EVOLUTION

Taranaki Daily News, Volume L, Issue 319, 18 January 1908, Page 4

EVOLUTION

A latUiTFt'L SCIENTIFIC THEORY. Ie ia regard to the uewa from Sunni- uc tra, a Dutch-owned island in the Malay Archipelago, concerning Dr. Elbert, a ' c (Jerjnan geologist, who lias been conduct- . iug rosea relics iu South Sumatra, reporting that tlie titory of the discovery by j. him of an ape-like man is false, it is interesting to trace mans descent. According to tlie theory of evolution, man's pedigree does not stop at some ape, or ape-like animal, but goO> right back to the most remote ancestors of all living organisms, wliich were beings of the lu simplest imaginable kind, organisms m without organs, like the still existing monera. By slow stages of develop- • ment, extending over vast periods of time, the ape eventually appeared, and lithe last stage, ljofore man, is the pithecanthropi, the pithecanthropus erectile w being thus described by Haeekel:— w In adaptation to a more erect gait, the legs hj; have become stronger, and the hind-hand has been turned into a llat-soled walk- p ( ing ' foot.' The brain is considerably enlarged. Pn-fciimably, it is devoid of t] so-called articulate speech; this is imli- o rated by the fact that children havo to learn the language of their parents, and h by the circumstance that comparative tl philology declines it impossible to reduce the chief human language* lo anything v like one comnmn origin.'' llaeckel sums n up the matter as follows: —*'11 we look e at the rcMills of modern anthropogeny from the highest point of view, and compare all its eiHpivienl arguments, we. are jnMilied in allirming thai Ihe descent of man. from an extinct tertiary series of primates, is not a vague hypothesis, but an historical fact." (ireat. interest was aroused in the scientific world in 18!)1, when Dr. Eugene j Dubois discovered in Java the pithecnnthropus erectus. This famous ape-like man, or man like ape, provoked an nni- * mated discussion at tlie International Zoological ('(ingress at l/'yden. Tutor- j Innately tlie fossil remains are very scantv - the skull-cap, a femur, and (wo teeth! The result of the discussion was that of twelve experts present, three held that the remains belonged to a low race of man; three declared them to be , those of a man-like ape of great, size; the rest niianta.ined that they belonged lo an intermediate form, which directly connected primitive man with the anthropoid apes. r " It is hard to see, apart from further information, how the discovery of human remain* '20,000 years old can tend to disprove the Darwinian theory. On the face of ii, the 'discovery simply means that a skeleton, which soino people thought might be a "missing link," is pronounced by Dr. Elbert to be (hat of a human being, and not of an ape, or of an ape-man. Of course, it M-cms to show that 20.000 years ago. mail was still man, whereas, about that 1 time, according to some estimates, hel on-lit to lmve been :i "lower animal" Hut -iii-h (siimates are never supposed| to be anything like exad. ami, in any case, a period of from 20.000 to 100,000 'r years since man's first appearance is •renerallv regarded as a minimum. • .