APE-LIKE ANCESTOR OF MAN

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXXI, 11 September 1937, Page 3

APE-LIKE ANCESTOR OF MAN

A COMPLETE SKULL FOUND PITHECANTHROPUS ERECTUS A cablegram from Batavia published yesterday stated that Dr. von Koeningwald, head of the geological service of the Dutch East Indies, had unearthed at Trinil a complete skull of Pithecanthropus erectus, an ape-like ancestor of man, of which a portion of a skull was found in 1891, also at Trinil, causing a sensation among scientists all over the world. . • ‘

The discovery of Pithecanthropus erectus has been held to be the one which throws most light on the evolutionary progress of man. It was made in Java in 1891-92, by Professor Eugene Dubois, then a surgeon in the colonial military service and later professor of geology at the University of Amsterdam. In a stratum which contained the fossil bones of many extinct species of animals he obtained five fragments of a strange form of being, one which he regarded as a transitional form between man and ape—a real missing link. He named it Pithecanthropus erectus, and assigned it to a special family of primate, one lying on the borderline between the anthropoids and man. The five fossil fragments found were skull cap, which outwardly had the form that might be expected in a giant form of gibbon, a left thigh bone, and three teeth. The most distant of the fragments were twenty paces apart. Later he adde»* a sixth fragment— part of a lower jaw found in another part of the island, but in a stratum of the same geological age. The skull cap is flat, low, and has great eyebrow ridges; its characteristics are more simian than human, yet when Professor Dubois succeeded in obtaining a cast from 4he interior of the skull cap the cast bore on it the convolutionary pattern of the brain of Pithecanthropus, and that pattern proved to be altogether human. Pithecanthropus, the fossil man of Java, had a brain which was smaller, simpler, and infinitely more primitive than that of the lowest living man. BRAIN IN EVOLUTION By this discovery Professor Dubois caught the human brain in the act of evolving. Certain cortical or convolutionary areas in man’s brain are known to be concerned with sight, hearing, and touch, and the receptions of messages from the sense organs. A motor area is concerned in the intiation and control of voluntary movements. Between these primary areas of the cortex lie association areas which have to do with the memory and the interpretation of what is seen, heard, o r felt. The cortex of part of the frontal lobe is concerned with the acquisition of skilled movements. These secondary or association areas, which lie between and separate the primary areas, are the basis 'of man’s educability, his capacity to learn from experience. In the brain of the Pithecanthropus the association areas are much less developed than in the brains of the lowest living human races. Yet all the essentially human parts are represented. It is even held possible that the possessor of this brain was capable of speech. Further study of the brain cast resulted in the conviction that Pithecanthropus must be placed in the human family. The brain of this fossil man was estimated at having a volume of at least 900 c.c.; the highest-brained gorillas rarely rise above 600 c.c., and the lowest-brained of human beings occasionally fall below 1000 c.c. Pithecanthropus, in size of brain, has been placed on the verge of humanity. The thigh bone is human altogether; proof that he walked like a man. His teeth are essentially human in crown and root. Pithecanthropus has been assigned to a date late in the Pliocene period.