HUNTING EARLY MAN

Auckland Star, Volume LXII, Issue 96, 24 April 1931, Page 8

HUNTING EARLY MAN

The hunt for the footprints of early man goes merrily on, with just sufficient success now and again to stimulate the seekers to new efforts. They have found him and examined his cranium in England, in various parts of Europe, in Galilee, India, Java and Rhodesia. The prime difficulty is, of course, that away back in the days when, with the most primitive weapons, every man had to catch his meals on the hoof or on the wing there weren't many people in the world to leave any tracer. Life was hard and dangerous then, far harder than it is now, and not many survived its rigours. However, new search parties continually go forth to delve in virgin areas. Not long'back Roy Chapman Andrews led an American expedition to Mongolia and the Gobi Desert on such a quest, and found the most valuable eggs on record, a nest of fossilised dinosaur eggs, laid perhaps ten million years ago. However, lie did not find the early man he sought and failed again in that respect on a second venture. Now Australia's notable scientist, whose position in anthropology is comparable with that of our own Lord Rutherford in the realm of physics, Grafton Elliot Smith, doctor of literature, of "science and of medicine and a whole lot more, is to lead a British expedition to Eastern Turkestan to spend his sixtieth birthday 011 the same elusive trail. Elliot Smith, as his first name suggests, was born at Grafton, X.S.^., was educated at Sydney and Cambridge, then went to Egypt as professor of anatomy in the Egyptian Medical School, Cairo. It was there, on the spot, that lie developed the idea that the Egyptians were the first of all mankind to turn from the foodcathering habits of early man to food production, lie advanced this theory in several books, notably in his most recent "Human History," published in 1930, in which he asserts, convincingly, that all civilisation is based 011 a diffusion of the culture originated anciently in Egypt. He is now abandoning bis beloved men of the Xile, and, temporarily, his quarrel with those scientists who pin their faith to Mesopotamia as the pioneer of civilisation, for the old haunts, as he believes, of most primitive man. The odds against the success of his new search are tremendously heavy, but all interested in the study of human origins ■will certainly wish the brilliant Australian all the luck he needs in his hunt. —F. H. BODLE.