BRIBED BRIGANDS.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVII, 12 June 1928, Page 7

BRIBED BRIGANDS.

EMPLOYER \S ADVANCE PAYMENT EARLY MAX QUEST. \

PEKING. April 10. “First catch your 'brigand; then cmj !ov him,’’ seems, to be the motto of ‘•.dentist's exploring; the Central Asian plat etui. To-chrv Mr Roy Chapman Andrews, ■■f the A'lnericati Museum of Natural Hi.-fmy. left Kalgan at the head of the Central Asiatic expedition, Jt.fter linving made full forward arrangements with brigands who infest, Mongolia, in order that the work of tlu* expedition should proceed without hindrance. In the course of an interview before he deft Peking Air Andrews said: Without these arrangements we should not have a ghost of <i chance ol' getting through. I have lie on to Ivalgan to make a rrangenients wit'll the chief brigand and pay him part of his smhir.v. Our caravan of camels, carrying sapjdies for six months' ,is left in his charge. He is a tame Alongoiian brigand. and it is all right. I have known him a long time. He stole my camels once, but brought them buck when he discovered liis daughter was married to a relative of one of my servants. 1 pay him a sum before' Qie caravan starts into the desert, and lie guarantees no interferonce by brigands. I have never known him ‘break his word. He'gets the rest of his" salary when we are safely back in Kalgan.

SEARCH FOR PREHISTORIC MAN.

This is the fourth expedition Air Andrews has led into Alongolui. On the last occasion he brought back the famous dinosaur eggs. He deprecated statements that he was going to search the Central (Asian 'plateau for the ‘‘■missing link.’'’ but this time, following upon a very interesting discovery near Poking, he and his fellow scientists .propose to look for human re mains, older than the Java ape man discovered last century by Dr Dubois.

The discovery was made last summer by Air Davidson Black, of the Pekiug Union Are die a.l College, in the Western Hills, 12 miles from Peking. It was a. human tooth as old a's the Java ape man, and possibly older, according to Mr Andrews, and ha's been named Sinanthropus, or “the Peking man." In referring to it, AD* Andrews said: This, is probalfly the oldest and nvost important piece of human remains yet discovered. It is at least a million years old. and possibly older. Its discovery has been an enormous stmulus to the expedition, and shows we are on the right; track. (This 1 is a reference to the theory upon which the expedition work's, that', the Central Asian plateau is the cradle of the human race, iperhaps -the greatest, theatre of evolution in the world.)

We a-re going to search strata and deposits of the oligoeono age, which ‘a few years ago would have been thought far too old to contain human remain's. We are going through them with a fine comb to see if there is any evidence Of man ’s existence so far back. The- value of the. Peking man is that we judge iiim to be in the- direct line of human descent, and not a branch that, is now extinct, which the Java ape .man is. ' THE OLDEST DRY LAND. Mr Andrews went on to explain that lie is one of those scientists who believe that man evolved on land that, was fiat, arid. spaTsely forested, and temperate in climate, conditions giving a healthy struggle for existence. Alongolia possessed these conditions, and had done so. in his opinion, for millions of years. Moreover, it was the oldest continuous •ley land in existence. “We shall go,’’ he said, “to a point itoo miles north-west of Kalgan. where there is a large area full of deposits of the right ages oligdcene, miocene,

and- pleistocene —which, we believe, contain those aneic-nt remains if they are preserved. It- is a great deal like looking for a needle in a haystack, .but we have already found that it is the only place" in the world where delicate dinosaur eggs were preserved, lin'd wo hope to find remains of very early main” Whereas the last three expedition’s have been into Outer Alongolia, this one will be into Inner Mongolia. Hundreds of miles will be covered, the route crossing the trails of the late .Sir Francis A'oung.lius'band and of Air Sven Hod-in, the- Swedish explorer, now in Oliinesc Tnrkestaii.

The expediiton left Kalgan in 8 2-tom Dodge lorries, and consists of ten foreigners -and twenty-six Mongols and Chinese. The caravan is of 120 camels, carrying petrol, scientific equipment, and food for six months for thirty-six men.