The evolution of man : essays / by G. Elliot Smith.

  • Smith, Grafton Elliot, 1871-1937.
Date:
1924
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The evolution of man : essays / by G. Elliot Smith. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    species belong definitely to a higher type than the Australian and the Negro points clearly to the con¬ clusion that these representatives belong to a compara¬ tively late phase in the history of the species, and that they were immigrants into Europe when they displaced representatives of the Neanderthal species. The skull found in Rhodesia in 1921 represents a species of the genus Homo which is definitely more primitive than that of Neanderthal Man, although the actual bones which were found in the Broken Hill Mine may be actually very much more recent in time than the bones of the Neanderthal species, which have been recovered in Europe. In the diagram the attempt has been made to represent these facts gra¬ phically, and to show how the ancestors of Rhodesian Man may have sprung from the main stem at a much earlier period than Neanderthal Man, but survived till a more recent period than the latter. This would not be surprising when one considers that in Africa there have been preserved until the present time representa¬ tives of much more ancient genera of mammals whose European representatives became extinct at a vastly more ancient time than that assigned in the diagram to the origin of Rhodesian Man. In the diagram I have assigned the origin of Rhodesian Man to a place near to Heidelberg Man : but at present it is impossible to define the issue more closely, because the only fragment of Heidelberg Man that we possess consists of a lower jaw, whereas the lower jaw is missing in the case of Rhodesian Man, of whom we possess the skull and some of the limb bones. But the jaw from Heidelberg fits the Rhodesian skull so closely that I have ventured to put the origins of the two species in close apposition, and as we know the date of Heidelberg Man it suggests the time at which the Rhodesian species separated from the main stem of mankind. Heidelberg Man occupies a position at the base of the genus Homo. In fact, future discovery may possibly compel us to exclude the Heidelberg