Harrisburg telegraph. [volume] (Harrisburg, Pa.) 1879-1948, 1919-03-29
A Society to Study
Our Forebears

! full program. ITO promote the
study of racial anthropology. and OF
the origin, migration, physical and
mental characters, crossing and evo-
| !ution of human races, living and
extinct"
1t is put forth by a society re-
Gently organized in this city at the
American Museum of Natural His
tory, called the Cation Society for
! the Study of the Origin and Evo-
luton of Man.
TO fancy that you don't care
! how or where or when man origi-
mated; that you are only interest
ed in him as he is to-day. is to
shut yourself up in a box of igno
rance. deprived of the best stimu-
by looking backward that we can
look forward. Looking downward
makes us look upward. There are
no far horizons for the man who
his race. His mind is on a dead
level and works horizontally.
Think of our position in the uni
verse. Here we are on n swiftly
careering little globe that spirals
around the rushing sun, compelled
to travel at a speed of more than
twenty-five miles a second to es-
cape being left behind and lost like
a chip in open space. Surely it
i 1, 4 IL.
we got here. Especially would it
be stupid after having found out
that the earth did not have us
when it started on its wild flight,
but picked us up, or brought us
out. somehow. when IL had been
hundreds of millions of years on its
journey.
There were lot of exciting
things going on in this world be-
fore we could be said to have
climbed upon it's round back. like
shipwrecked mariners unexpected
ly saved from the midst of the
boundless ocean. But that is a
fable. We did not really come
dropped, like Milton's Vulcan. from
the crystal battlements" upon the
passing ship of space. as the old
doctrine of special creation would
imply: for, if science has proved
anything. it has proved that we
arc the result of evolution, or de-
Velopment, from pre- existing forms
OF life, while the earliest of those
forms had their seed in the "fetid
carbon of a nebula.
"AfGr down ] see the huge first
Nothing; l know l was even there.
waited, unseen and always ana
/, ln lot f.tpt1 niCt
And when at last we were in
6ubitably here, in the form AMI
manner of men and women, where
did we make our first appearance.
among the lower animals, and i'm :
press them with our superiority? :?
Were we scattered widely over the
earth, or were we confined to a
particular cradle? Were we
children of the sun, haunters of
the tropical forests, tree climbers
with prehensile tails, and cocoa
nut throwers, in our racial youth,
or did we from the beginning pre-
fer. as we do at present, a tenn
perate climate, not too heating
for big. active brains enclosed in
thin skulls? How did we make
out to live amidst the ice and
snow and cold of the glacial ages?
What terms did we make with
the mastodons. the mammoth and
the redoutable ''sabre-toothed"
beasts that deemed the caverns
quite as much theirs as ours ?
or what, first persuaded woman that
she needed any artificial adorn-
ment?
How did we get our racial colors
and temperaments? What gave
some men a black skin and GRIN
| kled hair, and some a red skin and
straight hair. and others a white
skin and variable hair? What was
the origin of the blondes and that
of the brunettes?
| When did the mixture of races
| going on? Was there only one
race to begin with, and did it split
up and form four or five. inhabit-
| ing different parts of the earth, OF
| were there four or five at the
| start, each beginning it's career in
! its own quarter of the world?
If mankind scattered over the
world from one original habitat,
by what routes did they go, and
what guided them? Have some
of the lines of migration formerly
connecting the continents now dis
appeared, through the sinking OF
any such bridges. or any that were
| used for such a purpose? Was
there ever a continent once inhab-
tied by man now lying at the bottom
of the sea?
Has 'the Procession of the Equi-
noXes swung the earth's poles COM
pletely round the great 26,000-year
circle since human beings became
human, or has it swung them round
twice or thrice, or even ten times? /?
They seem to have gone almost
half round since King Minos ruled
in his palace in Crete, and the
Cretan women yearned to pinch
their waists, to put witchcraft into
their hair, and wear low-necked
dresses with flounced skirts. There
must have been a long history be-
hind their time. Finally. what about
the extinct races. such as the mar
vellous Gro -Magnons? You see
what field of interest this new