Iron County register. [volume] (Ironton, Iron County, Mo.) 1867-1965, 1900-01-11
TRACES OF MISSING LINK.
Scientist Thinks He Has Discovered
Them In the Philippine
Islands.

DR.. George F. Becker, the govern
ment geologist sent to the Philip
pines, in his report expresses the
ture termed ssthe missing link"-may
have had its earliest haunts in those
isles of the sea, at time when, not
less than 100000 years ago, they were
connected with the mainland of Asia
by sort of land bridge, via Borneo.
In his opinion DIR. Becker comedies
with the late Prof. Marsh, of Yale uni
versity, who expressed the belief that
the Philippines We're among the earli-
est localities inhabited by the human
species, even if the latter did not
actually start there. The time may
have been 100000 years ago, but sc;-
ence always wishes to be conserva-
tive.
There are excellent reasons, how
ever, for believing that homo sapiens
the true human being. as distin-
guished from the typical ape-existed
on the island of Luzon, or in that
immediate neighborhood, in the epoch
called the pliocene, along toward the
end of the tertiary period, which end
ed about 100000 years ago with the
great ice age.
DIR. 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,
are astonishingly monkeylike in aspect.
The sounds they utter in lieu of Ian
guage resemble the short and sharp
shrieks of animals. Apparently they
are not distantly related to the GER
tain savages 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 and live on mice
and such other small mammals as
they can catch.
All through the larger island groups
of the southwest Pacific are found
more or less differentiated tribes CT
monkeylike dwarfs. 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 in
aborigines of Sumatra, 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 pro-
nounce few Malay words.
These pygmy peoples, according to
the belief of DR.. Becker and Prof.
Marsh, are descended directly from
the original stock of the so-called
missing link
Now. this missing link is no theory
some scientists say. That he and his
kinda whole tribe, constituting q
Few and improved species-did actu.
ally exist has been proved by the
discovery in Java, not very far from
the Philippines, of fossil specimen
There were the upper part of a skull
a molar tooth and a left thigh bone.
all completely fossilized.'
Certainly the creature in question
was not human, but in size, brain
power and erect posture approached
much nearer TO man than any other
animal hitherto known. The capacity
of his skull seems to have been about
two-thirds that of the average human
being. From generation to genera
ton they improved, physically and
Their arms grew shorter.
their legs longer and their brain pans
bigger, until at length the type rep
resented by the bones dug up in cen.
trail Java-the pithecanthropus erect
US, or upright monkey man, as sci
entists have named the animal--was
evolved. Here at last was the des-
tined ancestor of the monkeylike |
Negritos of Luzon.
The land bridge to Asia, by way of |
Borneo, afforded facilities for travel |
and for the spread of the newly de- |
veloped species of anthropoid, who, |!
though truly human, was pure beast |
"a monkey with bigger brain.-N. |
Y. Herald.