THE EVOLUTION OF MAN*

Otago Witness, Issue 3619, 24 July 1923, Page 60

THE EVOLUTION OF MAN*

LECTURE BY MR JOSEPH M'CABE. An illustrated lecture on “The Evolution of Man” was given by Mr Joseph M‘Cabe in the Victoria Hall on the 14;h inst. Mr M'Cabe said that much of the recent remarkable progress of science bore upon tiie evolution of man. A wonderful epic could now be constructed of the human story, from the birth of the race in Asia, and every scientific authority in the world insisted that man, body and mind, was evolved from a loner type of animal. It was probably at least 2.000,003 year- since the apes and the semi-human ancestor of man parted company. We had no remains of this earliest ancestor, but the frame of man’s body to-day' compelled us to see that man and the ape came of a common stock. 'I here were scores of useless organs or muscles in the body. The eternal ears, the hair, the male breasts, and ihe vermiform appendix were obvious examples. There was only one possible interpretation of these. They were shrunken relics of what had been useful organs in an earlier ancestor. They were just the same in man and the ape, and therefore the two types came of a common ancestor. As the apes existed at least 2,000.00*0 years ago, we knew that our branch of the family must have been somewhere, probably in Southern Asia, an the same time. Human bones found in the island of Java gave us our first glimpse of tin* early' race. In brain-power this being was midway between the highest ape and the lowest savage. The Java ape-msn was probably a stagnant off-hoot of the early race. By that time man had wandered as far as Britain. Quite recently' an important international commission had settled that certain crude stone implements found in England were more than half a million years old. In England also we had the oldest human skull, going back to about 400,000 years age. and a jaw of the same type was found in Germany. These ancient skulls and jaws were, remarkably ape-like, yet man was already' more than a million years old. One hundred thousand years ago Europe was peopled by a race —men of the old Stone Age—which we knew well. \Ye had about. 30 skulls or skeletons of it. Man was still far lower than the Australian aboriginal. The key to this extraordinary slowness of progress in the early ages seemed to be climate. Europe was then as warm as Queensland, and food was enormously abundant. A great Ice Age slowly fell upon Europe, and the face of the earth was transformed. All the old types of food disappeared. and it became necessary to hunt the reindeer, the horse, and the mammoth. Man’s wit was greatly stimulated. The cold, moreover, drove him into caverns, where he formed large social groups, and in a series of beautiful slides the lecturer showed how he made rapid progress at this stage—probably about 50.000 years ago. The ice-sbeet rolled away, and a higher race poured over Europe, gradually discovering agriculture and the use of metals: During the Ice Age most of the primitive Europeans would c*o south, and would gather in the eastern end of the Mediterranean, which was then dry land. This gave us the key to the evolution of civilisation. The great African desert barred the way south, to the lands of the sun. and the increasing race would spread round the eastern end of the Mediterranean. They would easily find the fertile valley of the Nile and the plains of Mesopotamia. 11 hat was the island of Crete would then be the centre of a large tamia.