Evening star., 1932-12-13
Men Living Among Giants!
SCIENTIST ADDS CHAP1
\ 4 AYBE you wondered. back In
Nj the bedtime fairy story days,
w inst what q giant was like.

n AYBE you wondered. back II
MI the bedtime fairy story days
wv just what giant was like
1 i As matter of fact, you've
been living with giants ali
your life. some of them rather fierce
ones. You yourself are giant.
And thus Gerrit S. Miller, curatcr
of mammals of the Smithsonian Insti-
tuition, adds another chapter to the
much debated subject OF human evo-
luton.
Man Mr.. Miller says, is undoubtedly
a giant, together with the great apes
of two or three million years ago. and
this fact practically invalidates the as
sumption that one is derived from the
other. Such derivation was the
original Darwinian thesis which still
is maintained by many anthropologists
Replies TO Britisher.
Mr.. Miller brings forward the fact
of human and anthropoid gigantism IN
reply to the distinguished British an
thropologist, C. Elliot Smith, who traces
modern man from the great apes of the
tertiary geological period with such in
term diate steps as the Java man, )"
Pithecanthropus, and the so-called
"Piltdown man." reconstructed from
fossil remains found in England.
No case is known, Miller declares in
the current issue of the journal Of the
American Society OF Mammalogists, in
which a race of giants" has given rise
to new line of development equivalent
to the development of man from the
great apes. If this actually happened,
he says, it was in violation OF ap-
parently well established evolutionary
trends.
Mr.. Miller does not deny the descent
OF man from Simian ancestors which,
he maintains, Is well demonstrated by
the other lines Of evidence. He only
questions whether the descent could
have been from now extinct creatures
closely similar to the present day great
apes. generally regarded as the near
est relatives Of the human race.
Are in Advanced Stage.
"The fact that man and all the great
apes, excluding the gibbon," M Miller
says, are in the advanced evolutionary
stage known as gigantism can hardly
be doubted by any one who will take the
trouble to survey the living members
OF the order primates as a whole. For
he will then see that this group Of
mammals Is made up of hundreds Of
kinds whose size ranges from that Of
squirrels to that o. bird dogs. dozen
or two that are somewhat larger, and
four whose great bulk makes them
wholly exceptional-the orang. Chin
panzee, gorilla and man. Obviously it
is the majority and not the exceptions
that must set the standard for size.
The records of paleontology show
that giants have arisen in many groups
Of mammals Mere significantly they
commonly exist during short intervals,
geologically speaking, a-'d then become
extinct without giving rise to new lines
of development. Their racial life seems
to have advanced beyond its period
of Elasticity. 1t is true that gigantic
stock dating from one age is often rep
resented in later age by modified
successor Of its own general kin5-
as one elephant by another. But in
no single recorded instance have We
the fossils to demonstrate that an
earlier mammalian giant has been
modified into later giant of an obvi
ously different type-as mastodon into
a modern elephant or great saber
tooth into modern great cat.
Apes Change Doubtful
so complete is the ab-ence Of evi-
dence that mere suggestion Ct such
transitions would rot seriously be put
forward. Nevertheless, the evolutionary
anomaly implied b. either Of the two
examples just mentioned is probably no
greater than the one implied by the
belief that q great ape, its evolutionary
trends stabilized in gigantism, could
change under stress of altering envir-
onment. into such an essentially differ
ent kind Of giant as man.
1T might. perhaps. be urged that We
should, in the absence of knowledge to