Evening star., 1936-01-04

The rising of the Himalayas, with the
resultant division of a tropical jungle
into two parts, may have been respon-
sible for the emergence of man.
Such is the theory propounded by Sir
Arthur Keith, one of the foremost living
anthropologists, to account for the pres
ent distribution of the fossil remains of
ancient man.
According to this thesis, as outlined
in Nature, organ of the British Associa-
ton for the Advancement of Science,
India in the early tertiary was covered
with a great jungle whose treetops were
filled with all sorts of anthropoid apes.
Among them were those which were to
become the ancestors of the human race.
The northern hills. over the course of q
great many generations. were elevated
into the present mountain range which
cut off the moist, warm winds from the
South.
That portion of the jungle to the
northward gradually degenerated into
semi-desert. Most of the tropical trees
could not survive. AS they became
scarcer the ancestral apes lost their Gus
tomary habitat. The food supply in the
remaining treetops became very scarce.
The animals were obliged to come to
the ground-and the necessity of adjust
ing themselves to terrestrial life marked
the great turning point in the evolution
of the ape into the man.
Most other evidence, Keith says, points
to South Central Asia as the original
abode of man-the birthplace where re-
mains of the transition types must be
ro,,gIt ca iy,oproSSpd nr davidson
Black, the discoverer of the sinanthropus
fossils in China, with this fact that at
the time of his death two years ago he
was planning a systematic search across
the whole region from Eastern China
to Syria The search now has been
taken up by the French anthropologiSt,
p. Teilhard de Chardin, who plans to
conduct systematic reconnaissance.
It is an old law of biology, Sir Arthur
Keith points out that from the center
in which an animal type originates it
spreads out in concentric circles. The
most progressive members remain at the
point of origin. The more primitive are
pushed outward until the least Mt are
found at the extreme limits. This, he
says, is approximately what happened
in the early history of the human race.
The oldest and most primitive human
fossils have been found In Java, Eastern
China and England. The ancient man.
like creatures could have gone no fur
ther in either direction. Then come the
ogrelike Neanderthalers, chiefly known
from their scattered remains found
throughout Central Europe. They lived
there during the ice ages. They were
the rough-stone people who chipped
crude implements from flint, knew the
art of making fires and buried their dead.
Within the past few years Neander-
thaler remains have been found In
Palestine. Skeletally they hardly are dis
tinguishable from the ice-age race OF
Europe, but their graves contain evidence
of a much higher culture. Their stone
artifacts are quite similar to those OF the
next migration wave to enter Europe
the Cro-Magnon and Gimaldi peoples
who were the immediate precursors of
the present European races.
This distribution. Sir Arthur Keith
points out. is in accordance wi ] the
theory. The most progressive OF the
NeandefthalerB settled fueareSt TO the