Fossil Man Of Sussex May Be Of An Extinct Race.

New York Times 100 years ago today, January 5, 1913:
Importance of the Discovery of a Skull in England Described by Sir Ray Lankester. Teeth of Jaws, Still Intact, Indicate a Race Between Man and the Ape.    THE fossil man from Sussex has set England agog. The announcement made last week of the discovery a few months ago by Mr. Charles Dawson and Dr. Smith Woodward of a Paleolithic human skull near Piltdown Common, aroused the attention of the whole world. The find, which is now known as the Piltdown skull, is of great importance, partly as it can be proved to be the oldest human skull yet discovered in England, and still more from the light that it is hoped it will throw on the problem of man's ancestry and of his mode of evolution.
    So different is this newly discovered type of individual that the authors, although admitting its humanity, propose that it should form the representative of not a new species but of a new genus of mankind, to which Dr. Smith Woodward proposes the startling name Evanthropus Dawsonii, in honor of the discoverer, Charles Dawson.
    Mr. Dawson, who is not the first amateur man of science to rescue valuable scientific material from destruction, described in detail the site on which the discovery was made. Four years ago, while walking along the road passing from Lewes northward into the Weald, Mr. Dawson saw that it had been recently mended by peculiar flints. These, he found, came from a pit situated in the corner of a field under a venerable yew tree. A little later, on visiting the pit, he found that laborers had dug out a "thing like a cocoanut," and thrown the splinters on the rubbish heap near by. It was from this rubbish heap that the greater part of the skull was recovered, but the lower jaw was dug out of the undisturbed stratum at a later date.
    The gravel in which it lay, Mr. Dawson said, consisted for the greater part of waterworn fragments of Wealden ironstone and sandstone, with occasional pebbles of chert, probably from the greensand, and a considerable proportion of chalk-flints, which were also waterworn, all deeply stained with oxide of iron, and most of them tabular in shape.
    The human skull was originally found by workmen, broken up by them, and most of the pieces thrown away on the spot. As many fragments as possible were recovered, and half of a human mandible was also obtained from a patch of undisturbed gravel close to the place where the skull occurred.
    Two broken pieces of the molar of a Pliocene type of elephant and a much-rolled cusp of a molar of a mastodon, were also found, besides teeth of a hippopotamus, the bones of a form of deer, of a fossil type of beaver, and an extinct form of horse. Like the human skull and mandible, all these fossils  were well mineralized with oxide of iron.
    Many of the waterworn iron-stained flints closely resembled the "eoliths" from the North Downs near Ightham. Mingled with them were found a few Palaeolithic implements of the characteristic Chellean type. The gravel at Piltdown, he continued, rested upon a plateau eighty feet above the River Ouse, and at a distance of less than a mile to the north of the existing stream.
    Dr. Woodward revealed a new species of human being, one linking modern man very closely in some respects to the anthropoid apes.
    The actual remains are fragments of a massive skull, with bony walls nearly half an inch thick; the fragments are sufficiently complete to give, when fitted together, a fairly accurate picture of the greater part of the brain-containing part of the skull; the face, and the greater part of the forehead, are missing, but fortunately half of the lower jaw, with the first and second molar teeth, in situ, was recovered. The front part of the mandible, which carries the incisor, canine, and premolar teeth, is also missing — but there is enough to show that in the region of the chin the conformation was identical with that of anthropoid apes. Not a single bone of the limbs or trunk was found.
    The skull, Dr. Woodward contends, exhibits all the essential features of the genus Homo, with a brain capacity of not less than 1,070cc., but possibly a little more. It measures about 190mm. in length from the glabella to the inion, by 150mm. in width at the widest part of the parietal region; and the bones were remarkably thick, the average thickness of the frontals and parietals being 10mm., while an exceptional thickness of 12mm. was reached at one corner.
    The forehead was steeper than that of the Neanderthal type, with only a feeble brow-ridge; and the conformation of the occipital bone showed that the tentorium or covering over the cerebellum was on the level of the external occipital protuberance, as in modern man. Seen from behind, the skull was remarkably low and broad, and the mastoid processes were relatively small. The horizontal ramus was slender, and so far as preserved resembled in shape that of a young chimpanzee.
    Molars 1 and 2, which occurred in their sockets, were typically human, though they were comparatively large and narrow, each bearing a fifth cusp. The two molars had been worn perfectly flat by mastication, a circumstance suggesting that the canines resembled those of man in not projecting sensibly aboye the level of the other teeth.
    The weakness of the mandible, the slight prominence of the brow-ridges, the small backward extent of the origin of the temporal muscles, and the reduction of the mastoid processes suggested that the specimen belonged to a female individual, and might be regarded as representing a hitherto unknown species of Homo, for which the new name was proposed of Evanthropus Dawsonii.
    The importance of the find is emphasized by the following article in The Daily Telegraph, London, by one of England's greatest authorities on scientific subjects:

THE NEW FOSSIL MAN FROM SUSSEX.
By Sir Ray Lankester, K. C. B., F.R.S.
    LAST Summer it was whispered in some privileged circles of prehistorians that a wonderful fossil man had been discovered in a gravel of very great antiquity in the South of England. The greatest secrecy was observed as to the exact spot and as to the fortunate discoverer of these remains. It was rumored that the remains now found in England were worthy to compare with the celebrated skeleton of the Chapelle-aux-Saints and the lower jaw from Heidelberg, and indicated a more ape-like type of man than either of these, as well as being geologically much more ancient than any human bones yet discovered.
    Some eight weeks ago I was enabled, by the kindness of Mr. Charles Dawson, F. S. A., of Lewes, and Dr. Smith Woodward, F. R. S., of the Natural History Museum, the discoverers of these interesting remains, both to examine the specimens and to visit with one of them the site near Uckfield, in Sussex, where the bones were found.
    The discovery was brought before the Geological Society by these two gentlemen in full detail recently, and there is no longer any desire on their part that others should abstain from comment on the subject. It was obviously necessary to take steps to avoid any interference with their excavations while these were in progress, and to prevent any premature statements in public about the age and character of the remains.
    Dr. Smith Woodward is to be Congratulated on the skill with which he has demonstrated their very great interest and importance. The fact that they are the first fossilized human bones found in a flint-bearing gravel associated with flint implements is itself of great interest.
    The human bones found are the right half of a lower jaw and a large part of the left side of the skull. They were dug out of a gravel not more than four feet below the surface — and not far apart — so that they probably are parts of the same individual. The bones are mineralized and deeply stained through and through by iron of a ruddy-brown color, as is the sand and the flints among which they are found. They were in a broken state when discovered, and the broken edges had been a little worn before the pieces were embedded where they were found. They are not friable, but tough and hard. The piece of bone forming part of the wall of the brain case is extraordinarily thick — as much as a third of an inch.
    The lower jaw has two molar teeth (the first and second) in place. They are worn very flat on the surface. The jawbone is chiefly remarkable for the breadth of the upstanding part or "ramus," and the shallowness of the notch (called "the sigmoid notch") between the articular process and the process facing it (the coronoid). In this the Sussex lower jaw is unlike a modern man's, and approaches the heavy, ape-like jaw found in early Pleistocene sands at Heidelberg.
    * * *
    The front part of it is to a large extent broken away, only its lower end being preserved. But this is a most important bit. It is flattened on the under side, and forms a flat, broad "union" (or symphysis) with the other half of the Jaw (broken away). This Dr. Smith Woodward shows is unlike the same region in modern man, or even in the Heidelberg jaw. It is almost exactly like the union of the two halves of the jaw in the chimpanzee, and justifies the completion of the jaw made by Mr. Frank Barlow, the able modeler of the Natural History Museum, at Dr. Smith Woodward's suggestion.
    To fill up the space for teeth indicated by the bone, it is necessary to introduce two large bicuspids, a large canine, and two large front teeth, bigger than those of a man and like those of a well-grown chimpanzee.
    The skull has been carefully "completed" from its fragments by Dr. Smith Woodward and Mr. Barlow, and proves to have a good straight forehead, and is probably that of a woman. It does not resemble the skulls of the Neanderthal race, and is in general characters closely similar to that of the inhabitants of this part of Sussex 1,000 years ago.
    The gravel in which this fragmentary skull and jawbone were found embedded proves to be as remarkable as are the human remains themselves. The great valley known as the Weald of Sussex is bounded on the north and south and east and west by chalk downs, often as much as 600 feet or 700 feet above the sea level. The chalk once stretched right over the Weald continuously. It has been gradually dissolved and worn away by little streams sinking deeper and deeper in to itm, and carrying the chalk in solution, and even the green sand below it as sand, away to the sea. The result is that the sands and clays of the great sub-cretaceous freshwater deposit known as "the Wealden," containing remains of Iguanodon and other great reptiles, are exposed. The chalk and green sand which once lay to the thickness of several hundred feet over the present surface have been slowly carried away, but they still remain all around the edge of this great valley of erosion. The waters which wore away the chalk over, this area formed gravels containing the flints was washed by them from the chalk, and they must have been laying down these gravels at different levels without cease from the earlier times, when the chalk was hardly worn at all, until the present day.
    We find on the edge of the Weald Valley, high up on the top of the chalk hills, what are known as "the high plateau gravels," as much as 700 feet above sea level. The oldest of all these gravels is very possibly of Pliocene age, and is not related to the Thames Valley or other existing river valleys, which are of later date than they are. The gravel at Uckfield, (Piltdown,) in which the human jaw was found, is only 120 feet above sea level, and not far from the River Ouse, which flows past Lewes. Probably a high plateau gravel existed on the top of the chalk which once stretched across the Sussex Weald, and the gravels deposited much later at low levels after the wearing away of the great mass of chalk lying over the Wealden beds contain some material derived from these oldest and highest gravels, and also some of the gravel deposited in every successive age as the erosion continued. So that this bottom gravel on the Sussex plain, only 120 feet above sea level, is likely to contain a mixture and assortment of all the preceding gravels.
    Hence it is very difficult to assign the bones and the worked flints (shaped by man) found in it to a definite age. Any fragment we pick up may be as old as the plateau gravels which lay on the top of the chalk in the very early Pleistoscene or late Pliocene age, or may belong to as late a period as that of the actual deposit of the gravel bed in which we now find it imbedded.
    The gravel about Piltdown is so thin a layer that it escaped attention from the officers of the Geological Survey. It became known to Mr. Dawson by the fact that local farmers were digging it and sifting it for mending roads. It only exists on certain slightly raised parts of the Valley of the Ouse, and its "make-up" is very peculiar. It contains iron-stone and deeply stained iron-sand from the Wealden strata on which it rests, and peculiar ruddy-brown broken flints, not very numerous, which are nearly all bits of "tabular" flint, recalling those of the high plateau gravel at Ightham, in Kent.
    Many of the flints in this Piltdown gravel have been worked by early man into rough implements. They are of flat shape, often triangular in area, and show a coarse but unmistakable "flaking" of human workmanship. I and my companions picked up four from the surface of a ploughed field when I visited Piltdown. They are rougher in workmanship than the Acheuillian, or even Chellean, implements of our better known river terrace gravels. It is impossible to associate them with those from any other locality known to me; and I should merely say of them that they seem to be earlier than any flint implements which can be rightly called Chellean.
    Later and more finely worked flint implements have not been found in this gravel.
    But the most remarkable thing about this gravel is the discovery in it, by Dr. Smith Woodward and Mr. Dawson, of a fragment of a tooth of mastodon and of fragments of teeth of the Elephas meridionalis — specimens which were exhibited to the Geological Society.
    These two animals are known to occur in Pliocene strata — and are not found as late as the Pleistocene (in this part of the world). The teeth of the elephant in question are very different from those of the mammoth. They are found also in the Norfolk forest-bed and in one or two "fissures" in the South Downs filled in by ancient sands. The remains of this elephant abound in the Pliocene of France and Italy.
    A few fragmentary teeth of hippopotamus, a beaver, and a horse, a bit of a large deer's antler, and the human jaw and skull fragment complete the list of animal remains. It is owing to the digging up of this thin layer of gravel over several acres of surface and its sifting for road mending matterial that Mr. Dawson was able to discover some of its peculiar contents, and then by special digging and sifting to get further bones and teeth, including the human fragments.
    There can be no doubt that it would be well worth while to continue systematically and carefully the turning over of this strange shallow layer of gravel — the residue or sifting, as it were, of all the ages during which the chalk was melting away from the Sussex Weald.
    It is natural to entertain the suppositions, first, that the fragmentary skull and lower jaw are those of one of the race of men who made the rough but well-flaked flint implements, and, secondly, that he was contemporary with the other animals whose bones or teeth have been here found, namely, the mastodon and the "meridional," or southern, elephant, and therefore that the man was of the Pliocene age. It must, however, be strictly asserted that we have as yet no proof of the truth of such suppositions. The human bones, the flint implements, and the mastodon and southern elephant teeth may be each of a totally different age, and yet all brought together by slow wearing away of the solid ground by water and the subsidence of some of its harder constituents into one final gravel deposit at this present day.
    On the other hand, if we look at probabilities, there is some reason to hold that the man (of the jaw and skull) did not live later than the makers of the rough flint implements, since no flint implements of a later type occur in this gravel.
    To say that he was contemporary with the mastodon and Pliocene elephant, because their fragmentary remains occur side by side with his, is more than we are justified in doing. But it is quite true that there is nothing to prove that they were not coeval.
    The strongest argument against their being coeval is that the fragment of human skull and the lower jaw were found near each other, and therefore were probably imbedded for the first time in the existing gravel, and not washed out of a previous deposit.
    The Heidelberg jaw is the most impressive of all the remains of primitive man yet discovered. Though it is so extraordinarily powerful in breadth and thickness, and so thoroughly apelike in the absence of chin, yet the well-preserved teeth are thoroughly human and not ape-like at all.
    The canine is as small as in ourselves. There is no approach to the great projecting dog teeth of the ape. Yet the more slender Sussex jaw, owing to its long union or symphysis is more ape-like and less human. It had almost certainly great canines and large front teeth.
    It is to be expected that other specimens will be found in this same gravel when further explored, which will throw more light on the general characteristics of the race to which the Piltdown man belonged and on the question of the geologic age to be assigned to them.