Daily Kennebec journal., 1913-12-27
MAN HALp MILLION YEARS OLD.
Scientists Determine Ancient Origin OF
Human Race.

| the crown OF Gotnlc aTt-you VIII see
just below it the shallow green waters
Of the river. 1t was along its banks
60 or so years ago that the Aope
Boucher de Perthes began picking up
the little flint instruments which first
gave the idea that the human race
might be very very old.
At that time il was supposed that
things Babylonian or Egytian were oil
high antiquity, and it was thought that
mankind had appeared not very long
before this. But in caves, and especial
ly in excavations, the Abbe and those
who followed him found evidences of a
race in Europe that must have been
vastly older. Because their imple-
ments were of flint they were called the
men of the Stone Age.
Very early it was found that there
were great differences in the number
end variety of these instruments in the
diffeEent caves, and lilxwise in the skill
with which they were made. Some
were very crude, some very beautiful
in workmanship. And then came an
other discovery. That was of caves or
excavations where there were clear
layers, sometimes a series of them-as
for example, layer Of sand, layer
of dirt and another of clay. Some of
these would contain the stone instru-
ments and others not. But always it
was found that the finer and more pol
ished tools were in the upper layers,
the cruder ones in the lower
Along with these stone arrow heads
and knives and grinding stones and
other evidences of man were found the
bones of animals, many of which are
now quite extinct in Europe. And they
were often the animals of cold cli-
mates. the reindeer, the musk OK, the
mammoth, the woof4y rhinoceros, etc
Changes of climate are slow. 1t takes
time TO deposit layers of earth several
feet thick. All this suggested that the
men who fashioned these fiints must
have lived in a very ancient day. Also
that from the very earliest of them to
the latest must have meant a long
time
Sometimes in one layer there were
evidences of very mild climate and in
another of a warm or mild climate as
the remains of subtropieal animals and
plants. And often in between these
would be several layers which seemed
to indicate very great changes, requir-
ing long years to complete And be-
cause some Of the layers were quite de-
void of any f1ints or bones 1t seemed as
if there must have been time in be-
tween for the populations to have NOV
ed or been swept away.
Soon it was possible by collecting and
comparing the flints and bones to make
two groups, the men OF the New and of
the Old Stone Ases-Neolithic and
Paleolithic man. From one to the 9TH
er there was clear and gradual de-
velopment. Then came Darwin and
the idea of evolution. and about at the
same time the discovery in these caves
of human skulls and bones of undoubt-
edly very great antiquity.
In size and shape they We're very
primitiYe,5 low -hrewed and thick boned.
like the skulls of the higher ares. The
first of clear authenticity was the Ne
anderthal. skull. found in 1856 not far
from Dusseldorf. Then came the Spy
skull in Belgium, and in the interven-
ing half century long list.
Comparing and cataloguing the skulls
and bones and the flint instruments
and animal remains which they con-
tain-correlating all these, as the SCI
enlist loves to say, it became clear
beyond all question that the men of
the lowest foreheads and thickest
skulls We're the makers of the crudest
implements and came from the lowest
cave layers and lived side by side with
the extinct animals. In the higher
layers were the finer instruments and
the bigger skulls--that is, the evidence
of later day and of growth and cv-
olution. Many beautiful collections
have been made, showing all this de-
velopment at a glance.
The most remarkable of all is that of
Prof. Rutot Of Brussels. You will find
in in the Natural History Museum in
Leopold Park, and it is worthy of a
visit by itself
From all this work it came about
that men no longer thought of human
race but few thousand years old The
more uncompromising of investigators
heRaE even to think in tens of thous-
ands or years. But there was To kind
OF ehronometer, no time measure which
seemed to give more than the yaguest
clews.
Carefully analyzing the flint artefacts
and the different stages of culture and
development which they represented, the
anthropologists, the man studiers, came
TO agree first upon four and then sub
divided these into eight distinct stages.
and to give these names.
And as from one stage to another
there was often the clearest evidence,
from the animal remains, of great cli-
matte changes and because the layers
or sand and clay and dirt must often
clearly have required long period of
years for their formation 1t was evil
dent enough that each of these stages
must have represented a period of time
compared with which the unknown
period of human history-three of four
thousand years-was very slight. But
now to fix any fairly certain limits?
The biologists, for example, will study
the face of an escarpment where layer
after layer of rocks are exposed; observe
the kind of rocks and their probable
mode of formation, whether they were
laid down under water or were due to
wind erosion, whether they have since
been nelted and on IN ava 10 ,ht1 -