The L'Anse sentinel. (L'Anse, L.S., Mich.) 18??-current, 1922-03-03
Prehistoric Europe Now Believed
to Have Been From Africa
and Not Asia.
FIND SKULL IN RHoDESlA
Believed to Be Of General Neander.
thai Type, Which Opens Up POSI-
biIity That Africa Was Source
Of Europe's First People.

Washington. The recent discovery
In cave In northern Rhodesia OF hui
man skull apparently many thousands
OF years old seems to put Africa on the
map for the first time as the probable
field of development for men who
played an Important part In the life
OF prehistoric Europe. Where the
most important old human skulls have
been discovered heretofore and what
their locations seem to indicate Is
told In the following bulletin from the
Washington. d. c. headquarters Of the
National Geographic society:
Europe has long been recognized
as merely the stage on which late acts
of the great drama Of the develop
ment Of man and his civilization have
been played" says the bulletin. "None
OF the races that has lived In Europe
during the long period Of mans life
on the enrth Is believed to have orig
mated there. Hitherto all evidence
pointed TO Asia as the source of the
succeeding waves of human immi-
grants as II was the source, at least
proximately, Of the thousands of
horses, deer and cattle that swarmed
into the country during interglaclal
periods.
Considered Only Bridge In Past.
Traces had come across the land
bridges from Africa, but for the most
part they had merely used northern
Africa as a path. coming from Arabia
or farther Asia. The one exception
known was the strange appearance
along the southern fringe of Europe
at one time Of race akin to the negro
pygmles Of present-day central Africa.
But these small negrOids were an I'M
important factor and soon vanished.
$50 far as Europe Is concerned, the
Heidelberg men were the earliest
known human inhabitants. single
jaw-bone discovered In Germany repre-
sents the data from which conclusions
have been drawn In regard to this
race which Is supposed to have lived
some 100000 years ago. They are
classed as the first wholly human be-
ings of whom fossils have been dis
covered, and are supposed to have
been later by probably a quarter of a
million years than the ape-man whose
skull was discovered In Java.
"The Heidelberg men were appar-
ently succeeded about $4,000 years
ago by long persisting type of whom
many fossils have been found-the
Neanderthal man. Skulls and bones
Of this widely diffused people have
been fo' nd In France. Germany, Bel
gIum, Croatia, on tn. Channel Isles, on
the rock Of Gibraltar and In Malta.
They we're cave-dwelling hunters and
for more than $4,000 years lived Off
the herds Of horses. deer, and cattle
that nbounded In Europe during that
period.
.'These Neanderthal men were much
Inure advanced than the men of
Heidelberg but still they were lower
In the scale than any savage of the
present day. They were squat. burly.
big-headed and thick skulled. Their
hrows projected markedly over cav
srIIOus eyes, they were almost chInless.
md their knees were permanently
ttnt. The first skull Of these people
discovered more than 60 years ago,
was so widely divergent from exist
Lag skulls that one scientist insisted
that II was malformation. 1t was
Gully after the discovery Of other fos-