SEARCH FOR MISSING LINK

Press, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22195, 11 September 1937, Page 19

SEARCH FOR MISSING LINK

Discovery of "Ape-Man's" Skull (SPECIALLY WRITTEN FOR THE PRESS BY DR. R. S. ALLAN.)

The finding in 1891 of fossils believed by their discoverer, Eugene Dubois, to represent the long-sought transition stage from Ape to Man, created a sensation among naturalists during the last decade of the nineteenth century, and since that date palaeontologists and anthropologists all the world over have discussed and argued over these relics. All regret the insufficiency of the materials brought to light; all agree in recognising their supreme interest; but the published opinions and impressions of their exact significance vary widely. In point of fact, in order to arrive at a decisive conclusion regarding the true relationship of pithecanthropus we should require to possess at least the complete skull and lower jawbone. It is for this reason that the announcement this week of Dr. von Kienigwald's discovery of a complete skull is of such outstanding interest. The new material should enable palaeontologists to decide whether pithecanthropus is simian, to be placed with the gibbon, the orang-utan, the chimpanzee and the gorilla, or human. He must be one or the other; he cannot be a so-caled "missing link" for the simple reason that the simian and human stocks had separated millions of years before the Middle Pleistocene, which is the age of the Trinil fossils. There is no possibility, therefore, of pithecanthropus bridging the gap between the higher apes and man; he is either an ancestral man -or, as one authority puts it, a gigantic and precocious gibbon. In either case, Dr. von Kienigwald is to be congratulated on his discovery, and scientists in all countries will await the publication of his results with keen interest.

are simian. Might there not be a mixture of human and simian types which were contemporary and per-

Pithecanthropus erectus, the ape-man of Java (antiquity estimated at 500,000 years), after the restoration modelled by J. H. McGregor. It is not improbable that the prehuman races of this remote geologic age used more than one natural weapon of wood or stone, the latter of the accidental "Eolithic" type.

is.ied together? Dubois said no, but his arguments, while sound, were not conclusive. An element of doubt remained, and has remained until the present time.

The Finding of Pithecanthropus It may be of interest to record the history of the finding of pithecanthropus. Certain deposits containing bones of mammals were known to occur in Java, and in 1890 Dubois, a Dutch army doctor, was commissioned by his Government to explore these strata. In September, 1891, he found a single tooth; one month afterwards a skull-cap, one metre distant from the tooth; the following year, in August, 1892, a femur, 15 metres from the skull; and a little later, a second tooth, three rrtetres from the skull. With these human or simian remains were many fossils of all kinds; plant impressions; freshwater shells; and bones of fishes, reptiles, and mammals. The latter included elephants, rhinoceros, hippopotamus, a monkey, and many others. Study of these mammals enabled palaeontologists to date the stratum containing the beds but not with certainty, and Dubois at first claimed a greater antiquity than is now admitted.

Two problems arose which were and are of vital importance; first, the exact age of the stratum yielding pithecanthropus; did all the bones of Trinil man belong to a single individual or in fact to a single type? The femur is distinctly human in type; the skull and teeth

Further Exploration

It became ,obvious that further exploration to obtain further information was most desirable. In 1906 Mme. Selenka, the widow of a German zoologist, organised, at great expense, a scientific expedition to Java to carry out new investigations. These lasted 18 months and a huge volume of soil was removed from the site. Important collections of fossil mammals were obtained, and study of these enabled the German scientists to date the deposit more accurately than Dubois had been able to do. But the principal object was not attained—not the least relic of pithecanthropus could be found. Before the recent discovery Trinil man remained something of an enigma, highly interesting and the f jcal point of a vast literature. It remains to be seen whether the detailed studies which will follow Dr. von Kienigwald's successful fieldwork will solve the problem or resolve the uncertainties which arose from the earlier work of Dubois. Man's true position in the animal kingdom is obscured by the thick veil of civilisation, and it is fitting that palaeontology should from time to time reveal something of the path by which he attained his most distinctive attributes.