The Skyland post. [volume] (West Jefferson, N.C.) 193?-1988, 1939-08-10
Today
AND
Tomorrow
BY -
FRANK PARKER
STOCK B r. ID 6 E
STOCK B RID 6 E

MAN yesterday
Nobody knows how long Man
has existed on this planet Earth.
The deeper into the earth we dig,
the more traces we find of Man
in one form or another buried
under surface layers which took
tens of thousands of years to
form.
The oldest type of Man of
whom traces have been found
vanished more than 10000 years
ago. He was the Neanderthal
Man, some of whose bones were
first found in Germany in 1856.
Since then fragments of the
Neanderthal Mans bones have
been dug up in other parts Of
the world.
Only a few weeks ago a Rus
sian scientist, exploring a cave
in Middle Asia, found a complete
skeleton Of a child of this extinct
race Of humankind. In the 100,-
600 years or so in which Mean
derthal Man roamed; the earth
he spread over a wide range.
The belief of scientists is that
other races of men of superior
intelligence, progenitors of those
who live on earth today, drove
the NeanderthaI Man into the
frozen North, where they were
unable to survive the last Ice
Age, some 10000 years ago. Yet
it may be possible that some
strain of what low-broWed, 60
rilla-like race still mingles with
the blood of some folk who are
alive now.
HORSES iced
Not only extinct men but the
remains of other animals whose
species has completely vanished
are dug up in every part of the
world. The most amazing are
those of animals trapped by the
advancing ice of the last Ice Age,
whose bodies completely preserv-
ed have been found in the still
frozen soil of northern Siberia.
Many specimens Of the gigan-
tic mammouth, ancestor of the
Indian elephants of today, have
been found as the ground melt
ed, some still so fresh after 30
900 years that wild dogs feasted
on their meat.
Out of that region has just
come the report of a still more
amazing discovery. Digging into
an ancient burial mound of some
forgotten race, where the earth
has been frozen solid for more
than 10000 years, Russian ex-
plorers have found the body of
a man surrounded by ten horses,
all saddled and bridled and with
flesh, skin and hair intact after
more than hundred centuries in
the natural refrigerator.
Who the man was, what his
pricely rank that called for the
burial of his ten richly caprison-
ed horses with him, nobody will
ever know. But every such dis
covery throws more light on
mankind's dim and ancient past
TOOLS history
The oldest and best evidence
that men once lived in any given
spot on earth is the digging up
the flint tools and weapons used
by primitive Man. Indeed, scien-
fists classify ancient humanity
into the Paleolithic, Old Stone
Age, and the Neolithic, or New
Stone Age.
Paleolithic men never learned
to use metals and their stone i'm
plements were crude indeed. By
the fragments left behind them,
the kind of people they were
can be determined.
Just now scientists are excit-
ed over the discovery, near Fol
som, New Mexico of stone i'm
plements greatly superior to
those of the Indians, and buried
in strata so deep as to indicate
that their makers lived in Amer
lea thousands of years before the
Indians came.
Who were these Folsom
menu" Where did they come
from, how long did they live in