SCIENTISTS AND LIFE

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23690, 23 December 1938, Page 13

SCIENTISTS AND LIFE

ASPECTS EXAMINED INQUEST ON AGED BRITON CHEMISTRY OF MAN The British Association for the Advancement of Science held an inquest over one of the oldest and deadest Englishmen, writes Waldemar Kaempffert in the New York Times. He lived in Swanscombe, now a part of London. 250.000 years ago.

His remains are all too few —two petrified parts of his hinder skull—but they constitute what Sir Arthur Keith considers the most important discovery made in England in his lifetime, the famous Piltdown man not excepted. A. T. Marston, a London dentist, dug up the bones in 1935, together with the remains of elephants, rhinoceroses, deer, and hunting dogs When he submitted his bones to leading authorities, together with his opinion that they were at least 100,000 years old, he was treated with the pitying scorn that usually falls to the lot of amateurs. Now that they have had two years to study the Swanscombe man, today the same authorities admit their error. Sir Arthur said the Swanscombe skull came from the “only mid-pleistocene Englishman known to us.”

The discovery is important because it provides another link in the chain of evolution of the human race and because it shows that as far back as 250,000 years ago there were human beings in England who were not markedly different from the Englishmen who walk in Piccadilly. Though unlike any other known European, the Swanscombe man bears some resemblance to the much older Piltdown man. Sir Arthur is sure there is some relationship between the Swanscombe and Piltdown men Degree of Difference “ The degree of difference between the Piltdown and Swanscombe skulls is that seen when we compare an automobile of 1900 with its successor of to-day," he explained. At the end of the inquest Mr Marston. the Swanscombe discoverer, arose. He did not mince words in describing the scorn and scepticism with which his findings originally were received He vowed he would go back to Swanscombe to find the rest of the bones, and wound up with his own version of the Swanee River.

“ ’Way down upon the old Thames River—there’s where I want to roam.

“There’s where my heart is ever, there’s where I found my bone.” The Middle Stone Age also occu pied the association It is a period that goes back 140,000 years to the time when the climate of Europe was decidedly milder than now It survived into the first cold phase of the last Ice Age and is still found in some places. During the warm interval between the two glaciations Homo Sapiens spread ove Europe, produced his stone tool industry, and crowded out the Neanderthal man

According to Sir Arthur. “ In the Middle Stone Age, just as in tha

present age, each continent had its own peculiar races of humanity. Yet in the evolution of these races there seems to have been a remarkable degree of parallelism. Humanity seems to have passed through very similar stages. This raises the question of the resemblances of the culture of the Middle Stone Age in different regions. Inter-continental migration is suggested by some to explain these resemblances, but Sir Arthur finds anatomical evidence against it which is like saying that Chinese and Englishmen show certain resemblances in culture yet belong to different stock.

Knowledge Diffused

It follows, Sir Arthur believes, that men of the Middle Stone Age must have diffused their knowledge even though they did not diffuse themselves.

After listening to the chemical and mechanical interpretation of evolution delivered by Dr J. Z. Young, the biologists in attendance realised in a new sense that life is the supreme paradox of the universe. In fact, it is so paradoxical that, considered as a machine that takes what it wants from its surroundings and converts it into flesh and blood, man seems li 1- highly improbable organism. Dr Young began by pointing out that evolution can be considered as the relation of living things to their environment Whether biologists always know what they mean when they say one organism is “ higher ” or “ lower ” than anotnei there is no difficulty if the organism is considered chemically in relation to its environment. It turns out that the very simplest organisms chemically much like the ooze they live in. The more complex the form of life, the more it differs chemically from its surroundings

“Every living individual may be considered as a physical system in unstable equilibrium with an environment with which it markedly differs.” is the way Dr Young out it.

“ Whether it is an amoeba or a man the living thing takes what materia] it needs to maintain its integrity. As a result it must do work or expend energy, for it must overcome the natural flow of the material “ Consider the fish: it swims in the salty sea, it swallows sea water, yet its blood is less salty than the sea. And it achieved this result by going against the natural chemical current, so we have an improbable distribution of salt from the chemist’s standpoint.” Nobody knows how these improbable distributions occur or why, he went on. What Begins It All “ What sets a living creature apart is its curious ability to increase the amount of matter which it assimilates and organises by growing and reproducing its own kind We are so used to growth and reproduction that we accept them as natural. But physically and chemically they are very unnatural.”

Probably the earliest forms of life were not very different from their environment in composition. They contained water and salts of the primordial sea In the course of evolution living organisms acquired mechanisms—tricks, Dr Young calls them —which made it possible for them to live in sur-

roundings that became more and more theoretically improbable or less easy. “I believe it is largely the acquisition of these special tricks for obtaining living materials which gives to organisms the characteristics we refer to as ‘higher’,” said Dr Young in explaining evolution. “All about us are living examples of these living anomalies —chemical creatures with salty systems living in fresh water, marine animals taking to land. The higher the animal the more tricks acquired. “ Under pressure of competition more and more complex mechanisms are built up, so that the higher we go the stranger become the chemical circumstances in which the living process is carried on. Roots and leaves are tricks devised by a plant to get what it wants from the soil and air. Fins, wings, and legs are other tricks that make it possible for higher forms of life to forage for proper chemicals. A Startling Phenomenon

“In this sense man is a startling phenomenon. His temperature is higher than that of his environment as a rule. He is composed largely of water, yet lives on dry land. He has more improbable tricks than any other animal, but other animals have astonishing physical and chemical tricks. So we must not dwell too much on man’s psychological and technical superiority.” The more one studies physiology and the relation of the organism to its environment the more striking are the complex mechanisms of adjustment that early developed, according to Dr Young. “ Nevertheless,” he said, “ there does seem to be a tendency, due presumably to the pressure of competition produced by the phenomena of growth reproduction, for ever-more complex forms to be built up and for living matter to develop under increasingly strange conditions.” Dr Young believes that this new approach to life will be valuable “ because it provides material for the joint consideration of the problem of evolution acceptable to the geologist, biologist, ecologist and biochemist; it may help solve the controversy whether an organism adapts itself or is adapted.”