Evening star., 1933-07-16
WILL DISCUSS AGE:
Of MOTHER EARTH
International Biologists Will
Hold Sessions in Capital,
Opening on Saturday.
Mother Earth is to have a birthday

Mother Earth is to have q birthday
party here next week.
The interest of the scientific world
will be focused on Washington with
the assembling here of the sixteenth
session Of the International Geological
Congress. The chief topic for discus
sion will be the past Of the world for
the last 1000, 100000 years, more or
less. since the planet was born out of
an accidental collision of the sun with
a passing star.
The most notable geologists of Europe,
Asia and Latin America will attend the
sessions. which open next Saturday.
Among the chief topics for discussion
will be the actual age of the earth. with
reports from American. German and
Swedish geOlogists on the latest inves-
legations bearing on this point AL
though two billion years is the figure
generally accepted in the United States
it is not universally agreed upon, and
researches bearing on this point are
going on all over the world.
Disagree Over Results.
The clock by which the edge Of the
earth Is being measured Is the disinte-
grafton of uranium. The atoms of this
highly unstable element break up.
eventually becoming peculiar kind of
lead. The rate of this. diSintegration
is known, and thus, theoretically at
least the time that it has been going
on can be determined by measuring the
proportion of lead in an uranium de-
poSit. The actual process, however, is
very complicated, and there is much
disagreement over the results to be
threshed out at the Washington meet
ing. The papers on the age Of the
earth will be presented to the con-
gress Saturday.
From the vast span Of the earth's
age the geologists will turn on Monday
to a consideration Of the very brief time
the human race has existed on the
planet, believed to be considerably less
than 2000,000,000 years. There are
several much disputed points to be dis
cussed regarding the time of man. One
of these is over the much-diScussed
homo sinanthropus," or man of
China" casts of whose skull are being
brought out of the Orient for the first
time by Chinese biologists attending the
meeting.
Verital adam Of Human Race.
Some maintain the homo sinanthro-
pus, whose bones show that he occu-
pied a strangely intermediate position
between ape and man, was the veritable
Adam" of the human race who existed
more than a million years ago. His
supporters believe he is even more
primitive than the famous "pithecan-
thropus erectus' of Java who long has
been considered the first of known men.
Others believe the Chinese primitive
was only another manifestation Of the
widely spread Neanderthalers-
strange half men who apparently ex-
icfn in nf 10 inc
before the emergence Of the true hu-
man race.
One of the difficulties has been that
there has been no opportunity for ex-
pert measurements of the Chinaman' S
skull outside his native land This may
be overcome by the material presented
at the Washington meeting. Among
the announcements scheduled is that
of the discovery of new humanoid re-
mains in geological strata dating from
the Mousterian period in Hungary.
This was almost a million years ago, at
the very beginning of the period OF the
Neanderthalers.
Sessions to Last a Week.
Still another difficulty to be threshed
out at the meeting is over the antiquity
Of the so-called Folsom remains found
in New Mexico. These are supposedly
human artifacts found with the re-
mains of animals which supposedly were
extinct in Central North America be-
fore the end OF the great glacial pc
riods. If this can be established salts
factorily it will place the human oc-
cupation of the New World much earlier
than is generally allowed by anthropol-
ogists.
The sessions will continue throughout
the week, presenting the particular geo.
logical problems of different countries
in their relations to world problems.
The papers will cover almost the en-
tire scope OF terrestrial time from the
earliest traces Of life on earth, about
a half billion years ago, through the
ages when the monster reptiles were
the dominant form of life, and into the
period of the rise of mammals.
There will be public lectures Of a
popular nature at the Shoreham Hotel
aach evening