The Place of “Pithecanthropus” on the Genealogical Tree

Abstract

WRITING to NATURE (January 16), under the above heading, Dr. Eugene Dubois makes the following statement: “In Prof. Cunningham's tree, figured in NATURE of December 5, p. 116, he regards the left branch as all human, the right one as entirely simian, and he placed Pithecanthropus midway between recent Man and the point of divarication.” In this assertion there are two inaccuracies. I do not regard the left branch as being entirely human, but merely as representing a hypothetical line of human descent. During the debate which took place at the Royal Dublin Society, I was most careful to insist that at a certain point on sucha line (marked on the diagram by a x, NATURE, December 5, p. 116), we might expect to meet with an individual possessing ape-like and human characters in equal degree; whilst below that point ape-like characters would predominate, and the human characters diminish until, probably, before we came to the junction of the line with the main stem, the latter had reached a vanishing point. But, again, I did not place Pithecanthropus on the mid-point of the line, but much lower down, as may be seen by a reference to the diagram itself, where the upper mark of interrogation (?) indicates the place which I assigned to the fossil cranium.