THE ANTIQUITY OF MAN.

Otago Witness, Issue 3352, 12 June 1918, Page 54

THE ANTIQUITY OF MAN.

A NEW CHALLENGE:

A remarkable lecture on "The Origin of Man " was delivered at King's College recently by Professor Wood-Jones, Professor of Anatomy in the University of London. That man is not, as has been held till quite lately, descended from the anthropoid apes; that these would be in fact more accurately described as having been descended from man; that man, as man, is far more ancient than the whole anthropoid branch; that, compared with him, the chimpanzee and the orang-outan are newcomers on this planet—these were the assertions made by Professor WoodJones, which he claimed to have been proved not only by recent anatomical research, but to be dedhcible from the whole trend of geological and anthropclical discovery. " Quite one of the most interesting references in Professor Wood-Jones's lecture was to the recent reports by Dr Stewart Arthur Smith, of Sydney, on the Talgai skull, discovered in- 1889, in the Darling Downs, Queensland, but never seriouslv investigated till 1914. This undoubtedly human skull, very highly mineralised, was found in a stratum with extinct pouched mammals, and is probably as ancient as the famous Piltdown skull, whose human nature was so hotly being disputed just before the war. In deposits of the same age as those in which the Talgai skull was unearthed were found the bones of dingo dogs, and also the bones of extinct pouched mammals gnawed by these dogs. Now the dramatic interest of this discovery lies in the following facts. "Until the arrival of Captain Cook in Australia no non-pouched mammals had ever intruded upon the Australian island continent. It is geologically certain that Australia has always been surrounded by sea since the time of the evolution of pouched mammals. Had it not been so it is almost certain that the many non-pouched mammals in the neighbouring continents would have migrated thither. Kow, then, can the presence of the Talgai man and his dingo dogs, alone among these, be accounted for? We are almost forced to the conclusion that he must have arrived there in boats with his family and his domesticated dogs. And the astounding fact emerges that at a period in the world's history when, only a year or two ago. the most advanced anatomists were satisfied that man was scarcely distinguishable from his brute ancestors, a man already so highly developed as to have domesticated animals, to be a boatbuilder and navigator, was actually in Australia, and to an astonishing degree the reasoning master of his own fate.

" In view not only of this, but of even more convincing evidence, gathered from man's own anatomical structure, Professor Wood-Jones made a- moving appeal for the whole reconsideration of that postDarwinian conception of man's comparatively recent emergence from the brute kingdom, which lie claimed to have been so "disastrous to the world's thought in view of present tragic events. "The missing link of Huxley, he asserted, if ever found, would not be a more ape-like man, but a more human ape. Such phrases as ' The will to live,' 'The struggle for existence/ and 'The survival of the fittest'—the whole idea of what Professor Wood-Jones describes as end-on evolution from lower to higher forms—must be abandoned in view of our new knowledge. " Man as man is inconceivably more ancient than has «ver been supposed, even by so original and daring an investigator as Professor Arthur Keith."