AFRICA THE CRADLE OF MAN

Evening Post, Volume CXVII, Issue 147, 23 June 1934, Page 25

AFRICA THE CRADLE OF MAN

Africa is; the Cra.dle.of human culture, according to the archaeologist, Dr. L. S. B. Leakey, who discusses for the first time the full repercussions on evolutionary theory of the remarkable: discoveries of early man which ho has made near Lake "Victoria, Nyanza says the '^Morning Post.". ' Dr. Leakey founa two races of "modern." or quasi-modern man in the Kanam and Kanjera districts. He believes that the dlder of the two, Kanam man, whom he describes as an ancestor of modern man, must have lived about a million years ago. "For the first time," he says, "human remains which appear to represent respectively, a type of man ancestral to homo sapiens and actual homo sapiens himself,, haya ;be ; envfound .under 'scientific in deposits vastly older than any which'have previously yielded remains of this type." . The primitive stone tools of these earty men, Dr. Leakey emphasises, belong to .."cultures", which are also repre--BWte.a*/:althoiifeft;?li guenee, in Enrope. It^ollavsii^Jieiconsiders r ..i?hat-Africa

was the centre from which European • "culture" was from time to time renewed and stimulated. But from the fact that similar tools are found in this country he holds out the hope that the self-respect of English archaeologists may, one day be restored by the discovery of equally- early men here.

Dr. Leakey believes also that his discovery of the unexpectedly early appearance of modern man may serve to rehabilitate the famous Galley Hill man, discovered near Dartford, whose claim to antiquity has hitherto been received with scepticism.

The suggestion that his discoveries dispsove the evolution of man from anthropoids is emphatically rejected by Dr. Leakey in "Adam's Ancestors." "I would rather say," he writes, "that evolution has been very much slower than we have sometimes been, led to believe."

Pointing out that at least four distinct types of man existed at the earliest period at which human remains have been found, Dr. Leakey suggests that future search for the common ancestor of man and the ape must be carried ■bacfediCHa-T?cryi'taucli.-earlier-date.