William K. Gregory

[384] Mr. Gerrit S. Miller 1 in his paper on the Piltdown lower jaw maintains that this mandible does not belong with the human skull near which it was found, but represents an extinct species of chimpanzee, which he names Pan vetus . Thus he carries to its logical conclusion the line of argument which had been opened by Professors Waterston, Boule, and others who had doubted the anatomical association of the mandible with the skull fragments. But, while these earlier sceptics had made only brief criticisms of Dr. Smith Woodward's reconstructed Eoanthropus, Mr. Miller has gone into the problem in a most thorough manner and was the first to make and publish extended comparisons between the Piltdown jaw and teeth, and those of a large series of chimpanzees. From this series he selects certain jaws, of very old animals, which, as everyone must admit, exhibit an extraordinary resemblance in all views to the Piltdown mandible.

Of course the real question is, does this resemblance imply generic identity or is this after all a human jaw that is practically indistinguishable from an ape jaw? Speaking only for myself as a student of recent and fossil animals I recognize that the resemblances in question constitute generic identity, that Mr. Miller's illustrations furnish a demonstration of the generic identity of the Piltdown jaw and the chimpanzee jaws there figured. And Dr. W. D. Matthew 2 and Dr. MacCurdy 3 have already testified to the same effect. But while the resemblances and differences are in a sense objective phenomena, the cognition, or perception, of generic [385] identity is an individual experience, like the perception of truths and abstract propositions. Hence it must be expected that for some time to come men will differ in their reactions to Mr. Miller's evidence, in accordance with their individual history and preconceptions. Dr. Smith Woodward, for example, the describer of Eoanthropus, is still firm in his belief that the Piltdown jaw belongs with the Piltdown skull, which was found, along with remains of other mammals, in the same place. The question of association is discussed elsewhere by Dr. Matthew 4 and will be passed over here, with the remark that according to this authority, the association of jaw and skull in space, in view of the circumstances, is of little value against the anatomical evidence that the remains belong to two different animals.

In the course of a general review of the extinct anthropoid apes and men 5 I have had the accompanying illustration (fig. 47) prepared, for the purpose of showing the molars of the Piltdown jaw in comparison with those of several extinct and recent races of Hominidæ and Simiidæ. The figure of the last Piltdown molars (d) is based upon a very clear photograph published by Dr. Smith Woodward, 6 which appears to be more accurate than the hand-colored casts of the specimen. The two molars, although extremely worn, reveal the remains of what I have elsewhere called the "Dryopithecus pattern," because this pattern is most clearly developed in the Upper Miocene genus Dryopithecus of Europe and Asia; it is retained with more or less modifications in the chimpanzee, gorilla, and orang, and clear traces of it are found in many human teeth. The Piltdown molars agree with the chimpanzee molars figured by Mr. Miller (our fig. 47 c) and differ from the human types (e f g) in the following characteristics: (a ) they are decidedly more elongate anteriorly, so that the crown as a whole is more quadrilateral than circular; (b ) the hypoconids are smaller and do not project laterally,