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after Rama, an incarnation of God described in the Vedas. In 1964 Ramapithecus achieved worldwide fame when Elwyn Simons and David Pilbeam reconstructed an upper jaw from two fragments, giving it a characteristically human parabolic shape. Simons and Pilbeam pronounced Ramapithecus to be a hominid, an erect, bipedal primate. In 1964, Elwyn Simons wrote in Anthropology: “Ramapithecus punjabicus is almost certainly man’s forerunner of 15 million years ago. This determination increases tenfold the approximate time period during which human origins can now be traced with some confidence” (Fix 1984, p. 20). This was a bit of an overstatement, because between Australopithecus and Ramapithecus there was, and still is, a gap of several million years in the hominid fossil record.

In any case, Ramapithecus quickly received acclaim, in textbooks and journal articles, as the earliest human ancestor. As Richard Leakey and Roger Lewin wrote in 1977: “Ramapithecus . . . as far as one can say at the moment . . . is the first representative of the human family—the hominids” (Fix 1984, p. 20).

Others, however, maintained a more cautious attitude. In 1972, Maitland A. Edey wrote in The Missing Link: “On grounds of pure logic, it is tempting to regard Ramapithecus as a sort of proto-Australopithecine; after all, the Australopithecines had to start somewhere. But, however tempting such an idea may be, it is premature. We have no knowledge whatsoever of the nature of the rest of Ramapithecus’s body. We do not know what its skull was shaped like or how large its brain was. We know nothing about its hand or foot. We do not know if it stood upright” (Fix 1984, p. 21). Herbert Wendt also expressed some doubts in Ape to Adam: “Whether Ramapithecus, which some experts think does not really belong to the race of hominids in the narrow sense of the term, was already a tool-maker we do not know” (Fix 1984, p. 21).

In 1979, information confirming the doubtfulness of Ramapithecus appeared in the journal Natural History. A. L. Zihlman and J. M. Lowenstein stated that a complete lower jaw of Ramapithecus, the first ever found, was V-shaped, unlike either the human jaw, which has a parabolic shape, or the ape jaw, which has parallel sides (Fix 1984, p. 21). In response, Pilbeam modified his position on Ramapithecus, placing it in a separate category related neither to apes nor humans. But three years later, Ramapithecus’s status changed again. William R. Fix (1984, pp. 21–22) wrote: “the February 6, 1982 issue of Science News added a new twist to the Ramapithecus story. Compiling information from an article in Nature (January 21, 1982) and a telephone interview with Pilbeam, Science News now has Ramapithecus as ‘part of the orangutan lineage.’” This newly defined Ramapithecus was definitely not a maker of stone tools.

As late as 1981, however, A. R. Sankhyan of the Anthropological Survey of India was writing (1981, pp. 358–359): “The Sivalik Group of rocks exposed in Haritalyangar area of district Bilaspur is famous for the well known Mio-Pliocene Hominoidea—Dryopithecus, Gigantopithecus, and Ramapithecus, the last of which is considered as the earliest hominoid ancestor of man and also believed to be an ad hoc toolmaker.”

But a short time later this view was history. R. N. Vasishat, an anthropologist at Punjab University, wrote (1985, p. xiv): “Until the year 1982, scientists all over the world had unanimously been considering the genus Ramapithecus to be the earliest known hominid in the world and [it] was also presumed to be ancestral to Australopithecus and Homo. When this species was taken out of the family Hominidae, the Siwaliks became devoid of any evidence for the antecedents of Early Man. But the author is very sure, the void thus created is very temporary and there is no reason for us to believe that the Siwaliks will never yield fossil evidence or physical evidence of Early Man in the future.”

It is interesting to note that with Ramapithecus demoted, the Siwaliks became “devoid of any evidence” for Early Man. But what about the above-mentioned