Jervois Skull

An ancient slab of bone, shaped and curved like a cupped hand, gave Australian anatomists imaginative play last week. The bone was found recently near the Jervois Mountains in southern Australia. The bone is the top of a female's skull. The hind part of the relic indicates that, from the rear, she looked like an ape with head canted slightly forward. She had very powerful neck muscles. Her walk was slouchy, but nonetheless habitually upright. Thus her hands were free and more nimble than an ape's. She probably could braid twigs, early step in the art which ends with fine embroidery. The front part of her skull looks more human than apish. She must have had a muzzle which, while more forward jutting than jaws of modern humans, jutted less than ape jaws.

The inside of this skull piece still indicates the shape and size of the ape-woman's brain. The brain was small.

That in itself means nothing. Small brains do not mean low intelligence. Intelligence shows up in folds, creases and wrinkles of the fore brain. The more complex the convolutions, the more intelligent the creature. The Jervois lady had a simple mind. She could grunt, squeal, gabble but probably could not talk.

Most probably she was not a human being. Neither was she an ape. Probably she was the remnant of a race which persisted while descendants of its ancestors' cousins developed on one side into gorillas, chimpanzees, orangutans and gibbons, on the other side into white, yellow and black men.

All these were the deductions which Professor Sir Colin Mackenzie suggested to the Australian Institute of Anatomy at Canberra last week. He is director of the Institute, used to be lecturer and examiner of anatomy at Melbourne University.

Sir Colin interpreted the Jervois skull as confirmation of his old hypothesis that upright posture dominates intellectual activity, that the animal which eventually became a human being walked before it talked.

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