Tooth‐Size, Body‐Size and “Giant” Fossil Man

Abstract

OVER the past twenty years there have been repeated discoveries in Southeast Asia of very large fossil teeth variously attributed to a protohominid or euhominid of truly extraordinary size. The first of these finds was the famous drugstore teeth, purchased in Hong Kong between 1935 and 1939 (but probably from Kwangsi Province in South China), and assigned by Von Koenigswald (1935) to the provisional genus Gigantopithecus. Next in order of discovery came two mandibular fragments with attached teeth, recovered from Sangiran, near Solo in Java in 1939 and 1941. The Sangiran tooth-jaw fragments were entered in the provisional genus Meganthropus (Weidenreich 1945:16). The most recent find, made at Luntsai mountain, Kwangsi Province, South China, occurred in 1956 (Pei 1957). Though metrical data were not given by Pei, it may be inferred that the teeth of the Luntsai fossil were at least 50 percent longer and wider than those of contemporary Europeans or Asiatics. On the basis of morphology and size together, Von Koenigswald decided that the Hong Kong and Sangiran teeth and jaw fragments came from giant