FIRST TOOL USERS

Evening Post, Volume CXXVI, Issue 9, 11 July 1938, Page 4

FIRST TOOL USERS

HOME IN LOWER ASIA?

Archaeological records that our expedition has discovered in Burma and others that we have just finished studying in Java all point to South-eastera Asia as the probable centre of dispersal for the most ancient tool-mak-ing races of the Stone Age man in Asia, writes Dr. Hellmut de Terra, leader of the American South-East Asiatic Expedition from Java to the "New York Times." Geologically about as ancient as those found with the remains of the "Peking Man" in China, these oldest stone tool cultures are different from any - that have served in Europe for a standard of classification of human prehistoric.periods.

Through our studies two interesting facts concerning early, man have appeared: the geological synchronism of the earliest Stone Age cultures in Asia, and this, dispersal following a period rich in climatic changes and mountain-building events.

Java as an island was imperfectly emerged from the sea when man appeared there at the. beginning, of the Ice Age period. Most of the neighbouring lands of the Sunda islands region then made a land bridge which must have allowed man to wander be^ tween here and China. Mountain ranges have grown since then: iri Burma and India, obscuring our visions of the old migration routes.

During the middle of the Ice Age period occurred the last of :the more vTolent mountain upheavals leading to the deposition of those river pebbles from which man fashioned .his first tools. Hence the earliest cultures appear to be linked with the stream valleys and lowlands of the ' tropical regions of Asia. v . EARLY LINK VERIFIED. Dr. de Terra,.who is Associate Curator of Geology at the Acadamy of Na-. tural Sciences of Philadelphia, is leading an expedition on. the ; difamatic search through lower Asia and Oceania for evidences of the origins and development of early man, comments: the newspaper. In researches during the last five months in Burma on. the southern Asiatic coast, and in Java, half-way between Asia and Australia, the expedition has found indications Qf. a link between two primeval forms of human life existing more than half a million years ago. ■ :

Studies of the expedition so far have pointed to a definite relationship between Java Man (Pithecanthropus Erectus), found in Java about fifty years ago, and the Peking Man (Sinanthropus Pekinensis), found near Peking, China, about ten years ago- One of these is believed to be the "anthropological Adam" of the human face.

Scientists have been Unable to agree which type represented the" more ancient man and it was -part of the purpose of the expedition 'headed by Dr. de Terra to settle this dispute, if possible. Both types were believed

to frave lived from, 500,000 to 700,000 yea^s ago. . *

Stone implements found by the expedition a few months ago in Burma indicated that contemporaries of the Pekfing Man had traversed the entire length of the. Asiatic seacoast to the border of the Indian Ocean. The stuc&es now being made in Java point further to the possibility that other contemporaries spread several thousand miles farther south.apparently over a "lc»st continent" connecting Asia with the Oceanic Islands in the early days of tlp.e earth. • :

With the Java Man linked to a spreading-out of the early; human race during great changes of climate and mountain upheavals. during.- the late Ice Aj?e, evidence collected by the ex- \ peditipn so far" adds support "to the i belief that the Peking Man may have been,the "father" : of the human race and "the others his descendants who set out from the early honi'e .of mankind; in search of new worlds to conquer. ■ ■ ■'" .. '■■ .. . ■••''•'