A LINK WITH THE PAST

Dominion, Volume 9, Issue 2659, 3 January 1916, Page 3

A LINK WITH THE PAST

(Contributed.) The latest important addition to the show cases of the Dominion Museum is a finoly-modelled cast of the "Piltdown skull," as reconstructed by Dr. Smith-Woodward. The late celebrated Dr. Jowctfc said long ago: "I am afraid .mankind must contrive to do without a first parent." Were lie to return among us now lie ■would bo even more emphatic in that opinion.- Science gives no support at all to the notion that the present races of mankind are descended from an ancestral pair, liowever described. The best' readily-accessible description of the Piltdown skull is to be found in a work, "Stan and His Forerunners," by Dr. Buttel-Reepen, the authorised English translation being by Mr. A. G. Thacker, A.R.C.S. (London).' In his preface, Mr. Thacker says: "R-ecent researches have : brought out in a striking manner the important fact that in the remote past there" existed not one kind of man, but soveral very distinct kinds, just as there are half-a-dozen diverse sorts o.f apes living at the present daj. Thus, in addition to the modern type, four different species are known—the now familiar Veaudertal race; the creatures represented by a single jaw found near Heidelberg; the famous ape-man of Java; and lastly the Piltdown race, the Evantliropus dawsoni, known, from the Temarkable skull found at Piltdown Common, Sussex, tho discovery of which was made known to the world at the end of 1912. How far the term "man" is really applicable to all those kindred species, these forerunners of mankind proper, is a moot point, the Javan ape-man in particular being very unlike ourselves. This verbal difficulty is of course one which, on the theory of gradual evolution, was certain to arise as soon as geologists ;discovered any of the so-called missing links, and it may become necessary eventually to revise our terminology and restrict the term man to the living 6pecies. However that may be, it now seems almost certain that the oldest stone implements antedate by long ages the appearance of any being whom we should, have greeted as human if wo had met him in the flesh. A mere glance at the photographs of -skulls included in "Man and His Forerunners" forcefully emphasises the translator's opinion. The Piltdown skull is considered to be unique—the first known cranium of a race new to science. The pity is that tho brain it once held .cannot tell its own story of how the world wagged when.it was alive and active. [.We may stand contemplating this old brain-box, half dazed with hard think-, ing over those days of a faraway past; ing over those days of a far away past; less recent, fragmentary fossil," but silence alone ensues. Musing over it, we can . hardly imagine the owner of that .lowrbrowed skull' as being human in any . sense in which we define the term to-day. With a recent poet: "We figure him a savage, ■ With hands to rudely ■ shape A weapon'for his uses; Low-templed like the ape." He lived a long time ago, at a time probably (separated from the present by hundreds of thousands of years. While bo lived we may infer that he represented the racial-best of his day and generation—that he was human at the highest, though the brute within him glowed. ' fl