THE ANTIQUITY OF MAN

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXI, Issue 10713, 9 November 1912, Page 3

THE ANTIQUITY OF MAN

..'n;iA. Keith, M.i)., bMI.S., gave a, disclosure on "Modern Probiv ui:» relating to the Antiquity of Man." siid lie co v uld not vito a more stalwart representative of tho orthodox opinion to-day than Prof. Boyd Dawkins, who held tliafc man was enveloped during the Pleistocene period and was therefore, from a geologist's point of view, a recent addition to tho earth's fauna. A moderate figure for the duration of the Pleistocene period was 400,000 years, and it might be taken as the orthodox opinion that the dawn of the very earliest form of humanity- lay 100,000 years behind us, and in that time man -as he was known tiacl been evolved from a crude almost prehistoric form. 'Caking the view of M. En tot as representative of modern heterodoxv, he pointed out that if his claim to have traced man by means of his colithic cirttnro through tho lung Plioceno and •Miocene periods, and even into .tho Oligocene period; wero admitted, on tho estimates of Professor Sollas, which were disputed by M. Pntot, tho antiquity of man m.ust bo placed at over 3,000,000 years. Tho problem of man's antiquity was not yet solved. Tho picture he wished to leave in their minds was that in tho distant past there was not one kind but a number of very different kinds of men in existence, all of which had become oxtinct except that branch winch had given origin to modern man. On tho imperfect knowledge, at present at disposal it seemed highly probable that man as we knew him 'now took on his human near the beginning of the Pliocene period. How long ago that was must, bo measured by tho changes which the earth and living things had undergone, and yet it was only human to try and find a- means of measuring that period in a term of years, and the estimates -nt- hand gave an antiquity of at least a million and a half years.