THAT MISSING LINK.

Taranaki Daily News, 21 December 1929, Page 1 (Supplement)

THAT MISSING LINK.

GHOSTS OF DEAD YEARS.

(By

“Plato.”)

Thank heaven there is a “Missing

Link,” for it provides several thousands of scientists with harmless and remunerative employment and protectsmankind at large from the awful truth. In every corner of the world those people with the terrible name they so richly deserve are digging into the murky past—why, no-one rightly knows. Probably if they found the Missing Link none would be more disappointed than they, for then they would have to go back home and work for a living again. Mysterious bones are occasionally unearthed by the diggers. After cabling the news to all parts of the world they hold several conferences of leading scientists and then generally identify the remains as those of a cow or a nigger, but once in a while they are not quite sure to which they Delong. That is the most important occasion of all, for to cover their utter ignorance of . the facts they dazzle the world with science and declare most positively that the wretched piece of bone is none other than the Phillipopolis Damascus Man. Generally they warmly dispute hie age, but always they fix it well beyond the memory of the oldest inhabitant of the village lest the quarrelsome old fellow should contradict them. Of course, the scientists have no means of proving that Phillipopolis Damascus is not actually the bone from last Sunday’s sirloin roast buried by some dog vvith an eye to the future, but that does not matter —down he goes in history as Phillipopolis Damascus, aged one million five hundred and sixty-four thousand two hundred and thirty-one years seven months, another step nearer the Common Ancestor than the last jawbone diecovered in Central Africa.

Only the other day the startling news came from China that Sinanthropus Pekinensis had been found, a hoary, old chap just turned a million and something. Reconstructed in his living form he was a crude affair and frightful to behold, and men and women throughout the world felt a twinge of anxiety-— could Sinanthropus Pekinensis be tlieir own particular ancestor?- No one would take pride in entering him as the star item in the family, tree. But to the paleontologists he was the greatest ever, and now there will* be a vast migration of scientists to China, hot on the trail of the Missing Link.

Sinanthropus Pekinensis is the. fifth really big thrill these ghoulish diggers have had in the last century. The first was tho discovery of the Apeman of Java, a wild, hairy beast who was over-' whelmed when the Lawn volcano burst forth and burned him with lava near what is now known as Trimal. He it was who displayed the first family traits by collecting each meal and dividing it equally amongst his family, including Mrs. Java, a peculiar habit that has descended to the present day. He may have had other peculiarities, but they are shrouded in mystery; only the one is indisputable.

The Piltdown Man —or Dawn Man—was next. He, strangely enough, was found in England. His most remarkable feature was that he bore a striking resemblance' to the Venus de Milo in one particular—both, arms were missing. Other distinguishing characteris* tics were that he invented the sling and throwing-stick ac weapons for the hunt,and thereby brought about a permanent estrangement between himself and all the. other monkeys that swarmed in England at that period. In a sand pit at Heidelberg was discovered a piece of bone that subsequently became known as the Heidelberg Man. It is said he was the first to discover the cunning scheme of living in a house, which happened at that time to be a cave or the hollow trunk of a tree. He it was, also, who invented the first tools—crude sharpened flints that were used for fashioning throwing-sticks.

But to the Neanderthal Man, a gentleman in the form of a piece of bone discovered in Europe, must be given the credit for a really important advance. Neanderthal Man is his palmy days roamed throughout Central Europe at least, and his number, before the dec; e set in (probably through in-breed-ing) was legion. lire was first pressed into the service of humanity by the Neanderthal Man. It. is imagined that he discovered the use of it by observing the results of an electrical storm in the forest, but certain it is that he employed fire in his family life and kept it burning continuously in queer baskets made of stones. About this hearthstone developed to a' greater degree than ever the family idea which in some cases still subsietts.

It was when as a result of a raid by a hostile tribe the Neanderthal Man's lire was extinguished that he discovered means of creating fire by the act of striking flints together or by rubbing pieces of wood one upon the other. Neanderthal Man in addition to having other vices was a cannibal —or at least so it is supposed by the fact that roasted human bones have been found, cracked for their marrowfat. Obviously he w’as developing pleasant lit tie" human trickfl.

But why scare up the ghosts of the dead centuries? Some evidently nervous person .said, “Let the dead past bury its dead”; he could not bear the thought of having his past history laid before a staring -world. But not so these paleontologists —their very name sounds militant —they are out for the truth and to secure it they would parade all the skeletonfl of our sacred dead just ao that they could say: “See!' I told you your several-greats-grandfather was a cannibalistic bone-cracking, rip-roaring gorilla.”

Of course most of us are proud of our anceetors as we know them back, say, to William tho Conqueror. And of course any of us would be pleased to point to King Solomon, Moses or Socrates as peaches on our family tree, but why cake the risk of having to include Judas Ijcariot or Guy Fawkes?