Atlanta tri-weekly journal. [volume] (Atlanta, Ga.) 1920-19??, 1922-10-14
5-RELICS OF THE "SUB-MEN''

MONG the earnest evidences of ,Ome
u creature, more manlike than any liy-
ing ape upon earth, are a number of
tlints and stones very roughly Clipped and
shaped so as to be held in the hand. These
were probably used as hand-axes. These
early implements CEoliths") often so
crude ana simple that there was for long
time a controversy whether they were to be
regarded as natural or artificial productions.
The date of the earliest of them is put by
biologists as Pliocene-that is to say, before
the the First Glacial Age. They occur also
throughout the First Interglacial period We
know of no bones or other remains in Eu-
rope or America of the quasi-human beings
of half a million years ago, who made and
used these implements. They used them to
hammer with, perhaps they used them to
fight with and perhaps they used bits of wood
for similar purposes.
A Walking Ape
But at Trinil, in Java, in strata which are
said to correspond either to the later Pliocene
or to the American and European First Ice
Age, there have been found some scattered
bones Of creature such as the makers of
these early implements may have been. The
top of "a skull, some teeth, and a thigh-bone
have been found. The skull shows a brain
case about halfway in size between that of
the ch1mpanzee and man, but the thigh-bone
that of a creature well adapted to stand
ing and running man and as free, there
fore, to use it's hands. The creature was not
man, nor was it an arboreal ape like the
chimpanzee. 1t was walking ape 1t has
been named by naturalists Pithecanthropus
erectus (the walking ape-man).
OF the makers of European EoIiths We
have got no bones at all. We can only guess
at their appearance. /
While these early men or "sub-men" or
"pseudo-men" of the Eoliths were running
about Europe four or five hundred thousand
years ago there were .mammoths, rhinoceros-
es, huge hippopotamus, giant beaver and
bison and wild cattle in their world, There
were also wild horses, and the saber-toothed
tiger still abounded There are no traces of
lions or true tigers at that time in Europe,
hut there were bears, offers, wolves and a
wild boar. 1t may be that the early ub-
man sometimes played jackal to the saber-
toothed Tiger and finished up the bodies on
which the latter had gorged itself. y
After Pithecanthropus, that first glimpse
Of something at least sub-human in the rec
ord of geology, there is not another fragment
of human on man-like bone yet known from
that record for Interval Of hundreds of
thousands of years. There is nothing hui
man or sub-human to be found except an in
creasing abundance Of stone implements. But
these Improve in quality.
1t is not until We reach deposits which are
stated to be of the Second Interglacial period,
100000 years later, 10000 or 100000
years ago. that another scrap of bones comes
to hand. Then we find jawbone.
Man or Beast?
This jawbone was found in a sand pit
near Heidelberg, 1t depth of eighty feet
from the surface, and il is not the jawbone
OF a man as we understand man, but it is
man-lik~ in every respect, except that 1t has
absolutely no trace Of a chin; it is more
massive than mans, and it's narrowness be-
hind could not, it IS thought, have given the
tongue sufficient pla. for articulate speech
1t is not an apes jawbone; the teeth are
human.
The owner of this jawbone has been va
riously named Homo Heidelbergensis and
Palaeoanthropus Heidelbergensis, according
to the estimate formed Of his humanity or
sub-humanity by various authorities. He
lived in a world not remotely unlike tie
world Of the still earle sub-man of the first
implements; the deposits in which it is found
show that there were elephants, horses,
rhinoceroses, bison, moose, and so FORTH
with it in the world but the saber-toothed
tiger was declining and the lion was spread
ing over Europe.
/ The implements of this period (known as
the Chellean period) are ve1y considerable
advance upon those o. the Pliocene Age. They
are we'll made but very much bigger hon
any truly human Implements The Heidel-
berg man may have had very big body and