The Daily News THURSDAY, DECEMBER 19, 1929. A PREHISTORIC MAN.

Taranaki Daily News, 19 December 1929, Page 10

The Daily News THURSDAY, DECEMBER 19, 1929. A PREHISTORIC MAN.

The discovery of a skull of Sinanthropus Pekinensis, or the Peking man, is reported from Shanghai to be regarded as the most important discovery of its kind ever made, surpassing even the apeman of Java (Pithecanthropus erectus) and the Piltdown mail (Eoanthi’opus) of England. The find has been made, no doubt, by Dr. Davidson. Black, a graduate of Toronto University, who for some years has been Professor of Anatomy at the Union Medical College in Peking. . He has been closely investigating some Early Pleistocene deposits of limestone . at Chou Kou Tien, 25 miles from Peking/ where in 1926 he found two fossil human teeth, which were said to be so different from alp other human teeth .as to justify the creation of a new genus and species of the human race for their reception. Further discoveries since then by Dr. Birgher Bohlin and Dr. Black have confirmed their belief that the, new genus, Sinanthropus Pekinensis, was as old as Pithecanthropus and Eoanthropus. Prior to the finding of the skull announced this week fragments of two jaws, one adult and one infantile, were investigated, and the scientists went so far as to reconstruct the head of the Peking man. Their deduction was that he had a much larger brain than his Javan contemporary, and the bones of the skull were thinner than those of the Piltdown ‘skull and different in type. The skull itself, of course, will, enable the scientists to ela-; borate their ideas, and it is interesting to learn from the cablegram on the subject that they have been confirmed in their belief that the Peking man represents an entirely new genus of the human family. In a recent statement regarding Dr. Black’s work Professor G. Elliott Smith, an English authority, remarks as a * curious fact that the early member of the human family who lived on the eastern littoral of the vast continental land mass much more closely resembled his contemporary living in the Far West (England) than his neighbour in; Java. The discovery of three such contrasted types at the beginning of the Pleistocene Period on the extreme fringes, east, south and west, of the vast domain of man suggests to Professor Smith two reflections. He says that their common human ancestor must have lived long before them,' in the Pliocene Period, to, allow time for such contrasts to be developed; A variety of experimental types of the human family, grotesque caricatures of mankind, must have been roaming about in the heart of the great continent, working out the destiny of man, at the time ’when nature was throwing the jetsam and flotsam of her failures into Java, Sussex and China. Dr. Black claims that the. Peking‘ inari' approaches far nearer the type of the genus homo than does either the Piltdown or the Java man. The jaws found at Chou Kou Tien present those ape-like conditions. which, leading European palaeontologists regard as placing the Piltdown jaw outside the human status, but even after seventeen years controversy concerning the ihterpre--tation of the Piltdown fossils continues. It may be hoped that Sinanthropus Pekinensis will.resolve some of- the doubts still existing in the minds of scientists and she’d fresh light on the early history of the human race. Up to the. present the -weight -of scientific opinion -favours- the conclusion that both ■ men and apes are descended from a common ancestry. Somewhei’e. in. the .history of man, the. inquirers - say; ■ there -was .an animal- - that - • had • some of the charactefistics ‘of man. aiid some of those of the apes,-, and its descendants developed along different lines, some remaining in the forests and acquiring all the characteristics of the apes, and others living on the plains and developing the 'characteristics of man. The farther back the investigation of fossils is carried the nearer the scientists claim to be to creatures that were neither men nor apes. The story is very far from complete, many blanks remaining - to be filled in if the necessary evidence can be discovered. If Professor Smith’s deductions are right the Peking man will not be, as he was described in the cable news, the nearest approach to “the missing link.” It is not a missing link between the ape and the human that the investigators are seeking, but a link in the life story of mankind. The skull of Sinanthropus Pekinensis may be a mine of information for them.