MAN’S ANCESTRY

Kaikoura Star, Volume LVI, Issue 94, 30 November 1936, Page 4

MAN’S ANCESTRY

FURTHER CLUES PEKING, November 24. Two new skulls of the famous Sinanthropus Pekinensis type of men who are estimated to have lived half a million years ago have been discovered at Choukoutien, 30 miles southwest of Peking, by workers from the Rockefeller Institute. The director of the research laboratory, Dr. Franz Weidenreich, is reconstructing the fragments into two fairly complete skulls which, he believes represent a woman aged 50 and a man aged 40. He claims that they leave no doubt of the vadility of the theory that man is descended from anthropoidlike hominids, and believes that they are contemporaneous with the famous Pithecanthropus Erectus found in Java 40 years ago, which it was long believed was an ape, but which Dr. Weidenreich now states was of the Sinanthropus type, on the basis of comparison with the new skulls. The complete lack of any limb bones or skull bases in the world’s largest collection of human fossils, all from Choukoutien, leads Dr. Weidenreich to believe that the Peking man was a head-hunting canniblal who smashed the skulls of his victims near the bases to obtain the brains, which primitive man considered were strengthening.