The Washington weekly post., 1899-11-21
Islands Were Once Joined by
Land with Asia.
Dr.. BECKER'S INVESTIGATIONS
Traces Of Land Bridge Between Luzoa
Man Seems 10 Have Made His Way Across
It-Dr. Becker Thinks that the Philip
pines May Have Been the Earliest Home
of Mankind-ipe-IikeH Human Ancestors.

| DR.. George F. Becker. the government
| geologist sent 10 the Philippines not long
/ ago, has returned with q very interesting
account OF the origin OF the archipelago
1 But the most notable feature Of the re-
port submitted by him 10 the Interior De-
/ paTtment has relation 10 the presence or
| ancient man in Luzon and other islands
/ of the group. His opinion is that the ape
/ like creature termed the missing link
/ may have had its earliest haunts in those
] isles of the sea. at a time when. not less
/ than 10000 years ago, they were connect
/ ed with the mainland of Asia by sort
OF land bridge via Borneo.
! In this opinion DR.. Becker comedies
with the late Prof. o. c. Marsh. of Yale
/ University, who expressed a belief that
/ the Philippines were, at all events, among
| the earliest localities inhabited by the hu-
| man species, even if the latter did not
actually start there. The time may have
been half million years ago, but science
/ always wishes to be conservative. There
! are excellent reasons, however, for be-
/ lieving that homo sapiens-the true hu-
man being as distinguished from the typ
( ical ape-existed on the island Of LuZOD,
or in that immediate neighbOrhood. in the
| epoch called the Pliocene, along toward
| the end of the Tertiary Period. Now, the
/ Tertiary ended about 100000 years back
with the great Ice Age, and thus one gets
notion of the extreme antiquity assign
able to the first families of the Philip
pines.
i DR. Becker surmises that the black
dwarfs OF LuZOn and other islands of the
group known as Negritos, are actually
descended from the primitive human stock
in question. These black pygmies, now
nearly extinct, who nave not advanced
even as far as the Stone Age, are aston
| ishingly monkey-like in aspect and in their
ways. the sounds they utter in lieu of
| language resembling the short and sharp
| shrieks Of those animals. Apparently,
they are distantly related t0 certain saw
| ages discovered in the interior of Borneo.
not exceeding four feet in stature, whose
Wrinkled skins are covered with hair, and
who sleep in caves or in trees, living on
mice and such other small mammals as
they can catch. These wild people of Bor-
neo can neither be tanned nor employed
! for any work, and their speech js the
| gable of brutes.
Monkey-like Dwarfs.
All through the larger island groups of
! the southwest Pacific are found, more or
| less differentiated. tribes of monkoy-like
! dwarfs There is no question of the fact
that most of that part of the world now
called Oceania was inhabited by these lit
| tie black people long before bigger races
came in boats and began the work of eX-
| terminating them. They have been wiped
out entirely on all but the largest islands,
| such as Luzon and Mindanao. where they
still survive in small numbers in the
mountainous and inaccessible interior.
| Among them are certain abOTigines of Su-
| matra, whose bodies are covered all over
! with soft, dark hair, and who wear no
| clothing, have no language of their own,
| and learn with the utmost difficulty to
pronounce a few Malay words. AS far
away as CeylOn the wild folk of the
mountains, known as Neddahs, make
themselves understood by signs, grimaces,
and inarticulate grunts.
These pygmy peoples, according to the
belief of DR.. Becker, are descended from
the original stock of the sO-called missing
| link. OF course. the missing link was not
an individual, but a species, and the best
| authorities are of the opinion that the
| type was not very unlike the ChimpanZee-
a kind of ape now almost extinct, III
fortu ly. but regarded as nearer 10
man tuan any other ~ In great anthro-
pOids Nobody will ever know row he
came about, but ne arrived somehow
very likely in Luzon or its near neighb0r-
| hood-and it soon became apparent that
| he came there 10 stay. He was smarter
! than the other monkeys, and so could get