THE RISE OF MAN.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXIII, Issue 4442, 19 July 1922, Page 1

THE RISE OF MAN.

A PROCESS OF AGES> In the concluding lecture o( a series of three on life and evolution delivered by Acting Professor Harrison at Sydney the lecturer dealt interestingly with man and evolution. While there was no guarantee that man was the final product of evolution he was the highest product so far, said the professor. The evolution of man was fairly well worked out. Anthropoid apes, such as the chimpanzee, were much more closely related to man in structure than were the lower monkeys. Primitive man passed through, all stages from tin? life ot a niere wild animal up to the possession of a definite civilisation. The oldest man-like creature, the apeman of Java, was estimated to have lived half a million years ago. Man began to use stone tools 100,000 years ago, and did not reach the stage of using metals until 5000 B.C. The key of man’s dominant poaU tion, said the lecturer, lay in the fact tliat he had come to use tools and machines, and with the invention of speech and writing man had been able to add a social inheritance to liis instincts. Sound sociology must -be based upon an adequate appreciation O|f evolutionary laws, and it fell within tlie province of the zoologist to put forward general principles which had helped the successful advance of animal groups. The most striking principle was adaptation. The fittest was no - - necessarily the strongest and most ruthless. Co-operation would seem to be the secret of success. Industry for the common good and the provision of an adequate offspring, ivell nurtured in body .and mind, were essential for the success of the race;