The Dentition of Australopithecus Africanus.

Abstract

In brief there is no feature external or internal in the dentition of Australopithecus, that can be termed simian. We are led, by our detailed study of the dentition to an unqualified support of the deductions that are to be drawn from the study of the bone breccia at Taungs. If any single tooth in this dentition had been found separately, it would unquestionably have been called a human tooth. We stand in the presence of an ape with a human dentition, of an ape that lived on a carnivorous diet-a diet indistinguishable from that of primitive man, a diet consisting of animals that live in an open-country region. The teeth more than any other single feature removes Australo-pithecus from apes and assembles him with men. As in the jaws of primitive men we find here the dentition of a man in the jaws of an ape. We have seen from our introductory remarks that these demonstrated facts carry with them striking implications. An ape living in southern Africa and having only the dentition of a defenceless man must have been gifted with an almost human intelligence. This ape moreover was like primitive man, a hunter ; he subsisted on the bloody fruits of the chase. He was enabled to do this because he was a practised and skilful wielder of lethal weapons of the chase. Australopithecus was troglodytic and predaceous in his habits a cave-dwelling, animal-hunting, stream-searching, bird-nest rifling and bone-cracking ape, who employed destructive implements in the chase and the preparation of his food. We can no longer regard such qualities as distinctive of Man.