MAN OR APE

Hokitika Guardian, 13 December 1929, Page 5

MAN OR APE

A SCIENTIST’S VIEW’S. OF GARDEN OF EDEN. (United Press Association—By Electric Telegraph.—Copyright.) NEW YORK, December 12. Doctor Henry Fairfield Osborne, director of the American Museum of Natural history and a. distinguished zoologist, an,l palaetiologist, challenges the tale that man is descended from the ape. Being a scientist, Osborne nas 1 iUe to do' with Adam and Eve and the green fields of Eden, but lias discovered for himself A Garden of Eden,which lie is convinced was the true authentic garden and in scientific sense this is tiie great Gobi Desert in Central Asia, the one time empire of Genghis Khan and Tartar conquerers. Lie believes that upon the great Central Asia plateau, the wind swept and treeless region the first men lived. AN OPPOSITE VIEW. LONDON, December 12. “There is not a scrap of evidence to support the contention that primitive man lived in Gobi Desert,” Elliott Smith told the “Sun” in answer to the sensational statements of Dr Osborn, of New York, who formerly supported the Darwin theory, but who now believes that man has been distinct from apes throughout the evolution, and is of the opinion that thefirst man dwelt in Gobi Desert, “it, is sheer nonsense to say that man has always been human. Undoubtedly he was descended from Anthropoid a lies, which were the common ancestors of the African apes and the human family. All available evidence indicates that man originated either in Africa or somewhere between Western India and Africa. Confirming the Darwin view that man is closely akin to apes, my research cf blood reactions and problems of liability to infection and immunity from certain diseases, corroborates emphatically that man’s blood has relation to that of the gorilla.”