HISTORY OF MAN.

Press, Volume LXIX, Issue 20807, 17 March 1933, Page 15

HISTORY OF MAN.

♦ ADDRESS ON ANTHROPOLOGY. PROFESSOR SHELLEY SPEAKS OF THE PAST. Remarking that in order to understand world problems of the immediate future wo must endeavour to underBtand the relation between our own culture, whether good or bad, and tho culture of other races and civilisations, whether good or bad, Professor James Shelley delivered at Canterbury College last night the first of a series of lectures on anthropology. Tho lecture is one of a series to be held every Thursday evening on the general topic of "Aspects of Life." Professor Shelley emphasised the inn pcrtance of not looking down on other rates and their culture merely because they were not possessed of the telephone t,nd the telegraph. He statd that our civilisation itself had become rather badly distorted in several ways, and that we were apt to think that, belonging to the "white" culture, it was our business and our right to impose it on other peoples. Wo must try to understand tho world as a complete whole. Anthropology was ono of those synthetic studies that endeavoured to look at life as a whole. Moat of the sciences wore breaking down in thoir isolation to-day, continued the speaker, and this was an age of synthesis just as the linctecnth century was an age of analysis. Anthropology studied all aspects of man—his origin, his races, and his development, and its aim was synthetic rather than analytic. The earliest known skulls that had been found that could be called mau had been found in Java, in Peking, in England, and in Is'orth Germany. The German skull was 200,000 years old, according to the geological strata. Most of the finds had been accidental, but during the last few years there had been expeditions definitely digging iu likely places. Characteristics of these skulls belonging to "pitbecanthropos erectus" showed a development of the lobes of the brain having to do with the exercise of speech, and the Piltdown skull, found in England, had given scientists valuable data about tho whole of the man. This, stated the professor, was because no particular part of man eould be altered without altering the whole, and from the attachments of the neck muscles to the hone there eould be deduced from the skull alone the general features of the carriage and spina! structure of the early men. The Origin of Man. The question of the origin of mau was also referred to by the speaker. '•-Man did not come from any of the present apo families," declared Professor Shelley. "There arc no apes at the present time m the world which represent the species from which man has developed. They aro just offshoots." Man had probably originated in north-west India or Turkestan, though the exact region was still conjectural, the lecturer continued. One branch had gone south to form the aboriginals of Australia, an extremely primitive type. After one migration they were cut off for tens of thousands of years. Another migration moved eastward to Mongolia, and thence to America, where their descendants were the Red Indians and some of the South American races. Another race, which could be called the Cromagnon race, went westward towards Europe. Other migrations went north, and south into Africa. But these races were only convenient terms to denote movements which might have gone on at irregular periods over a large number of years. Europe claimed three of these races --the Nordic, the tall, fnir, blue-oyed type found in Sweden and Norway, the Mediterranean, a short, dark, longheaded type, and the Alpine, with broad heads, giving a high cephalic index. There was really no such thing as a pure. race. All that could he meant by a pure race was ono that had been settled so long in a particular locality and had so inter-brcd that it, had certain distinctive characteristics. Tt was fooli&h to talk of pure races when there were more Italians in Xew York than there were in Rome, and more Trish than there wore in Ireland. The pure races wore the degenerate, backward ones in the odd corners of the world. Tt wan the streaky character of mixed races that had produced the> basis for the future development of the race. Identification of the Races. Cross-sections of the hair were useful in identifying races. Crinkly hair indicated n flattened cross-section, and the lower tho race tho more the hair inclined to the curly "peppercorn" variety. If this were so. the highest biological type on earth was the Chinese In many of his characteristics, indeed, he was further in tho line of evolution than the European races were. The nasal index, the width of the eye-socket as compared with its length, and the facial atig'c, were of sreat assistance. Tlik old means of Identification by language was of use only where strange forms could be related perhaps to other languages. The language generalisation had been used in the past, but no longer served to form conclusive distinctions. Professor Shelley will continue the series Thursday night.