FOSSILISED MAN

Hokitika Guardian, 6 September 1932, Page 8

FOSSILISED MAN

NEW JAVA DISCOVERY. v* . , . • EXPERIMENTS BY NATURE. sjk LONDON, August 31, 7 Ifrbifessojr Elliot ,@mith ga.ve a special intorylew. on the significance of th« new species of fossil man whose skull was discovered in java by Mr C. Ter ’Hair,', of the Dutch Geological Survey. By an. odd Coincidence,this new specimen of Pleistocene man was found embedded in the bon e deposits of the valiey of the Solo River, . not many miles from Trinil, where. Dubois ,disco vefdd. the famous and earlier Pithecantithropus forty years ago. Homo Solo on sis, as this hitherto quite, unknown and distinct species of anthropoid man has been named, probably belongs to the mid-period of the Pleistocene Age, and thus is later than Tekihg man, Ja.va m. a, and tile Pilt4©wtt, man, but considerably earlier than Neauderthiall man of., Europe, the last of whose race mingled with the first .true men (Homo Sapiens) known to the • immeasurably tong record of hum mi history.

Tv ‘ SPECIES. . ' . Professor iElliot Smith first maue clear thfit the line of th e brain' ca 7 -e :/most -of : which was secured), with its , curiously flattened occiput or base v of • the sku’l,' diverged sufficiently from ' the - type-Skulls of thb ! . Neanderthal race to ;be called a definitely separate species from it, though theto are many technically ‘identical points of s'milaiity between Homo Soloen'is and Homo Noahdefthalensis. The more, prim.t> ye ehatoctors, of the ,new skill! uii&ar#d :at. Ngaudong would suggest, he fi kid. that this Javanese specieg lived long before the Neanderthators. • - ! Professor Eiliot Smith pointed out that we therefore have to regard Honu ■ loloensi?. as intermediate between tb Apeimajn. of Jhvb;- who was Dubois great find, and. Neanderthal man, with certain, resemblances:, tjo -Homo Rhode; s!'ensto who, in his turn,. possesses cm tain . affinities with?.r;Ndand©rtb,al -. nian Though-:the Ngandong skull is more ..advanced, than that of Java man, the :;n-ofestibr; [scouted'-the original -Dutch •dea that the distinctive type of Homo | ,Soloen sis entitled him to - the rank of a sfiediaiT genus; all his ©wp. ■ 1 “The chief interest in the '.'*ove?ation 'if a, hew .type of the; human family,” the professor - continued, “in what was once .the j extreme - .south-eastern ' comer, ■if. Asia is - that it has' already produced > the more ancient I'and ''much - more primitive Pithecanthropus as well as . the-', relatively ‘modern fossil men of r as 'protof 1 Australian,?’. ,• ,:...b/.':v.

PROFESSOR OSBORN’S SUGGESTION

W© then weut.,on>to, 'discuss. the tsug- ■ gestton of '' Professdf Xjsb'dfh, "oi tuy American Museum of Natural History, yhai- tbe origin of man has to be sougm. ••./i ooutral Asia, aim that the human race.- thence spread ; both eastwaru anu • aescwqi'd.. : Prbfes6or>,.Elliot Wraith .was, adwever, somewhat! sceptical of the new find providing; very definite . evidence of .this-theory.- - -

.That there were parallel series of development., one in Western Europe and one in Eastern Asia, /the latter cbhtaimng tl)e most primitive. . types, Pithecanthropus and (SinautlP'opuA .Peking man), is plain. But evi- . aeiice for assigning the' African Gontihent as the home of the earliest : .n*>n whb began. to emerg e from the •liithropoid stock is not demonstrably . weakened by ..the! new .discovery. Almost every year, new species of ape- ; like men are being revealed, and the , very abundance tof! the modern anatomical record .goes'.! to show how incoinplete. it .yet- is i; It was not so .j vqry long ,ago. that even men of science believed that tlie. world of life began attoiit 4000 B.C. ' • ... \., > Professor Elliot Smith added that i what is .of more general interest ti\hn . fine shades between the anatomica* characters of primeval man is Nature’s experimentalism before she secured the .right pattern for the human race. We proceeded, to examine a figure, which .gave a linear demonstration of the skull Tines of five different species of .men— Java man, Peking . man, Neanderthal [mail, Homo Australiensis and Homo -Soloensig, the most recent addition to thb human family.

TOWARD THE HUMAN

. Each of these lines traced its own course, the lowest or more primitive .(Java man) being the gmaiHest 'in out.iiite and the Austfaiiah the most capacious'. Only one of thes e lines, that of ■ the new Java man, conspicuously intercrossed with the line representing th£ Neanderthaler’s craniupi. What future discoveries of still un•kppwn epecies of extinct man .will ■introduce more complicated interlacings indho diagram? That coldly expository figure dfd indeed open up a niiracu.’ou ' wofld of eanly strivings wherein the anthropoid design seemed to experience sortie mighty urge to become humanoid and in the end human. We we r c viewing' 'Nature’s workshop,, an which sketch after sketch had appeared and was discarded by the artificer untill after many aeons the right and true type was reached. ; i: . v> ,. , 1 Homo fioloensis, said the professor, waft just on e more of Nature’s fertile ,experiments and failures, sommewhere half-way between . ,the most simian pkull of that earlier Java man who once, lived on the same island with },im, and that of Australian man, whose descendants have not yet joined the vast of thi *ttinguißhfiid ..