ON SOME FOSSIL REMAINS OF MAN

by Thomas H. Huxley




I HAVE endeavoured to show, in the preceding Essay, that the ANTHROPINI,
or Man Family, form a very well defined group of the Primates, between
which and the immediately following Family, the CATARHINI, there is, in
the existing world, the same entire absence of any transitional form or
connecting link, as between the CATARHINI and PLATYRHINI.

It is a commonly received doctrine, however, that the structural
intervals between the various existing modifications of organic beings
may be diminished, or even obliterated, if we take into account the
long and varied succession of animals and plants which have preceded
those now living and which are known to us only by their fossilized
remains. How far this doctrine is well based, how far, on the other
hand, as our knowledge at present stands, it is an overstatement of the
real facts of the case, and an exaggeration of the conclusions fairly
deducible from them, are points of grave importance, but into the
discussion of which I do not, at present, propose to enter. It is
enough that such a view of the relations of extinct to living beings
has been propounded, to lead us to inquire, with anxiety, how far the
recent discoveries of human remains in a fossil state bear out, or
oppose, that view.

I shall confine myself, in discussing this question, to those
fragmentary Human skulls from the caves of Engis in the valley of the