THE SUSSEX SKULL.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXV, Issue 1060, 6 February 1913, Page 4

THE SUSSEX SKULL.

IS IT THE TONG-SOUGHT

MISSING LINK?

A race o£ men who could not talk, who roamed about England before even the first of the several known glacial ages, who lived on roots and shellfish and wild truit, and dodged the mastodon, the hippopotamus, and the sabretoothed tiger —such is the astonishing link in the story of the origin of man which leading scientists believe to have been discovered in the “Sussex skull,” which is supposed to have been not the skull ot a mau at all, but of a woman.

The skull was shown at the meeting of the Geological Society, as the cables told us, and the accounts by mail say that all the scientists in England were agog with something like excitement, for it was declared by Dr Smith Woodward, of the South Kensington Natural History Museum, that the type ol man to which the skull belongs has never before been discovered. In other words, here is a new race of men, in points strongly resembling the apes, but still unquestionably “mau,” although devoid of the power of speech. SEARCH OP. YEARS. “We have been looking for such a ‘missing link’ for years,” one ot the leading anthropologists said, “and here we have found him. Some years ago a skull of somewhat similar type was discovered at Neanderthal, in Germany, but in that case it was doubtful whether the faculty of speech existed or not. It might have done so, to some extent. Earlier still is the ‘Javaman,’ a type which, although possessing human points, was more nearly akin to the apes, and which certainly bad no power of speech. “Now, for the first lime, we have found a race of men who unquestionably could not talk as we understand talking, but who were as clearly human as the ‘Javaman’ is not. “The evidence on the point is convincing. The ‘speech centres’ in the brain are, as a distinguished expert on such matters pointed out, so feebly developed that the brain power for speech was practically non-existent. The jaw also has no inside ridge to which the muscles controlling the tongue in tha ‘talking man’ are attached. Thus the power or talking must undoubtedly have been absent. “Then it is clear that the front teeth must have been very large and protruding, and a man with such teeth could not talk. Yet the back teeth must have been like human teeth, and although the, jaw, without the evidence of these teeth, resembles the jaw ot an ape, the top ot the skull as distinctly resembles that of man, although with only two-fifths of modern man’s brain power.” THE AGE OP MAN. Opinions differ to some extent as to the period of time which has elapsed since this first of all known human beings chewed roots and shellfish iu the Sussex sub-tropics. “Hundreds of thousands of years,” was the view which Dr. Smith Woodward expressed. Professor Keith, the secretary of the Anatomical Society of Great Britain, is inclined to place the non-talking man back iu the days of the Pliocene elephant, or hippopotamus, and he said the discovery marks by far the most remarkable advance in the knowledge ol the ancestry of man made in England. “It gives us a stage iu the evolution of mau,” he said, “which we have only imagined since Darwin propounded his theon.” In Professor Keith’s view the “Sussex man” was man “still .in a simian stage of evolution,” and he holds that the skull supports the conclusions which present-day anthropologists have come to, that in the early days—many hundreds of thousands of years ago—there were quite different species ol mankind existing at the same time.

Some of these types of mao, it is held, died out altogether, while others developed into man as he now is.

The “Sussex man” is only one of the “missing links’’ between man and the ape, and scientists are now greatly encouraged in their hope that others, forming a fairly complete chain, will still be discovered. Next summer a hunt Is to be made in Sussex for other prehistoric remains, and great things are hoped for. Even the phase “hundreds of thousands of years,’’ conveys but an indistinct idea of the time that has passed since the “Sussex man’’ searched for the elusive shellfish in the river beds. But at that time there was no North Sea and lions, bears and rhinoceroses enjoyed life in southern England.