The Savannah morning news. (Savannah, Ga.) 1900-current, 1903-01-18

Iy established the antiquity of this
primitive man. The conditions of the
excavation in the Croatian cave were
so favorable that it was possible to
take every step with minute and
pIinful observance of all the rules of
chronological and geological re-
search. There is no possibility that
0ne epoch has been mistaken for an
other.
Site of the Discovery.
The find was made in a cave on the
top of the steep banks of Krapinica
Brook, near Krapina in Croatia. The
cave was seventy-five feet above the
present bed of the stream. In the gla-
cial period that cave had been level
with the water. and an inconceivable
stretch of time had been needed till the
slow course of erosion had cut down
the channel to its present level.
The cave was a cavity in sandstone.
The floor of it was covered with boul-
ders and sediment left there by the
brook in the days, perhaps two hum
dred thousand years ago, when its
waters washed the cave.
After the water receded and left the
cave dry, dust and debris, Wondering
rocks, and SO on began to fill the cave
until at last, after age had piled on
age and epoch on epoch the rubbish
reached to the very top of the place.
Yet during all those unknown ages,
men used the cave for sheltering. First
of all came this creature that was, so
far as knowledge of to-day can TELL the
first man. Sand and dust and the prod
ucts of slow decomposition fell on his
remains. Then came other creatures,
farther advanced in the Slow progress
to being human, and dust and decom-
position settled on their bodies and
their tracks, too.
So, when Prof. Gorjanovic-K ramber-
ger, of Agram, began to. dig, he uncov-
cred epoch after epoch. He found
ashes, charcoal, burned sand, roughly
hewn flints, and almost 1000 bones of
rhinoceros, cave and brown bears,
wolves, deer mammoth stays, horses,
auerochs, beavers and wild boars. These
bones were as easy to read as the hands
of a clock. They pointed straight and
true to the period in which they had
been deposited.
A Cat0cOmb of 100000 Years Old.
At last the excavators got down to
The lower stratum. Until then they had
found no human bones. Now they came
upon a catacomb. That lower stratum
appeared to be one immense fireplace.
In it lay tee bones of none but hui
man beings. Almost all were broken
and spIintered, evidently by violence.
Most of them showed signs of burning.
The bones were found to belong to
ten Individuals, adults and children.
The only theory that the scientists
have been atie to formulate as yeta is
that these ten persons met violent
deaths and that the slayers then cook
ed them ard ate them.
The bones were gathered with rigid
observance of all the safeguards
Known 70 science And as soon as
tboxy Ia1 no. Cf,, ga1 Safo
was known that the great find of the
young Twentieth Century had been
made, for there remained no doubt
that the primitive man of Krapina
was the same as the man of the Ne
ander Valley and the man from the
Belgian cave of Spy. This meant that
the same form of man had dwelled at
one time in Eastern as well as in
Western Europe and with one blow it
established the correctness of the be-
lief that the Neander Valley man and
the Spy Valley man were truly crea-
| lures who represented a graduation be-
tween man OF to-day and the ancient
animal form.
How far removed from the ape or
even the ape-man this graduation may
be no one can say.
Professors Schwalbe and Klaatsch
last year produced facts which appear
to prove positively that man in the
! form of to-day cannot have existed
before the last inter-glacial period
Whatever came before that, was a
creature that was not man as we
know man low.
The Man of Spy, the Man of the
Neander Valley and the Man of Kra-
pima were such creatures. Perhaps the
same form was existent then in other
parts of the world. The famous ape
man of Java, Pithecanthropus erectus,
| possibly was the Asiatic ancestor of
this man i'll being.
How Old Is Her
| How old is he? Prof. Penck at the
last meeting of naturalists in Karls-
bad, laid down the law that the dura-
ton of the glacial period had been at
least. half million of years. The
| earlier Stone Age alone-not an epoch,
| but merely a stage of development
he thought was most certainly at least
100000 years. I'VE can estimate the
age of the species known as man in
Europe as several hundreds of thous-
| ands of years." he declared.
| Studies of skulls and skeletons from
| the last Stone Age, which is supposed
to date back from 1000 to 10000 years,
show no noticeable differences be-
tween man of that remote time and
| the man of to-day. This in itself
shows how immense must have been
the time that did afford opportunity
for structural changes.
How great these changes were, and
how enormous consequently must have
| been the time that elapsed between
| the existence of the missing link"
and the existence of the Man of Kra-
pima and the arrival of the man as we
know him, is shown by the skull of the
creature.
The skull of Krapina is longer even
der Valley-far longer than any mod
ern skull.
1t is as low as it is long. 1t is 50
much lower than the lowest human
skull of to-day that there is estab-
lished this fact about this ancestor of
man: he was separated from the man
of to-day by a far greater difference
than was the difference between him
and the ape.
Structure OF bones, the immense
thickness over the eyes, a decided
! contraction in the sides of the Kra-
pima skull beyond the eyes, are all
! characteristics of the monkey.
But there are other characteristics
| in the Neauder Valley and Spy and
| Krapina skulls that differ vastly FROM
| those of the monkey. Some of these
differing characteristics point to rever-
sion to forms still more primitive than
| the monkey, while others show a de-
! velopmeut toward the human being of
our own type.
No "MissinG Link"
These Emergencies in opposite direc-
tons have led European scientists to