The herald., 1922-03-30

Civilized man these days is OlScOV-
erng relics of man pretty far back,
but the Missing Link appears still
TO be missing. That is to say. modern man has
not yet succeeded i'm find ing relies of an animal
intermediate between ape and man that he
could not be definitely assigned TO either.
This search for the Missing Link is going on
all the world in spite of the fact that there
scientists who boldly disbelief in OAR
wins theory of the origin of species and in evO-
luton. Some of these scientists believe in spon-
taneOus combustion Of life from protOplasm. Some
believe that life was introduced upon this earth
from another body in space Just the same this
old earth is being rolled aud scraped at the ex-
pense of millions to find the Missing Link.
The most recent find" that is interesting the
scientists is fOsSzed skull discovered in North.
ern Rhodesia The scentists-at least some of
them-say that the Darwinian theory that Africa
may have been the original home of the human
race is greatly strengthened by this skull.
This Rhodesia skull is complete with the eXcep-
ton of the lower jaw. Moreover. a collar bone,
a leg bone and part of hip bone believed to
belong to the skull also have been unearthed. and
these may enable anatomists TO reconstruct the
main parts of the whole Rhodesian skeleton.
The scene of the discovery was the Bone cave"
of the Broken Hill mine already famous for the
beauty of its stalactites and stalagmtes and for
the remarkable fact that the lime Of which they
were originally composed have been largely
placed by pnOSpnateS or zinc ana lead.
1t the commercial value of these fOrma-
lions that led to the transformation of this cave
into one of the strangest mines ever worked The
hoOr consisted of a mass of fOsSiliZed remains
of elephants. lions. eOpards, rhinOceri hippopot-
ami, antelOpes. birds, bats and small mammals
Hundreds of tons of these animal remains had
been removed, but trace of man was discovered
until depth of GO feet below water level was
reached, when the bones described were found
surrounded by soft friable lead conglomerate
The illustrations show photographs of the Rho
desian skull. In the figure showing varying types
Of skulls is that of the so-called Javan ape-man
found in Java-in 1894 which lacks face B is
the skull of the Neandertha man. so called from
the valley in the Rhine province where the first
skull of the type was discovered in 1857. C Is
the skull of the PiltdOwn man, whose remains
were discovered in Sussex just before the World
war. ID is the skull of the Rhodesian man. Is
the skull Of a negro and F the skull of a Kalmuck
Tartar representing existing species of a man.
Joseph Meade calls the Rhodesian find "the
most interesting human bones that have seen the
light since science first began to talk about the
antiquity of man." He says they are at least
half million years old and bring man nearer
to his poor relations the apes, than he ever was
before. And they throw most important new light
upon the fascinating story of evolution He
says, among other things:
We have found the skull and some other bones
or the most primitive man known to us.
In this case need not wait for biologists to
quarrel with each other about the age The skull
is one of the most perfectly preserved that we
have, and the brutality of the brain that once
lodged in that grisly Uranium leaps to the eye as
the French say.
Nearest Like Ape.
1 take down from the top of my library the
whitened skull of low type of Australian, and
compare the two. The Australian is gentleman
an academician beside this. / run over the photo
graphs of all the primitive human skulls we have,
and this old-wOrld African is nearer to the ape
than any.
The skull found at Piltdown a few years ago.
though 100000 years old. is too respectable to
brook comparison. Only the skull-cap Of what is
known all over the world as the apeman of Java
comes near it; and the new skull is decidedly in
ferior.
How did he get to Rhodesia? Here is a large
part of the interest Of-let us say 1t frankly-the
human beast The nearest skull to this was found
In Java; the next nearest in Sussex
Picture that great triangle in your mind and
you get good idea of the cradle of the human
race. Most Of us have long held that 1t was ON
land which is now below the waves Of the Indian
Ocean (as We know, lost bit of Africa which
once connected 1t with India.
The new discovery strongly confirms this and it
will not be pleasant reading for the Americans