LECTURE AT MUSEUM

Evening Star, Issue 17034, 3 May 1919, Page 12

LECTURE AT MUSEUM

BY DR BENHAM. Tlie fourth of the series of weekly lectixres in anthropology "which, are heing delivered at the Museum under the auspices of the Otago University was given last night by Professor W. B. Benham. In his previous lecture Dr Denham had-dealt with the general question of evolution in the field of biology, and had traced the development of the immediate precursors of man. Last night Dr Benham discussed the five ascending stages of the order—primates, marmosets, American monkeys, old world monkeys, Simians, and mankind, and with the aid of many interesting exhibits from the Museum showed the relation between the primates and lemuroidea. He proceeded to outline the history and structure of certain extinct animals as revealed by the study of palaeontology. The first traces of mammals were found in the triassio period, and biologists were quite convinced that they were descended from reptiles. The very scanty mammal remains found in the next, or Jurassic, period were allied to the marsupials of Australia. In the eocene period there were an immense number of mammals, of which all the species and moat of the genera were now extinct. There were four well-eetabliahod genera of the lemuroids, and they were all from the eocene period and from America. He save a most interesting summary of what is known of the ancestors of monkeys as reconstructed from the remains found in the pliocene period. Insight into palaeontological methods was given in the discussion of pithecanthropus croctus, an animal known only from three bones and three teeth discovered in Prinil, Java. This for a long time divided scientists into three camps as to whether it was a very early form of man, an intermediate stage’ bet wen man and ape, or , as is now generally supposed, a gigantic extinct gibbon. He described the famous Piltdown skull, and with the aid of lantern slides showed that the lower jaw of Piltdown man was extremely ape-like in structure. There were two widely differing views as ts*the bram capacity of this mail, according to one of which his brain was not smaller than that of modern man. From •“ caonthropos,” the man-like creature which was man’s immediate ancestor, the professor nassed on to the earliest remains of modern roan, or homo sapiens as he is called; “and, bear in mind,” remarked the professor, “he has named himself !” He dealt in detail with Heidelberg man and Neanderthal man, and showed the wonderful store of information that can be soundly deduced from the scanty existing remains of these men. The evidence, did not show that Neanderthal man was the parent of present man. because contemporaneous with him there were other races- of men living. Neanderthal man was now regarded as representing an arrested survival. True man could not bo defined and distinguished by his physical characters alone, but the evidence of his culture and intelligence must also be taken into count. The evidence, pointed, to the fact that man had been on the earth, -some 4CO.CCO yours. Man, he said, never was a monkey, never passed through an apo-like stage.; but men and monkey.; were cousins, as it were, both descended from a comon ancestor very far back in time.