Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1927-09-03
BACKGROUND OF EVENTS
BY PAUL Y. COLLINS.

rated as one of the most famous scien.
lists in the world, yet. from a purely
scientific basis, he denied that the re-
cent discoveries in the field of prehis-
torlc anthropology proved that man
| was derived from an ape. He pro-
nounced that as "a myth due to our
| ignorance of the real course of human
evolution, and that humanity would
yet be thankful to anthropological sci.
ence for having at last removed this
bar sinister from mans pedigree
! He argued that recent discoveries
proved that the human race is far
| older than it was formerly thought to
| be. even by scientists.
In the course of millions Of years
the climate of the Arctic and Antarctic
! regions changed many times. From
| the North the polar ice cap descended
| four times and buried all Europe and
all America north of the Ohio River
under hundreds of feet Of permanent
ice. Arctic cold prevailed through
centuries of Summarizes years. Only
cold-resisting life could exist here dur
ing those ice ages. Four times the
sun drove back the edge of the ice
cap, melting the ice and depositing
| its debris. The beginning of the
| Pleistocene Age was more than a mil
lion years ago. yet far down in that
| Pleistocene Age, during the first Pc
riod between the ice caps, there lived
| and died a man. whose remains are
| now known as the Heidelberg Man
| in stratum of glacial sand 76 feet
| thick above the jawbone of that relic.
| How many years did it take for melt
ing glaciers to deposit sand rs feet
deep?
In England, carved flint instru.
ments have been found. far deeper
than the locale of the Heidelberg man.
And later here have been found in
Nebraska. Bone instruments evidently
made by man--found in deposits
whose geologic age is set at four to
five million years. Similar instruments
have been found in Maine. And Prof.
Osborn infers from this evidence that
''men were men," out in the open
spaces so many millions of years ago;
therefore, they could not have been
asses nor monkeys nor jellyfishes--
they were men. He also deduces from
the head of the famous "Neanderthal
man" that not only he, but his an.
cestors for thousands of generations.
must have walked upright. Now no
jellyfish ever walked upright-nor did
monkeys or asses. Also the "Pithe-
canthropus," found in Java, was a
true man, walking upright. and
his proper name indicates that he
was "dawn-man''-not child of
an ape. Yet Prof. Frederick Tilney,
examining the convoluted surfaces of
the skull, discovers 'areas associated
with thought, imagination. reason and
speech" On the other hand, there
are those who contend that horses
and dogs and other animals think and
love and laugh at the foOlishness of
man.
Psychologists have also traced
back relics of horses, elephants. pigs,
cows, bears, cats and dogs. and other
mammals, and find that even to the
most distant ages they remain I'M
hanged-unevoluted. So the Osborn
conclusion is that all represent indie
pendent creations-man the same.
''out of the dust of the earth" by the
instant act of the Creator and not by
the age-long development from Jelly
fish to man.
But doctors disagree. Now comes
the great scientist at Leeds who in
dorses Darwin. Also Prof. William
X. Gregory, professor of vertebrate
paleontology of Columbia University,
New York, who contradicts Osborn
fatty DIR. Gregory writes in Scien.
tific American:
'Since 1915 I have written fire.
man from lower primate stock NAV
not. in the present state of our evil
dence, be looked for later than the
Middle Miocene epoch, which; accord.
ing TO BARRELS estimates, lay some
100000 of years earlier than the
Middle Pliocene. Therefore, the fact.
If it is a fact, that the little-known
men of the Middle Pliocene had al.
ready attained a human grade of or.
ganization may mean only that the
traditional stages between ape and
man must be sought in an earlier
epoch.
But why assume that there were y
such transitional stages? Why not
admit that man and ape always were
different, no matter how far back we
go in geologic time? Chiefly because
the sciences Of comparative anatomy,
of comparative physiology. ETC., offer
their silent testimony to the blood
in a very real sense, of man
and ape"
10, this only have I found, that
God hath made man upright; but they
have sought out many inventions."-
Ecclesiastes, ix.29.
lCopsrirht. 1897. by pni v. Commas