Arizona republican., 1903-04-06
A New Theory of Hans Origin.

A New Theory of Hans Origin.
 A new theory of the origin of the human family is shortly to be advanced in the American Journal of Science by Dr. J. L. Wortman of Yale University. Briefly, it is that man was evolved from some form of the higher apes that were trapped in the present southern lati- tudes of either Europe or Asia by the advance of the glacial sheet, and were forced either to exert themselves to survive the change in their surround ings and food or to die. Dr. Wortman has been formulating this theory dur ing twenty-five years of study of fossil vertebrates, and he believes that it is the most logical solution of the much discussed question as to where and why man originated.
 pr. Wortman has been exploring the fossil beds of this country for a num- Der of years in association with the late Prof. O. c. Marsh of Yale and other paIeontologists. He was for some years connected with the American museum of natural history in New York For the last three years he has been studying the immense collection at Yale made by Prof. Marsh, and it is the result of his studies of the fossils belonging to the monkey family in this collection that he is now to make pub lie.
 The following brief synopsis of Dr. Wortman's new statement of the prob lem of mans descent is made from the advance sheets of the American Jour- nal of Science, with his approval.
 The current teaching as to the origin and later distribution of most forms of higher animal life on the earth is that the ancestors of most present mammals originated in the present hot regions of the earth and were distributed to the temperate and frigid regions by emil grafton. As to man the college text books on anthropology teach that d similar course was pursued; that man evolved from a certain type of higher ape somewhere in the present hot lati- tudes, possibly Java or the now sunken Indo-African continent, and that the CT parts of the globe were those of the earliest immigrants from this equator ial cradle of the race.
 Discussion has ragged back and forth over this question for years, and it wa; only lately in the pages of a monthly magazine that one scientist proposej the theory that there was good evi- dence that a. man originated on ths American continent as we'll as in tht east.
 pr. Wortman, in treating the prob lem in the light of his own investiga tions, contends that all of these the ories are in error, and that, in evadins the question as to why man originated at all they all beg the question at tn start.
 Man." Dr. Wortman says, mus have had some reason for his rise some impelling force or influence mus have been present to produce thi amazing development of the simpl mind of the ape to the mental statur of even barbaric man. There is sucl wide divergence in intellectual at tainment between even the highest ap and the lowest man that any hypo thesis that advances a gradual evolu tion seems to be weak because it offer no reason for the evolution.
 "The intellectual awakening whicl must have been the fundamental req son for his evolution could not hay come without some remarkable chang in mans environment at the probabl time of his development. Such a re markable change must certainly b. supposed if any logical history of tn, evolution of man is to be written.
 "As it happens, it is not necessary l. suppose this. as we have the unassail able facts with which actually to stat 1t. In my opinion such a cause is to b. found, clearly and incontestabl ply. in tn attested data of geology itself.
 This Is the fact that the glacia epoch gradually came on. driving tn tropical vegetation and mammal Tiff from the north southward. As the onl. well-attested remains of primitive an thropoids have been found in Europ and Asia, the case seems well estab lished that it was somewhere in thes localities that man received his start.
 Caught between the impassabl water barrier on the one hand and tn equally impossible barrier of advanc ing cod and retreating tropical en