RACIAL PURITY

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXXII, 17 January 1939, Page 8

RACIAL PURITY

THEORIES UPSET RY PROFESSOR FOSSILS FOUND IN CHINA fU.P A—Bv Electric Telegraph—Copy right 1 PEIPING, 15th January. The German anthropologist, Professor Weidenreich, dealt a blow at j theories of racial purity by revealing ! details regarding the so-called Peking ! Man. Fossils of seven skulls found in a cave at Choukoutien belonging to a family who lived 100.000 years ago show three distinct racial types, Melan- ' esian, Eskimo, and Neanderthal, indi- 1 eating that the races have mixed since! the dawn of mankind. Professor Franz Weidenreich is the ! successor to the late Dr Davidson ! Black at the Rockefeller Institute.< Peiping. Up to the end of 1936 five 1 skulls have been found at Choukoutien. the name Sinanthropus Pekinensis i (Peking Man) being given to the first They have been described by their discoverer as “the richest and most complete collection of human fossils ever recorded, unique in every respect.” The vfirst skull was declared to be that of a woman, and restoration of it [ was made possible by fragments of . bone which w ere found in a limestone ! caye near Peking, where the first i traced of this ancient human type were 1

| discovered about ten years ago. Last ■ year Dr Weidenreich claimed in an article in “Science” that Peking man j : was a cannibal, and that his thighbone differed from Java man to such i \ an extent that it was obvious the two •belonged to different species. There I | was evidence that Peking man was a l hunter, that he killed large numbers of huge stags and boars, that he lived I contemporaneously with large beasts of prey such as the sabre-toothed | tiger, and that he knew the use of fire | and of stone implements. Last year Dr Weidenreich declared that he had been able to demonstrate that a close connection existed between Peking man and certain groups of the Mongol race. He based this assumption on I certain anatomical similarities in i mandibles and teeth of the Peking man and those of Eskimos, Lapps, i modern Mongols, and the American j Indian.