped in spreading and pro*
moting this interest among wide circles, and his meritorious, richly illustrated
representation of this subject in »The Pre»history of Mankind», Stockholm 1911,
may be specially mentioned. Another of his works »From the history of somatical
anthropology» (Ymer 1910), from which a great deal of the information given
here is taken may also be mentioned, G. Backman has also through his typological
studies (over the shapes of the cranium etc.) and by several anthropological meas*
uring intruments (tropometer, goniometer) further advanced anthropology in Sweden.
Lastly perhaps something may be said on the result of the investigations in
the most ancient of the palæoanthropology which the under=signed has made
during recent years. They have been carried out with the idea of examining into
the reliability of the sensational discoveries »Pithecanthropos» and »Eoanthropos»
which are supposed to represent »the missing link» and are interpreted as being
transition forms between the chimpanzee and man. But if both these interpretations
were correct, the anthropogenesis must in these transitions have followed different
ways, contrary to each other. For according to »Pithecanthropos» the lower
extremities must first have reached the high human stage of evolution with upright
walk etc., while the skull is still of pure chimpanzee type, while on the other
hand according to »Eoanthropos» the brain and skull must first have reached the
human stage and afterwards gradually the other parts of the body. By means of
detailed examinations of the parts of the discoveries and extensive studies of the
skeletons in a great deal of comparative material, especially teeth, together with a
comparison of the results of the Vobz* and Selenka*expeditions to Java and
their renewed examinations of the strata where the fossils had been found, it has
been shown in my examination that the discoveries in question do not in reality
give the support to the above mentioned interpretation one believed. This is all
the more clear as both discoveries are plainly composed of typical chimpanzee
fossil and similarly typical human fossil, the latter most nearly of Aurignac*
type, that is of the human race which seems to have wandered in the deluvial
period from the East into Europé.
By request I add a plate from the »Eoanthropos»*examination, which shows
that the teeth [two molar teeth, Mi and M2] in the chimpanzee*jaw, that was found
at Piltdown (England), are not »human», but chimpanzee=teeth.
The upper figure is a photograph of the Piltdown »Eoanthropos» jaw.
The middle » » » drawing of the same.
The lower » » » photograph of the lower jaw of a chimpanzee.
The discoverers asserted that the teeth of the Piltdownqaw were »distinctly
human»; and according to their opinion they should prove that »Eoanthropos»
was an intermediate form between chimpanzees and human beings. But in reality
they are in their structure fully in correspondence with the chimpanzee teeth.
Also the whole jaw together with the teeth shows the chimpanzee type.
There is then no reason for connecting this jaw with the admittedly human skull
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