OLD JANE OF JAVA

Stratford Evening Post, Volume II, Issue 23, 19 August 1932, Page 5

OLD JANE OF JAVA

FAMOUS "APE" MAY HAVE BEEN A WOMAN NEW YORK.—"OId Joe of Java," as ribald persons sometimes call me world's most famous primitive—the Java ape-man, discovered in IS92 — should really be nicknamed "Old Jane of .lava." Tins is the startling contribution to modern anthrop: logy made by Dr Alexander HrdlieKU, curator of physical anthropology at the SmUhson. ian institute in Washington. lie is one of the lew scientists who have examined the Java remains found by Dr. Dubois, and in a report published today he slates that "tiie Java skull cap indicates plainly that the individual was a "female, and must have been past middle age." Unusually Tall She was, he says, 511 ain tall or Sin above the average human female stature. Dr. Hrdlicka does not argue that she was Adam's mother-in.law, for siie goes back some 500,000 or more years before the Garden'] of Eden was nourishing, so, as one commeu tatoi remarks, "Adam had his tribulations, but. this prehistoric old lady was not one of Ins griefs."

Does thui new theory .settle the vexed question whether man or wo. man came first. For 50 years this round-shouldered, long-armed, apelike person has been declared a man, but now Dr. Hrdlicka conies forward chivalrously with the declaration that the honour of being the first km wi> human belongs to (he lair sex. Dr. Hrdlicka believes that this ancient "mother of the human race" \\ as killed by a crocodile, the marks of whose teeth still remain in. her thigh.