ROMANCE AND SCIENCE

Otago Witness, Issue 3542, 31 January 1922, Page 23

ROMANCE AND SCIENCE

A MISSING LINK FOUND. Romance and science are blended in a remarkable degree in the story of the finding (as reported recntly by our London correspondent) of the skull of a prehistoric man buried under hundreds of tons of mineralised bones in the bottom of a Rhodesian cave. This skull, sent to England by the Rhodesian representatives of a mining company on whose estate it was found, is now in the possession of Professor Smith Woodward, of South Kensington Museum. The man who found it is Mr William E. Harris, late chemist to the company. Mr Harris, who has, like most men of scientific training, some knowledge of prehistoric man, was quick to appreciate the importance of what was found when tho skull was revealed by blasting operations in the cave. He took photographs of it, and gathered up everything of importance associated with the spot, _ which was 60ft below water level. The discoverer brought to England with him bones of the wild animals found near the skull. Among important finds near the skull were two round stones, similar to the flint “hammer stones” found in Kent and other areas where prehistoric human remains and implements have been discovered. They have been examined by Professor Elliot Smith, of London University, who stated that they showed marks of pounding, and are appar-

ently of some heavy ironstone formation. The man or his family must have used such stones for pounding flesh or grain. “Tlie amazing thing about the skull,’" sail Professor Elliot .smith, “is its state of preservation. Unlike the fossillisod Gibraltar, Java, and Piltsdown skulls, it has retained its structure, being preserved by mineral deposits which accumulated round it like a case.” Professor Sir Arthur Keith, of the Royal College of Surgeons, a great anthropologist, stated to a Daily Mail reporter that the Rhodesian skull is “the most important thing since Piltsdown”—that is, since the discovery of the skull of a prehistoric woman in flint-bearing gravel in Sussex. “It is not a revelation,” he said, “but the fulfilment of a prophecy. We hoped that a link would be found between the Gibraltar skull and the Java skull; and it is here. It assists us to the conclusion that the prehistoric man whose skull was found in Gibraltar came orginally from Africa. How did he get there? Probably by land at a time when the Straits of Gibraltar did not exist. Other discoveries may follow. In recent years the knowledge of the importance of these remains has become widespread, and workmen engaged in excavations and working in gravel pits are on the look-out for such things. All 'prehistoric grave discoveries are important. We can now date a grave by things found in association with it. They assist us in tracing * u- history of our race and the changes which are even now taking place in the human body. Everything lias changed :n our present civilisation—the clothes we wear, the food we eat, and the houses we live in. You cannot do these things and expect nothing to happen. Our present civilisation is actually the greatest experiment ever tried upon the human race. What shall we become? Our study of prehistoric remains may answer that question. We can find whence we have come, what changes have taken place in the human body, and we may even judge whither we are going.” Still another important discovery has been made in Africa. Skeletons and weapons of cliff dwellers, believed to have lived more than 12,000 years ago, described as a preBushman race—the earliest known race of man South Africa—have been found by Mr F W. Fitzsimmons, director for the Port Elizabeth Museum, during his investigations of the cliff dwellings overlooking the rocky' shores of the Tzitzikama region, between Humansdorp and Knyna Cape Colony. The discoveries are declared to be of greater importance and antiquity than the fossil skull lecently unearthed in Northern Rhodesia, and it is the opinion of Mr Fitzsimmons (says the Rand 'Daily Mail) that his excavations prove that these cliff dwellers were antecedent to the primitive bushmen. “It is a point of great interest,” he says, “ that the cliff dwellers were not of stunted physical growth, but, according to their skeletons, big men and women.’ The rock shelters are in the faces of the cliffs which overlook the sea., and it was in some instances necessary to cut a way up to them from the sea shore. “I have obtained specimens of practically everything obtainable in these cliff dwellings.” Mr Fitzsimmons says, “including a number of human skeletons, bone chisels, awls, beads, and food grinders The cliff dwellers ate shell fish, dug pitfalls for animals, and their shelters were only accessible by perilous pathways, a slip from which would have been certain death. Lentil now they were erroneously' termed Pygmy Buthmen, but I am able to prove that they were physically big and the ancestors of the Py'gmies, who eventually became stunted because their forbears lived in these low-roofed caves.”