THE AGE OF MAN

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22084, 14 October 1933, Page 22

THE AGE OF MAN

• ' - . - jv REVISION OF OLD IDEAS NEW THEORIES ADVANCED. Man is no “ recent experiment ” on thig earth, as many anthropologists have believed. He may. in tact, be 20,000,000 years old. instead of a mere 1,006,000 or so. . This, according to the Literary Digest; is the opinion of Sir Arthur Smith Woodward, eminent British anthropologist, who told the International Geological Congress at Washington recently that human fragments found a few months ago by l)r L. B. S. Leakey in Tanganyika territory, South-eastern Africa, not only indicate great antiquity for men of modern type, but also suggest that the birthplace of human beings was in Africa. Both of these ideas run counter to opinions formerly held. It had been believed that mankind first reached human or. semi-human status shortly before or during the glacial periods about 1,000,000 years ago. „ , . , The age of the Tanganyika find is determined by the bones of other animals, now extinct, associated with them. Determination of the age of these depends in turn upon a long chain of circumstantial evidence. It is possible that the associated animals did not become extinct in Africa as quickly as elsewhere, in which case Sir Arthur’s chronology might be wrong. However, a theory attributed to the late Dr W. D. Matthew lends support to it. If each race of , animals evolved at a single centre, a succession of waves ot increasingly differentiated genera very likely radiated outward from that centre. The latest and highest types would be found in the actual place of evolution, surrounded by rings of less advanced types of lower and lower degree. By this theory, if homo sapiens began at a centre in Africa, the Piltdown man, Java man. and Peking man (all of whom were living at the same time, about 1,000,000 years ago, at the extreme edges of- Europe and Asia) ,may have been the displaced remote offshoots of early stages in evolution at the-centre. On the same supposition, thfe second ottshoot was probably the. Neanaathri or Mousterian man. who was mwwig* tributed throughout Europe 500,000 years nr. so ago. The British anthropologist believe, that the Neanderthal .man died out without descendants. All the ® ® of to-day, in his opinion, are the progeny of a still later wave. The question is by no means despite the weight of Sir Arthur Smith Woodward’s opinion. The “ a * te J. depends, of course, upon .what stage in the evolutionary process is to be called th Most l ‘ofThe older theories assume that man began in Europe or Asia. Almost simultaneously with Sir Arthur s argument in favour of Africa came word that another scientist, Gregory Mason, archaeologist of the University of Pennsyh ania Museum, was finding evidence that man developed neither in Europe, Asia, nor Africa, but in America. TTnnApes of anthropoid type found m Hon duras, and fossils of a creature known as tarsius, part ape and Professor in Wyoming, are linked by rroiessor Mason with man, for these creatures are possibly ancestral to him. The scient st has now gone to Central America to make a Botlf Sir* Arthur and Professor Mason mav be right, for the latter is apparently studying a more remote “ beginning than that which may have occurred Afncm Whether or not man began on the norm, ern hemisphere, little evidence of preglacial Americans has been discovered. Archaeological finds of the last two or three years have shown, however, that various races, probably from Asia, have lived in the northern hemisphere at dit ferent times for at least 20,000 years.