ORIGIN OF MAM.

Hokitika Guardian, 10 August 1926, Page 1

ORIGIN OF MAM.

CIVILISED BEINGS IN ENGLAND 70.000 YEARS AGO. (By Abbe Aforuex, the Priest-Scientist Director of Bourges University). The most ancient relics of the human race discovered in Western Europe completely explode the theory of the simian origin of mankind and prove that tho ancestors of the most cultured peoples of to-day were themselves 50,000 to 70,000 years ago a highly developed type of man. Carrying our investigations a step farther than the discovery in 1916 of the famous Piltdown skull in tile county of Sussex. M. Deperct, the well-knon professors of palaeontology and dean of the Faculty of Science of the University of Lyons, lias just completed a series of researches of the deepest interest concerning pre-liistoric man. All students of this fascinating subject of the origin of man know that what was regarded a® one of tile oldest relics of the human race was discovered at Mailer, near Heidelberg, Germany, in 1907.

It consisted of an extremely massive jawbone resembling somewhat remotely that of a chimpanzee. While there is no longer any question to-day . of seeking -the origin of the human race in any- branch of t-lie simian tribe, it is nevertheless a fact that- the jawIxnio found at Alauer, although its dentition is distinctly human, would appear to show that at the period to which it belonged our earth was peopled by races of the type now commonly known ps the Neanderthal man. It certainly much more closely approached bestiality than any existing type of mankind. INVASION OF CAVEMEN. However, the fragments of skulls discovered in 1912 and in 1916 at Pi'ltdown and which date from tl*e same Chellian epoch of the Quaternary period, show that- in those far awnperiods there lived in England a higher type of mankind, more closely resemblig the- man of to-day and shoving none of tho traces of bestiality such as the superciliary ridge (protruding frontal bone) of the man °* the Mousterian age who invaded the south-west of France thousands of years later. . -Astronomical information combined xvitli geological facts appear to indicate that the Alauer man and tho Piltdown main lived .some -50,000 to 70,000 years ago. whereas the caveman of’ the Alousterian aged lived only sonic 15.000 veins ago. If the old theories of prehistoric man are to be accepted to-day we must admit that for 35.000 to 40,000 years the European Continent as inhabited by a verv inferior nice from which our present white races have descended. The Piltdown skull seemed to contradict this view, but scientists have a rather had habit of jumping to conclusions and they argued somewhat hastily that the Piltdown skull was as exception in favbur of the race that at that period peopled the British Isl . THE SKULL’S SECRET. In 1844. however, a French peasant

found a skull which was not identified at the- time owing to the lack of correct local geological knowledge. The secret of this skull lias just been revealed by geological researches carried out' by M. Doperot. They show that tho skull, found in this peasant’s vineyard at Ifa Denise is contemporaneous with the Alauer jaw-bone. It dates also from the Chellian period, to' which doubtless also belongs tlie Piltdown skull. What is most remarkable, however, is that this La Denise skull resembles remarkably the English skull. It shows none of the bestial characteristics of the Neanderthal man. It hjas no pronounced superciliary ridge, but is a rounded skull like that of present-day civilised..man. The Piltdown man, therefore, cannot he regarded ns an exception, and it must bo admitted that this representative of the human race who lived much earlier than the caveman belonged to race that had invaded the old Continent at an earlier period.

Thus, side by side with the bestial typo of mankind, represented by the Alousterian age and propagated even to our times in a modified form in the Tasmanian aborigines and the Hottentots. there lived men closely resembling the modem white races. 31. Deperet has demonstrated irrefutably that the Piltdown man is not an exception and that there existed on our Continent. 50,000 years ago at the very least, men who if they came to earth once more and attired themselves apropriately could walk along Piccadilly or Bond-street without ! attracting the slightest attention.