Kritische Bemerkungen zur Entwicklung des Sapienstypus

1953

The earliest hominid predecessors as yet known, the Australopithecines, show that the branch leading to man was separated from the group of the anthropoids as early as the Tertiary. The Australopithecines as a group show great variability. The group contains in its genetic make-up all the characteristics of the representatives of the later stages. The presence of the primitive forms of many human characteristics has led us to include in the human line of evolution only those types which have remained primitively human (Australopithecus, Steinheim, Swanscombe, Fontechevade, Piltdown).Pithecanthropus and Neanderthals are not to be considered as stages of a higher evolution but as sidebranches…