Science: Old Men

In 1859, when Charles Darwin, armed with a mass of scientific facts, suggested that man had an ape ancestor, enthusiastic converts to his theory of evolution immediately pictured a great-grandfather-&-son development of gorilla or chimpanzee into Homo sapiens. Subsequent unearthing of scattered thighbones, skullcaps, jaws and teeth led to many diverging theories of the ape’s transition, showed that evolution is as unstraightforward as the relationship of second cousins once removed, that it moves in zigzags, circles, spirals.

Regardless of theories, however, all contemporary anthropologists agreed that early man differs from anthropoid apes in posture, brain case and teeth. Plaster casts of skull interiors usually reveal faint lines made by convolutions of the brain. These are more developed in man than in ape. When chewing, the ape moves his jaw straight up and down. Man rotates his jaw. Hence there are decided differences between ape and man in the size and shape of their teeth, particularly the molars. Prehistoric human skeletons which anthropologists have pieced together demonstrate these differences in one respect or another. While possessing many apelike features, these early men were definitely human. Oldest and most prominent are:

Pithecanthropus erectus, of low brow, apelike jaw and human teeth, who browsed on the island of Java during the early Pleistocene period (Ice Age), 500,000 to 1,000,000 years ago. Dr. Eugene Du Bois, Dutch scientist wb discovered the remains in 1892, changed his mind about Pithecanthropus’ genus several times, finally concluded that he was an ape. Britain’s Sir Arthur Keith, however, world’s greatest authority on fossil man, considers Pithecanthropus the earliest known form of man.

Sinanthropus pekinensis (Peking man), of receding, apelike chin and human brain case and teeth, who is approximately the same age as Pithecanthropus. His skull was discovered near Peking in 1929 by Chinese Anthropologist W. C. Pei.

Eoanthropus dawsoni (Piltdown man), of broad forehead, thick bones, human brain case and apelike teeth, who lived in Sussex, England in the early Pleistocene days. Rambling Lawyer Charles Dawson discovered the Piltdown remains in 1912.

Last week, world-famous anthropologists at the Cambridge meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science listened with shock and bewilderment to the description of the anthropoid ape fossil which Dr. Robert Broom of the Transvaal Museum discovered in the South African Sterkfontein caves last fall. The ape, of the family Australopithecus transvaalensis, lived in the Pleistocene days, when Pithecanthropus and Sinanthropus were already beating down lesser men. Since South Africa was treeless, Australopithecus must have walked on the ground. Whether it walked human-fashion is not known, since the bones of the lower leg have not been found, but certain it is that it carried itself like an ape, because its head was hafted to its neck like that of a gorilla or chimpanzee. The horrifying feature of Dr. Broom’s fossil was a set of human teeth, neatly arranged in the ape jaw. How could a creature lower in the evolutionary scale than man possess human features? asked the anthropologists. Are the human teeth in the ape’s jaw an evolutionary sidetrack? Or was this now extinct ape a closer relative of man than the chimpanzee and gorilla?

No one could give definite answers to these questions. “This discovery,” said Sir Arthur Keith sadly, “has destroyed the finer points we anthropologists depend on for drawing the line between anthropoid and man.”