Oldest Woman in the World.

Kaipara and Waitemata Echo, 11 September 1914, Page 2

Oldest Woman in the World.

The grinning skull of the oldest woman in the world is now beneath the glass case in the large central hall of the Natural History Museum at South Kensington lor aU the' world to see. It was the discovery of the fragmentary remains of this skull that sent such a thrill of excitement throughout the scientific iworld in the late autumn of last year. Mr. Charles Dawson, F.S.A., unearthed it from a pit at Piltdown Common, Sussex, in which he had been engaged in geological excavation for sex Oi al years. ' It is not an object of beauty, even as skulls may be regarded as vary- ' in,g in gracefulness, but in her defence it may be pleaded that the woman was a semi-simian, combining in herself the traits of a human being with the characteristics of the ape. Scientists regard her as the one specimen extant of "the missing link." Her age eludes one even now. She may have lived 50,000 years ago, or I<*o,ooo, or even 200,000, for geologists have agreed to differ upon so ch'.icate a subject; but it is believed that she belongs to the riiocene period, and it is certain that "o;r rough island story" was in its very earliest chapter when she walke:! abroad on the Sussex Downs. What the general public are shown is a cleverly built-up model of the actual skull. The remains discovered comprised no more than a portion of the left side of the skull, and a piece of the lower jaw, but with these as a guide Mr. Frank Barlow has succeeded in reproducing what is rcp.ardod as a faithful and reliable model of the whole. No modern human being possesses teeth of the size and shape of those seen in this reconstructed model, and more than anything else the powerful teeth and heavy under jaw serve to emphasise the apelike characteristics of this primitive being. A cast of the brain lias been taken from the restored skull, and is also on view in the case. While the brain cavity of a normal human being measures over 90 cubic inches, this Pliocene skull has a capacity of not more than 64-if cubic inches, showing that the brain development of modern woman is onethird greater than that of her semi-simian ancestor. From the greater development of the brain at the back of the left lobe it is judged that the individual was righthanded—another item in the chain of evidence proving the skull to be of the human species.