MAN'S ORIGIN

Evening Post, Volume CV, Issue 6, 9 January 1928, Page 11

MAN'S ORIGIN

NEW THEORY (SCIENTIST'S CHALLENGE ,Dr. Ales Hrdlicka, curator of the division of physical anthropology of the National Museum at Washington, challenged :i widely-accepted belief among anthropologists tliat the prehistoric Neanderthal man represented a different species from Homo sapiens, when he delivered the Huxley memorial lecture before the Royal Anthropological Society in London. The Neanderthal man, that giant, grisly creature who slouched, through the icy world from 50,000 to GO,OOO years ago, is a true ancestor of man as he is to-day, according to Dr. Hrdlicka'a view of the available evidence and not, as hitherto believed by many, a subhuman species exterminated by Homo sapiens as the earth grew warmer. Instead of melting into oblivion with the glaciers the Neanderthal man adapted himself to the exigencies of tne changing climate, and, through survival of tho fittest, became the ancestor and not tho victim of the "true man," Dr. Hrdlicka contended. If the assumptions about prehistory held by man were true, said Dr. Hrdlicka, science is confronted by a strange major phenomena, a long double line of human evolution, either near by or in the same territories, the sudden extinction of one of these lines and tho evolutionary sluggishness or pause of tho other. These hypotheses led to a maze of difficulties and contradictions, he continued. They gave a Homo sapiens without showing why, or how, or where he developed his superior make-up, and implied that while he evidently developed at a must more rapid rate at first to reach tho status of Homo sapicn, he then slackened greatly to remain from the beginning of the post-glacial period of to-day at nearly the same evolutionary stage. The conception of the ice age as composed of four distinct, periods, with three well-marked interglacial periods, did not harmoniso with either palaeontological or human, evidence, Dr. .Hrdlicka said. Both these tended to show but one main interglacial interval, from which there was a gradual progression toward an irregular cold period, after which followed an irregular post-glacial period. The Mousterian or Neanderthal phase of man, ho said, began toward the end of tho warm, 'main interglacial period, when man was brought face to face with great changes in his environment calling for new adaptations and developments bringing about greater mental and physical exertion.and intensification of natural selection and the survival of tho fittest. RAPID CHANGE. Strong evidence of a relatively rapid progressive change taking place during the Neanderthal period, tho scientist said, was furnished by the great variability in tho skeletal remains from this time. Such evolution, he went on, would certainly differ from region to region, and conceivably, if not inevitably with these processes towards the height of tho glacial invasion, the population decreased in numbers and the fittest group or groups eventually alone survived . Hei'c seemed a relatively simple natural explanation of the progressive evolution of-the Neanderthal man, Dr. Hrdlicka continued,, and such evolution would inevitably carry his most advanced forms to those of primitive Homo sapiens, The vastness of his distribution, the improbability of invasion, from warmer climates into colder, and the absence of any trace of superior beings were all against the theory that the Neanderthal nan was exterminated by a conquering race; Dr. Hrdlicka then painted a graphic word picture, giving his idea of this grim, grisly ancestor of man, whose neck, he said, was so poised that he could not turn back his head to see the_ sky, who knew of fire but not agriculture, who had implements and tools, who hunted the mammoth, and rhinoceros, the cave lion, bear, hyena, horse, ox, bison, reindeer, and stag, and, perhaps, the sabre-toothed tiger. The Nanderthal man, Dr. Hrdlicka said, was of moderate stature and heavy build. He had a large, thick, oblong skull, low forehead, low vault, protruding occiput, large, full upper jaw, large nose, large teeth, and large heavy lower jaw with receding chin. His bones were stout and his legs relatively short. He did not boil his food, and left no known pictorial representations of the animals he hunted, but judged from the beautiful implements he made, he was hot deficient in the art sense, Dr. Hrdlicka declared.