MAN 2,000,000 YEARS OLD.

Taihape Daily Times, 1 May 1919, Page 6

MAN 2,000,000 YEARS OLD.

o WHAT HE HID WHEN HE CAME

DOWN THE TREE

Man is more than two million, years old, This is the latest verdict of modern science, according to Dr. T. J. Jehu, the famous Scottish scientist, whost remarkable lectures on the ancestry of man arc attracting crowded audiences at the Royal Society of Arts, London.

Dr Jehu says that man, it is thought first began to walk about two million years ago, and it is now believed that he was descended from an animal (unnamed) who lived in a tree. The following are the characteristics of palaeolithic man according to Dr. Jehu; —

Average height, sft. 3in. in the male

the female shorter. The backbone was considerably shorter.

Hi s attitude was stooping as he could not walk quite erect, and the thigh bone was not nearly so straight as in modern man.

He had an enormous head on a short, thick-set trunk, The head and nock were habitually bent forward, and the arms short compared with the logs.

The knee was habitually bent. The hands were extremely large and without the delicate play between tub thumb and fingers so characteristic of modern man

He did not sit; he squatted There was an enormous development of the face. The. skull was flat and had an anthropoid aspect. Charred human bones which had been found in an ancient cave suggested that he had cannibalistic habits, but it was to be hoped that it was not true. '

Early palaeolithic man was able to

live In the open, and there was no traces of any burial rites. He may hayc thrown the bones of his dead to the hyenas, a custom which is practised in the present day by African tribes.

His descendants had’ to live principally in caves, probably owing to adverse climatic conditions, and there was evidence that they buried their dead.

At the close of the palaeolithic times this type of man became extinct and was succeeded by the modern species hut of a different variety.

Traces of early palaeolithic man have been found in the regions of the Marne and the Somme, While lecturing to the troops in Prance, Dr. Jehu met soldiers who found specimens of the stone implements used by their ancestors. ' * v 6 W 1

Dp. Jehu pointed out that the hippopotamus used to run about Yorkshire, and that the flesh of the now extinct mammoth dug up in Siberia is sometimes so fresh that dogs will cat it.