New "Britannica" Announces Discovery of the the "Missing Link"

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XLIX, Issue 39, 5 October 1922, Page 37

New "Britannica" Announces Discovery of the the "Missing Link"

In the twelfth edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica, which is to appear shortly, Prof. Grafton Elliott Smith, of the University of London, makes the startling statement that science has at last found the missing link between man and monkey. In a most iconoclastic article he sweep# away, as out of date, the conclusions of Dr. Edward B. Tylor, F.R.S., who, in writing on “Anthropology,” for the eleventh edition, declared that “no bones, with the exception of the" much-discussed Pitchecanthropus erectus, have been found 7 which can be regarded as definitely bridging the gulf between man and the lower creation.” The London savant, strange to say, has not discovered any new fossils, but simply confounds his timorous peers by recognising in the Piltdown skull (a subject of controversy for years) the long-sought “missing link.” This is not all. Delving further, he declares that mankind springs from the Siwalik Hills at the base of the Himalayas, where the anthropoid apes, the ancestors of the chimpanzees, gorillas, and the human family, were bred. This was in the Miocine period. All of this is so arbitrary that we cannot but recall Darwin’s letter to Haeckel in 1868, wherein he wrote-: “Your boldness sometimes makes me tremble.” So must the best scientists of the day address Dr. Smith. 'They have already passed on the Piltdown fossils. They doubt whether the jaw-bone and the imperfectly formed cranium, which were found at a "Considerable distance from each other, belong to the same individual; they admit there is no proof that both are human. The burden of proof is clearly on the shoulders of Dr. Smith. Others have jumped at conclusion. A few years ago Pitchecanthropus erectus of Java was hailed as the intermediate between man and ape. Now science knows the skeleton is that of a gibbon. Twenty scientists have twelve different opinions of the Neanderthal skull, while practically -all admit that the Galley Hill remains, the most ancient of all, represent clearly Homo sapiens as we know him to-day.V. Virchow’s dictum that “we have no fossil remains of imperfectly developed man” stands as the almost universal opinion of reputable science. Wherever remains have been found man has always appeared as true man. Palaeontology has shown us an older race of men with beetling brows and an absence of chin, but there is no trace, as yet, of even .a probable argument in favor of the ape-like animal progenitor of man. We have not obtained Dr. Smith’s argument; only. his conclusions have been broad- ‘ casted. Will he bolster up his assertions, as Haeckel did his Law of substance, by fraud -and falsity, .or will this • twentieth century Columbus make modern science bow its : head in shame at his display of erudition? ;; \