MAN AND THE APE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LI, Issue 15659, 13 July 1914, Page 4

MAN AND THE APE.

-* THE PILTDOWN SKULL.

"NO DOUBT OF RELATIONSHIP.".

PROF. ELLIOT SMITH'S VIEWS.

[from our owy CORRESrOXOTXT.]

Sto.vkt. July 4.

Tut; two foremost Australasians in tho scientific world to-day are Sir Ernest Rutherford, the brilliant New Zoaknder, whose researches in the field of radio activity have made him famous, and Professor Grafton Elliot Smith, who was bom at Grafton, New Smith Wales, A] V "ar* ago, and is to-day one of the gi<-atcst authorities on anatomy and anthropology, having particularly devoted his enirgics to the study of the evolution of the brain. Both of them will he conspicuous figures it the approaching congress of the Uriusn Association.

Professor Rutherford lias ye' to arrive.. Professor Elliot Smith is already in Australia. Professor Smith is a Doi-tor of Medicine, who has taken up anatomy as a life-study. He lias a brother who is also a Doctor of Medicine—Dr. S. A. Smith— and is lecturer on anatomy at the Svdnev University at tho present time. Another brother is Inspector S. H. Smith, of '.he Education Department of New s< utn Wales. His sister, Miss Elliot Smith, conducts an important girts' school at Killara, a Sydney suburb. Altogether it if an unusually scholarly family. The Oldest Human Skull. Professor Elliot Smith has been rev vine; our interest in our ancestors. In an interview, he said that an extraordinarily keen controversy took place in England over the historic importance of tho skull known as the Pilfdown skull, which hud been discovered in a flint deposit near a public Toad, The skull, Professor Smith :aid, was perhaps the most important remains of early man that had ever come to light, In the skull, which was essentially hum™. thero were a number of features which had hitherto not been found except in the skulls of apes. The skull represented probably the nearest approach to the hypothetical "missing link " between the apes and man that had yet come to light. Considerably more than half of tho skull was still preserved. The formation of the jaw was quito new. If it had been found alone most people would certainly have called it an ape's jaw. Many people still maintained that it was an ape's jaw, There was no doubt that it belonged to the skull, because the teeth which wore in the jaw were plainly primitive human teeth, and not an ape's teeth. Although the skull was obviously human, it had certain primitive features which no other human skull was known to possess. The bone was remarkably thick, and altogether tho discovery dispelled any doubt that might have 'remained of man's relation to the ape. The Life of 50,000 Years Age. " I suppose," says the professor, " the life they led 50.000 years ago—which is the minimum age of the Piltaown Skullwas very much like that of the Tasmanians, who are now extinct. So far as equipment was concerned, the Tasmanians. whoa they lived, were certainly the lowest raceon earth. They were more isolated than other races, and retained up to modern times an equipment not very much greater than that of the man of the Piltdown stage." Here he produced a rough piece of flint, which hud tome from Piltdown, and which, he said, had done service ius some kind of implement in very remote times. Be thinks the Australian Slacks are now the lowest type of human oeing. Professor Smith puts forward the * heory that in the ancestors of man the brain reached its human status before the features of the face. That man reached his human estate by virtue of his development of the brain, and that afterwards his features became refined as a result of his definite selection. As his aesthetic taste became elevated, he exercised a higher mental discrimination n selecting his female partner. "Mar.'? ancestors were certainly arboreal." he" said. Tb.B Spread oi Customs. " You find in popular journals," lie said, "tho idea often put forward that either tho Peruvians came from Egypt, or the Egyptians came from Peru. That is grossly "inaccurate, though there is, I believe, a germ of truth in it. My opinion on these things, however, is very heterodox. The idea is that, the influence of Egypt and Western Asia extended around'tho Mediterranean into Western Europe and tho British Isles. I am preparing a lecture, in which I propose to show how tho influence gradually extended from Egypt and Central Asia to Southern Europe" and the Persian Gulf. That is to say, in quite remote times there was a Jot of maritime intercourse between the different races, and some of thu customs of each race would thus be carried to the others. They certainly spread toward? India and down the Indian coast to Ceylon, and from Ceylon across to Sumatra, the Malay Peninsula; and the influence was gradually diffused throughout the whole of the East Indies. To a certain extent Northern Australia was influenced by this process. Mummification certainly got into Northern Australia in that way. Egypt and the Maoris. "The thing I am relying on chiefly is the custom of building great stone temples and things liko pyramids: we call them dolmens." Then them things spread riehi. out, through the Pacific. You will rind thorn in " widely-scattered places—as far south as New Zealand, as far north as tho Sandwich Islands, and right nut to Easter Island. "Mr view is that if you admit that this thing goes as far as Easter Island, which is, perhaps, two-thirds of the way across to America, there is no reason why you should not carry it tho rest, of tho way; that i« to say. if the people, were swept out of their courso to Easter Island a large number of them mu*t have reached America,

Thus, in Pern and Mexico*, shortly after the beginning of the Christ ion era, you find all kinds of these curious customs making their appearance—mummification, the building of pyramids .and stone tombs ami temples', and all sorts nf things, which cannot bo mere coincidences. There aw all Biflrts of funny liltlo things. In modern Egypt—and probably it goes bark sonin time—married women, for instance, tattoo their lower lip in a curious wav, just as the Maori women do.

"The main evidence I am reiving on is the physical characteristics of tiio people* There has been a movement all round, and the further it goes tho more mixed it becom««. In tho second place, [ rciv on the spread of such customs as mummification: and ill the third place—what led mo on to this—there is the distribution "f those great stone tombs and temples. 1 think there is an enormous amount of evidence.