The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1896-01-05
MAN OLDER THAN ADAM.
Relics Found of Ills Presence While
Half an Ape.
From the New York Press.

From the New York Press.
New evidence has been heard and seen
by the University of Edinburgh in sup
port of the theory of evolution. At Tri-
mil, on the Island of Java, where he was
searching for vertebrate fossils under COM
mission from the Dutch Indian govern
meIA, DR.. Dubois, an eminent anatomist,
uncovered fossilized bones which, he
maintains, are the bones Of the long
sought for missing link" DR.. Dubois
told the professors at Edinburgh that his
fossils We're found in strata resting on beds
Of marine limestone. These beds are de-
termined to be of the middle period of the
latest geological epoch. Consequently,
the remains, II found 10 be those of man,
are doubly important as discoveries, as
no traces Of humanity have ever been
found previously i'm so early an age Mans
antiquity Will be known. in that event,
10 be more antique than has been thought;
anu geology viii bear witness once again
DR. L'Envoy not long ago described to
the French Geographical Society an apes
like man, which he found living in trees
in Cochin China That, and the discovery
Of the hairy Anus, a strange half-wild
people OF a remote part of China, and the
excavation of these fossils by DIR. Dubois,
all seem TO help to make out Darwin's
case regarding the development of the
human race. Dr. Dubois. declared, how
ever, that his fossils demons trated nor
that man was derived from the ape. bur
that both man and the ape had common
origin or ancestry. At some far back per-
iod, he remarked, the human type and the
ape type diverged-one taking to one set
of habits ana the other to another.
OF course, the remains are ffagmentary.
They had lain there underneath the soil OF
many eras and epochs of years Times
dust had buried them long before the
earliest day of which we have any record,
even in cuneiform inscriptions-and they
go pack to soon after what we call 1.-THE
Hood" DIR. Dubois found a skull. a thigh
bone, and some molar teeth. They belong
ed to great man-like mammal" AS the
dental characteristics of man and apes
are marked, the third molar or grinding
tooth alone is considered by DIR. Andrew
Wilson of London to be an important
relic.
As regards the skull. it is remarked that
1t is disproportionately small compared
with the size of the thigh. But the skull
cap is considered by more than one anat-
omist of repute to be decidedly of human
like nature.
This divergence of opinion among au-
thorities, to my mind " saws DR.. Wilson
argues strongly in favor of its transit
t1onal nature; and in respect of the molar
tooth, DR.. Dubois showed its characters,
while differing from those of mans mo-
lars, yet also illustrated the mixed char
acters of lower and higher life. Even
Sir William Turner whose caution i'm such
matters is proverbial in the anatomical
world, and whose characteristics in this
respect might almost have constituted
MN q real instead OF naturallZed Scotch
man, admitted that the Javan skull had
double frontage-a mixture of human
and ape features combined"
Thus the skull seems to be of a form
which would be that of a mammal half
way between man and the ape What
puzzles the scientists most is the weight
Of the thigh bone, which is more than dou-
bic that of the ordinary man of the same
dimensions. 1t is of undOubted human
type, or, at least, belonged to an animal
which was. accustomed to the erect pos
u ia nj 4 H., H.
locomotion. DR.. Duboiss fossil thigh
bone exhibits human rather than mammal
characters. He is ready to admit that il
may represent the characters of an ano-
malous type of man-just such as we
might expect, indeed. in a transitional
form. 1t may have belonged to the period
of the giants-the period we read of i'm
fable, but which may have been a real
one after all.