THE STORY OF MAN

Auckland Star, Volume LXIX, Issue 220, 17 September 1938, Page 12 (Supplement)

THE STORY OF MAN

IN the lush valleys lying among the smoking mountains of the great island of Java half a million years ago there wandered strange beasts the like of which are not seen upon the earth to-day. Primitive elephants now known as stegodons ripped leafy brandies from pictuVe-book trees to cram into tlieir greedy maws. Behemoths more fearful in appearance than those of Holy Writ wallowed in streams and rivers that wound through the valleys. Undersized and curious bovine creatures fed upon the rich grasses. There were unfamiliar antelopes and apes. And übiquitous monkeys swung from limb to limb through va*t forests. Scurrying furtively at the edges of the herds, traversing beaten paths through the jungles, or crouching in the tec of lofty volcanic rocks, gnawing bonds and edible roots, were nature's greatest achievement, of the aeon. They walked upright, with a permanent slight bend at the kite?*. They stared out at the world through blood«hot eyes from beneath beetling brows. They thrust their flat, ugly heads forward from short bull necks. They were men! Though their teeth were much like those of apes, their general characteristic* were more human than simian, and their larger brains definitely placed them apart from all others of living creatures Thewe nightmarish, probably hairy primitive men had no speech as speech is known to-day. If they communicated at all with each other orally it wa« bv grunting and growling. J Nothing is known to day about the habits of thes® men who existed in Java in the remote past. Whether they had family or tribal life, or whether

Science Makes Him a Relative, Not a Descendant, of Monkeys

ByJohn A. Menaugh

tl-oy ranged the land like mere dumb brutes, on one knows. It also is uncertain as to whether they were capable of making or using the crudest types of utensils or weapons.

Despite the lack of knowledge about these early men, scientists now are reasonably certain that while they still were in existence there occurred in Java a gigantic volcanic disturbance. One or more of the island's smoking mountains burst into eruption at a period roughly placed at half a million years ago, covering fertile valleys, forests and mountain slopes with lava and ashes to t, distance of many miles. Beneath thin thick blanket of liquid rock, under billions of to.is cf ashes, were buried the herds, the elephants, the hippopotami and the primitive men.

Time moved on. Centuries came and centuries went. Other volcanoes erupted, pouring new layers of volcanic deposits upon the blanket of lava that had buried the beasts and the men. By and by these deposits attained a depth of SO feet.

Then something happened in & hie way in the depths of the earth under Java which caused a change in the land levels of the island. Streams and rivers began gnawing into this 80 feet of volcanic waste. The Solo River, for example, kept cutting away, year after year and century after century, until its rapid waters worked down to the level upon which the early men and beasts dwelt at the time of the first eruption.

In the autumn of 1801 Dr. Eugene Dubois, a celebrated Dutch palaeontologist, found in digging into a bank of the Solo River near Trinil the top part of a skull of one of the afore-described early citizens of Java. Other fossil fragments were discovered about the same time. These Dr. Dubois associated with the skull. He considered his finds in the light of remnants of a link connecting apes and men—the long-sought missing link. He called the original possessor of the skull cap the Ape-man of Java. He gave to it the scientific name of Pithecanthropus erectua.

In March, 1936, a part of a skull be lieved to have been that of a child of the same type as the original ape-man was found in the identical region that provided the first discovery. Dr. G. H. K ; T°n Koenigswald, research associate of the Carnegie institution of Washington, within recent months, has found still further fossil remains of Pithecanthropus—another skull cap, a lower jawbone, and several teeth.

Measurements of the brain capacity of Pithecanthropus and comparison of it with that of another famous anthropological find, the Peking man (Sinanthropus pekinensis), indicate, according to Dr. von Koenigswald's theory, that the Java man was the more primitive of the two and, indeed, the most primitive fossil man of whom science has knowledge. That Pithecanthropus actually dwelt upon earth earlier than Sinanthropus, however, is disputed by Dr. Franz Weidenreich, of (he Peking Union Medical College who believes, and is supported in his belief by a number of anthropologists, that the Peking Man was the earlier of the two. Fossil remains of

Sinantliropus have been found in the Choukoutien eaves near Peking, China, from 1919 to the present time. In 1848 a young lieutenant in the

British Army found a prehistoric skull a eser t e *l <|"arry at Gibraltar. Nine years later workmen while clearing out a cave in Germany discovered the fo«silised skull and limb bone*s of a man of the same species that had provided the skull found at Gibraltar. This early inhabitant of Europe, who is thought to have existed there roughly about 50,000 years ago, was called the Neanderthal Man (Homo neanderthalen*is) after the aforementioned cave, located in the Neander Valley near Dusseldorf.

The Neanderthal Man was a repulsive creature from the modern viewpoint. He was short in stature (about 5 feet 4 inches tall) but rugged and muscular. He had hu<»e eyebrow ridges, and his head was set almost directly upon heavy shoulders. He was so ugly and ferocious in appearance that it is believed the Kuropean lejjends of the ojjres arose from his early presence on the Continent. The Neanderthal men. of whom more than 50 skulls have been found

to date in flerinany, France and as far away as Palestine, are thought to have entered Europe from the east or southeast some time before the third and last stage of the last great ice age. They had flint instruments, knew the use of fire, and buried their dead with a display of respect, but they painted or carved no pictures upon the walls of the caves in which they dwelt. A discovery of great importance to the study and claswsifk-ation of primitive man was made near Piltdown, Sussex, England, in the years between 1911 and 1915. It was there that Charles Dawson found the greater part of the left half of a human skull, part of a jawbone, and some teeth. From these fragments Sir Arthur Smith Woodward, a noted British palaeontologist, reconstructed the curious human creature which was given the name of the Piltdown Man. Its scientific name is Eoanthropiis dawsoni, Eoanthropus meaning "the dawn man." From the meagre evidence available scientists have concluded that the Piltdown Man was of a much higher order than the Ape-man of Java, representing an advance of many stages from the apelike fellow who roamed Java half a million years ago. First of the true men (men of the same species as those who inhabit the world to-day) to enter Europe are known now as Cro-Magnons, after the CroMagnon cave of Dordogne, France. Earliest of this type were the Aurignacians (named after the Aurignac Cave, HauteGaronne France). They filtered into H-urope from Aeia about 30,000 to 35,000 years ago. They employed bone and flint

instruments, burned crude lamps, drew pictures upon the walls of c«ves, wore jewellery made of shells and buried their dead with offerings. Whether or not they found Neander.hal men still living in Kurope when hey invaded that Continent is not snown for certain. Imaginative writers rom time to time have attempted to ell the story of an age-long feud between the earlier inhabitant and the -ro-Magnons which finally resulted in he survival of the fittest—the men with he superior brains. It is easy to picture ii the mind a group of Auriguacian ex tlorers penetrating some new district >f Kuro[>e and spying out here and there . of Neanderthal cave-dwellers. , r o rea ter cunning and their probably superior weapons these Crolagnons could have trapped and slain f j ,eaß * ousted from their caves the iturdier, brutish Neanderthals. • ield Prefers fo believe, in the kx? r f cent evidence, however that -he Neanderthal and the Aurignacian erthal Z ? BUgg< * tß that thTSZ S'TC •nly fossil bones, While the andCrtl i al nhabit the earth a !f- ™ I,llona who tages of development Is if. ® ,f arller act that no fc3K Bh ? wn h 7 the "•imitive men, such as °J trUly 'ave been found th Neanderthal, In fact, it is believpH ft*? " 1 world. cam« into North Ameri V nien first years ago by "av £w ■ ab °" t 25 possibly by a land fl Stra,t > or ii th.".,° d '"ft tJ£ZJ£° d °< Mm into the time of th» «••<,* j between the doe and th,«V domestication of tion of iSS V* d"^Unthe horse, and the sheep .£ " "* - aBB ' of the Indians ™lvl P ' companions tr ™ Ss European explorers. y earl J r The Australian black m»r. * rel.tiv.ly £ !Tn!?\i ng ?A l! Iln what r °ughly corres ponded with the late corres Europe. Stone A S e "> The division of the human family into red 6 and UC 'l I h a 8 , t , he , White ' the yellow, the red and the black, of course, predates history and at the best can be onWYh! BU K„r f •T nt j fic B Peculation. 7 o.S -° nißta do not },old - aa frequently is erroneously supposed that man descended from the monkevs and the apes. They do believe, however that Z rA t ag fF T the great family tree that produced the others of the primates, the anthropoid apes, the old world and the new world monkeys, the tarsioids, and the lemuroids. They contend that somewhere in the dim past, """' ons , of y« ars ago, there were creatures upon the earth which were the common ancestors of all the primates. Fossil remains of these common ancestors never have been found—probably never will be found, since the world is a careless keeper or records, and bones only under the most fortunate circumI stances are preserved by Nature