The Evening statesman. [volume] (Walla Walla, Wash.) 1903-1910, 1909-01-02
OUR FIRST ANCESTORS.

The recent prediction OF Professor
Ripley in the Atlantic Monthly that
all races of man would finally merge
into a common type, as they must
have diverged some time from a COM
mon original gives new interest to
primitive, man.
We know little enough about him
and that little does not go far enough
back to establish a common origin for
all the races But it seems to be pref
ty we'll settled that the common prim-
tive ancestor of the modern people of
Europe was the cave man of the rough
stona age of the pleistocene or glacial
period, less than two hundred thou
sand years ago.
Professor Ripley's b2lief that the
common type to which he predicts We
shall all revert was small and dark
is based on a few fragments of bone
and what We know of the flesh, form
and colOring of the oldest races in his
tory and of those living men who ex
ist in conditions most resembling
those of the stone age. Heretofore in
formation about this creature rest d
on a single specimen, the skeleton of
the cave man dug up in Neand5rthal,
Germany, about thirty years ago.
But word comes from the Paris mu
scum that a more complete skeleton in
better preservation of about the same
Period has been discovered in South
western France. COmpar. of the
two discoveries indicates that these
two contemporaries of the mammoth,
living several hundred miles apart,
were enough alike to justify the con-
clusion that a common type of cave
man inhabited all of Europe that was
then fitted to sustain human life.
Both the French and German skulls
indicate a creature between the mon
bles that of the gorilla and the lower
part of the face that of the chimpan-
zee, though the skull had far greater
capacity than that of any monkey of
the same, size The lower jaw is long
and almost chinless and the body
bones indicate that the creature could
stand upright only with great difficult
ty.
Here We have a creature in some
respCicts higher and in other respects
lower than the highest monkey which
sciences does not hesitate to pro-
nounce human. differentiated from any
possible ape by the size and develop
ment of the brain and by its undoubted
use of the roughly Clipped stone i'm
Elements found with it in the glacial
deposits.
We do not now hear these discov-
cries spoken of as possibly supplying
I'M; ssing, link" between man and the
monkey. Science has given up that
idea of a missing link if real science
ever entertained it. You might as web
ask for a direct lineal connection be-
tween second cousins These are unit
ed only by their descent from the
same great grandparents, thsir lines
having diverged ever since. So the
races of men and monkeys may be
united by descent from a common an
cestor, but they have diverged ever
since and there can be no missing
link between man and thei ape.
The ape itself is an evolution from
a monkey ancestor of much lower
type, already widely different from
the contemporary ancestor of main.
Indeed the original divergent type
from the common ancestor, not yet
either ape or man, which finally de-
velopsd into the latter, may have been
at the beginning lower than the pres
ent apes except for the latent spark
of mind which afterwards became rea-
son.
These two skeletons and a few seat
tered bones found farther north are the
oldest human remains known, though
found in the newest part of the east