ASCENT OF MAN.

Press, Volume L, Issue 15017, 11 July 1914, Page 12

ASCENT OF MAN.

HOW BRAINS BUILD tAv&a.

-SPREAD OF EGYPTIAN INFLUENCE. Among the members of the British =sociation who are visiting, or are to sit, Australasia is Professor Grafton liott Smith, an Australian, who has ado his mark as one of the loading ithorjties in anthropology. Professor nith arrived in Sydney last week, and .c following interview with him ap>ared in the Sydney" "Daily Teleaph':— , Professor Grafton Elliott Smith's last iy in England was spent, dharacristicallv enough, in Sussex, at a aco called Piltdown. There, in a td of iron-brown flint stones, besides very ordinary-looking road, scientific ople are hunting eagerly for bits of >nes of prehistoric men and prehisric beasts; and there, two years ago, ie now-famous Piltdown sknll was und, almost accidentally, by a Sussex licitor. If this gentleman had not ippened to be on the way to the local anor-house to hold a "Court Baron," liatover that may be, and if he had >t happened also to be a collector of nt implements, the skull might never ive been discovered at all. He saw mc workmen using the flints as road etal, and asked them to keep a atch for anything out of the way. icy brought him something which ey declared was a "bit of cocoauutl" was. in fact, a piece of the Piltdown :ull, of which more followed. Upon ich chances do the discoveries of fence often depend! But the interesting thing about this :ull from tho scientific point of view that it forms ono of the "missing aks" between man and ,the higher pcs, and the place of its discovery— id where there may b&« more imporint discoveries yet—was naturally full " interest to an export on anthrop°gyV anatomy, and the brain.-' PREHISTORIC BRAINS AND FACES. But there was a reason why the PiltQwn skull should have a special in!iest and significance' for Professor mith.' The first ho. heard of its dis>very was in November, 1912, and only pp months earlier he had delivered an idress in Dundee before the British ssociaticm for the Advancement of cience, in which he put" forward tie leory that in the ancestors of man the rain reached what might be called umari status before the features of the i«o did. i His lino of argument was iat the distinctive feature of, man has Iways been his mental consciousness, nd that there was no essential conexion between mental characteristics nd human features. First, man deeloped a brain, and afterwards, as his •sthetic sense was uplifted, as the re-alt-of definite selection, his features radually became!human also.- The apeomen, having become intelligent. ;ore;rred the better-Tooking and less hairyiced males. Theirs, accordingly was the tock bred from, and therirs the kind of ice and form transmitted. In ,this way rains, so to speak, built the face. The md of looks man ■. wanted; in the end :o uot« ■■•.'.. .V MOST PRrMITTVE SKULL. : -Well," the Piltdown : skull .backed this heory up. Professor '> Smith describes he skull as, on the whole, the _most irimitiro- human skull known. -It is rue that the remains of the skuli found a. Java, some ,time ago-r-the skull of ithecanthropus. erectus.- it was called -indicate a creature much niore_.:aeTaded tban the PiltdoTCri man can have, leen. But/ according to Professor Smith, it is a question whether ..tnie i avanese ape-man. was really a pruniive type: he may have represented ome degraded branch of the common ; tock, some race which never travelled ar along -the line which hashed ,to The Piltdown Bkull, on he is undoubtedly Jbojfc. mraan and in'the direct line ofmans irooress. 'And the point about it that Sff3t' his: That, whereas"so far as the bram. avity is, concerned; the skull has very listinctive human ?iltdown man stood' far higher■ nttn»Uy; than" the' Javan link' — ■fie Yaw fe not hnman aVall Smith declares that if it had been fSund w itself, no one would have hesitated ;o call it the jaw of au ape, except ,hat the teeth arehuman.. He explainid'that the circumstance of left 10 possible doubt that the jaw belonged o the part of th© skull discovered. Tho •esult was then an unexpected reinforcotient of the professor's theory. This ikull stood for a type of being in which ;he. features had not yet caught up to :he brain. ' ■ v " PILTDOWN AND TASMANIAN. "What sort of a life did the Piltdowu people lead—the people with those Imman brains . and ape-hke jaws —and when did .they live: it? "Well," says Professor Smith, "I suppose their manner of life and their equipment for i-t was very much like that, of tho Tasinanians who ire now extinct. The Tasmanians were certainly the lowest surviving; race of man. The Australian, aborigines and the South African bushmen some extent into contact with other races, but the Tasmaniaus were so isolated that they retained up to modern times an equipment no' better thanrthat of the Piltdown man. Now that the Tasmanians are extinct, the Australian aboriginal is probably tho most primitive human type; The aboriginal of the south, that'is, the-tribes of the north, stand/ higher in the scale, probably, as the result of some contact with the outside world. But, of course, a race-must be judged-by its physical characteristics, as well-as by its equipment, and, going by the former, the South African bushmen stand, says the professor, quite as low as the Tasmanian As to the earliest date of primitive man, there is- no agreement among scientists. There are Belgian authorities; who trace man as far back as a million years! But Professor Smith thinks tnat "there is no justification for dating any known human remains iurther than 50,000 years ago." So somewhere about B.C. 50,000 the Piltdown men may have lived, and hunted, airl tried, with their human brain, to subdue the aue that still lived 'on in them, and of which the shape of their jaws was a sign. ' ..-'•' EGYPT AND THE PERUVIANS. What has Egypt to db with the Piltdown skull? But Professor Grafton Smith's interests extend over the boundary. of antnropology into _ ethnology j he is a student of the distribution of races of man over the earth, and their relation to one another. And a paper he is going to read before the British Association in Melbourne will deal with the relationship between Egypt and the Peruvians. "In some popular journals," Professor Smith eaye, "you come across the idea.that the Peruvians emigrated from Egypt, or the Egyptians from Peru. That is, of course, grossly incorrect. But I .think there is a germ of troth in it. Most scientific people will not agree that there has been any connexion between the -Egyptian and the Peruviaus; but I am heterodox in thie. In my 'opinion,.there has been for thousands of years a-gradual-extension of ine - inH uonco of Egypt and Western 'Asia-round*the Mediterranean; and into Western Europe and ■ the British Islands. That part of my idea I have set' «it in previous papers. But this time I propose to describe the same influence reaching out from Asia and

Egypt through Southern the Persian Gulf. Of _---»e.''iheh-S__9 always been a certain amount "o£-_Bl__| time intercourse between th-«*- ; tries; people wo_d. move:xSSgHH take their customs with they certainly spread much towards India and 'down 'the coast into Ceylon, and thei--»3fcs§_sß to Sumatra and tho Malay Pe_-__S_f From there tho influence *Sf___f__-' tliroughout the East, and i__tt_s_Sl_[ Northern Australia to a c_r_.i-&_-*gn' tent." Professor SmithlS_Sl mummification as a practice into Northern Australia in t__s2_S_j In its next stage, he went (ultimately) Egyptian right out through the Pacific, to shores as far anart __>-tIIh Zealand, Easter Island, There is no doubt, he spreading two-thirds of the to America, and thero is no w__-_f_S_§_| the last part of the distance *__illi not also have been covered. Ifit_fl9 swept out of its course as far as .-£___|l| Island, it should have found in much greater strength to THE BASES OF THE _3___o_§§|l Tho main argument on which Br__fisor Smith bases his theory' "■'•w-Stos courso, the physical characteri_ti_l_|lf the peoples it deals with. But lies also on the spread of such-Mli toms as mummification, and the ____! distribution of great stone templ____i tho monuments, the remains of'-_S_a on Easter Island are well know-PS Japan and Korea, he says __$•§ Eastern Asia generally, monumSl this kind were begun in the _ir_l_t tury before Christ. The fadHK not reach Peru and Mexico untnW seventh century, A.D., and {_•*_s sisted until the Spaniards -b M _2_l Mexico, and there is any ______!!§! other evidence, such as tho factl___l modern Egypt, and in Peru ___!_j_ women tattoo the lower lip' '&B_k chin—as the Maoris also do, $$£* to do. "It can't be all says .Professor Smith. Altog-thSllli believes that the I-gyptian m_h__Sjf_B --peaks of took about 20,000 _*eS§ll travel round the world. '^Plj|__