Evening star., 1935-04-16

natural tendency Of most living beings.
or tissues. to grow by bipartition OF
cells. 1t is thus the number of nerve
cells which increases and brings
about the progression of the brain
organization. Thus the quantitative
progression, as well as the functional
progression, is necessarily discon-
tinuous. since the number of nerve
cells in closely related animals be-
comes doubled without Intermediary
values.
The direct precursors Of the human
race of today in Euorpe were the we'll
known Neanderthalers-Qui ape
like creatures with STOPPING gait, long
arms and bulging ridges over their
eyes. They may, or may not, be in
the direct ancestry of modern man.
But in the same proceedings Prof.
W. E. LIE Gros Clark reveals that the
earlier the Neanderthaloid specimen
the less apelike. In other words,
these ancient men did not necessarily
stand in any close relationship to the
chimpanzee and the gorilla, but were
CNO4f446 dAOA46 pal dl1Cl 4414Ccs SO1-
sequently, he says, the Neanderthal
type can no longer be regarded as an
intermediate stage in the evolution
ary development of modern man from
troglodyte ancestor.
"A detailed study Of the anatomy
Of living and fossil primates," Prof.
Clark says, ''as well as a consideration
of biochemical and physiological evi-
dence, shows that paralleliSm in their
evolution has been much more COM
mon phenomenon than is generally
admitted.
There is accumulated evidence, DR..
A. Tindell Hopwood reported to the
same conference, that the human race
probably originated in Western Eu-
rope or Africa.
First. he pointed out, most an
thropologists now are agreed that the
ancestor of man is to be found among
a family of ancient apes-the dryo-
pithecus. Fragmentary remains are
found both in Asia and Europe. The
man-like apes also are supposed to
have descended from this group.
But" he said, recently 1t has
been shown that the European species
form a group close to the gorilla and
chimpanzee, while the Asiatic species
are close to the orang-utan. It is
also known that the human body
more nearly resembles the Western
anthropoids in its structure than the
Eastern. So the place of origin Of
the human species might be expected
to be nearer the West than the East.
Also, when the known remains of fos-
sill man are arranged in the order of
age and area it is seen that the
earliest, such as those of the Piltdown
man in England, md the earliest
comparable to homo sapiens, also are
from the western half of the Old
World. Hence the fossils tend to cor
roborate the view that the human
family Is of Western origin and should
be placed with the Western anthro-
poids in any major scheme of clas-
sification."
**.*
One Of the long-accepted dogmas
Of evolution has been that its proc
esses are irreversible-for example,
that changes in the relative length
of different segmentS Of the body,
once initiated, can proceed only in
the direction in which they have
started.
But, reported Prof. w. K. Gregory
Of New York City, altogether too
much has been made of the doctrine
in attempting to fix human ancestry
in a very remote past. The differ
ences may be complex characters
made UP Of O number Of factors, such
as divergence, parallelism and COM