Atlanta tri-weekly journal. [volume] (Atlanta, Ga.) 1920-19??, 1922-10-12
The Outline of History-By H. G. Well:
|. The Romance of Mother Earth

sub-men we shall presently describe was, at
the opening of the Cainozoic PERIOD a run
ming ape living chiefly on the ground MD
ing among rocks rather than trees. 1t could
still climb trees well and hold things be-
tween it's great toe and its second toe Gas
the Japanese can to this day., but 1t was
already coming down to the ground again
from a still remoter, Mesozoic arboreal an
cestry. 1t is quite understandable that such
a. creature would very rarely die in water in
such circumstances as to leave boxes to be-
come fosslized.
It must always be borne in mind that
among it's many other imperfections the geo.
logical record necessarily contains abundant
evidence only of water or marsh creatures$
or of creatures easily and frequently
drowned. The same reasons that make any
evidence of the ancestors of the mammals
rare and relatively unprocurable in the Meso-
zoic rocks probably make the traces OF pos
sible human ancestors rare and relatively I'M
procurable in the Cainozoic rocks. Such
knowledge as we have of the earliest men,
for example, is almost entirely got from a
few caves, into which they went and in
which they left their marks. Until the hard
Pleistocene times they lived and died in the
open, and their bodies were consumed or de-
cayed altogether.
But it is we'll to bear in mind also that the
record of the rocks has still to be thoroughly
examined. It has been studied only for
]
each generation. Most men have been too
busy making war, making profits out OF their
neighbors, toiling at work that machinery
could do for them in tenth OF the time, or
simply playing about, to give any attention
| to these more interesting things.
There may be, there probably are, thou
sands Of deposits still untouched containing
countless fragments and vestiges Of man and
| his progenitors In Asia, particularly in In
dia or the East Indies, there may be hidden
the most Illuminating clews. What we know
| today of early men is the merest scrap OF
what will presently be known.
The apes and monkeys already appear to
have been differentiated at the beginning of
the cainozoic age and there are number
of Oligocene and Miocene apes whose fela-
lions to one another and to their sub-human
associates to be presently described have still
to be made out Among these we may men
ton Dryopithecus of the Miocene age, with
a very human-looking jaw. In the Siwalk
Hills Of northern India remains of some very
interesting apes have been found, of which
Sivapithecus and Palaeopithecus show some
quasi-human traits.
Monkeys That Use Weapons
Possibly these animals already used i'm.
plements Charles Darwin represents ba-
boons as opening It's by breakin them with
stones, using stakes to prise up rocks in the
| hunt for insects, and striking blows with
sticks and stones. The chimpanzee makes
| itself sort of tree hut by INTERVIEWING
branches. Stones apparently Clipped for use
have been found in strata of Oligocene age
! at Boncelles in Belgium. Possibly the imple-
ment-using disposition was already present
in the Mesozoic ancestry from which we APP
pear to be descended.
Copyright, 1929
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