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EVOLUTION OF MAN

DR HRDUGKA'S THEORY THE NEA N DER THEE.. Dr Ales Hrdlicka, who delivered the Huxley memorial lecture in the lecture room 'of the’ Royal Society, London, took as his subject ‘The Neanderthal Phase of Alan.’ The lecturer said Unit prehistory, in relation to the Mousteriau period, appeared to have reached a. position approaching dogmatism, but the more the material remains of early man accumulated and were better understood, the more it was “sensed” that the whole Neanderthal question needed revision. If the given assumptions were true, we were confronted by some strange major phenomena—a Jong double lino of human evolution cither in near-by or the -same territories, a sudden extinction ol one of these lines and evolutionary sluggishness or pause in the other. These hypotheses Jed to a maze of difficulties and contradicitoim. They Jed to an outright polygeny—which was midemonstrable and improbable—or they conceded the evolution of homo sapiens from the same old stock that gave also homo neandertlialensis; but denied the possibility of such evolution from Neanderthal man later on. They gave us homo sapients, without showing why or how or where he developed his superior make-up, and implied that while he evidently developed much more rapidly at iirst to reach the status of homo sapiens, he then slackened greatly to remain, from the beginning of the postglacial period to this day at nearly the same evolutional level. _ There were other geographical and historical difficulties and contradictions involved in the position at present reached by prehistory.

Valid answers to the questions .which these difficulties suggested were as yet impossible, but it was possible to suggest certain indications. The PenckBruckner conception of the Ice Ago as composed of lour distinct periods of glaciation with three well-marked interglacial periods, did not harmonise with either the palaeontological or the human evidence. Both these tended to show but one main interglacial interval, from which there was a gradual progression towards an irregular post-glacial. The Mousterian or Neanderthal phase of man began towards the end of the warm main interglacial. During this period man was brought face to face with' great changes of environment, calling for new adaptations and developments. Such a major change in the principal environmental factors must inevitably have brought about greater mental as well as physical exertion and an intensification of natural selection, with the survival of only the more fit. These

■were the very essentials of progressive evolution. _ Strong evidence that a relatively rapid progressive change, both mental and physical, was actually taking place during the Neanderthal period was furnished by the great variability of the skeletal remains from _ this time. Such evolution would certainly differ from region to region, and it was conceivable, if not inevitable, that, with these processes, towards the height of the glacial invasion the population decreased in numbers, and that the most fit group or groups eventually alone survived. , . Here seemed (o be a relatively simple, natural explanation of the progressive evolution of Neanderthal man, and such evolution would inevitably carry his most advanced forms to those of the primitive homo sapiens. A critical examination of the known facts did not favor the assumption of a far-back common parentage and early Quaternary separation of homo ncanderthalensis and homo sapiens, for lack of cultural evidence of homo sapiens and other great difficulties. Tt was equally unable to favor a separate origin of the two stocks with subsequent hybridisation, for there was no evidence of the Pro-Anrignncian whereabouts and the doings of homo sapiens, there was no trace of his ancestry, and. moreover, it was impossible to conceive Ins origin without a Ncanderthnl-like stage of development. The thoroughly sifted indication appeared to tlm lecturer to favor the third assumption—which was the evolution of the Neandorthaler into later man. _ There appeared to be less justification for the conception of a Neanderthal species than there would he for that of a Neanderthal phase.

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Permanent link to this item

https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/ESD19280201.2.116

Bibliographic details

Evening Star, Issue 19779, 1 February 1928, Page 10

Word Count
649

EVOLUTION OF MAN Evening Star, Issue 19779, 1 February 1928, Page 10

EVOLUTION OF MAN Evening Star, Issue 19779, 1 February 1928, Page 10