The Meaning of EvolutionSchmucker, Samuel Christian
History
The Meaning of Evolution
Schmucker, Samuel Christian
Evolution
Many scientific writers to-day take it for granted that one form,
discovered in Java, while it may not be in the absolutely direct line,
must be very close indeed to the line of ascent toward man out of the
apelike forms. A scientist by the name of DuBois, working in the banks
of a stream in south-central Java, found a thigh bone which seemed to
him exceedingly human in its general character and yet not absolutely
like the human thigh bone. The oncoming of the rainy season raised the
water in the river so that DuBois could not continue his search.
Returning a year later, and digging back deeper into this bank, he
found a skull cap and two molar teeth which seemed to him to belong to
the thigh bone, although they lay several yards farther back, but at
the same level in the bank.
When these bones were subsequently presented to a meeting of European
scientists by DuBois, he claimed to have found the "missing link" for
which there was so eager a demand. Some of the best anatomists of the
meeting, notably Virchow, laughed at his claim and said that the skull
cap was simply that of a human idiot, and could be duplicated in any
large asylum. A committee of twelve naturalists was appointed to
report upon DuBois' find. Of this committee three asserted the bones
to be those of a low-grade man, three insisted that they belonged to a
high ape, of a type somewhat higher than any we know to-day, but still
distinctly an ape. Six members of the committee of twelve agreed that
the remains were those of a creature higher than an ape and lower than
any normal man, and represented, in their opinion, a stage distinctly
along the line of development out of the apes and into man.
This so-called "Java find" is known in science by the name of
Pithecanthropus, which means the ape-man. Whether we look upon this
fossil as a serious find or not, it is very certain that in the caves
of Europe belonging to the Quaternary period we find abundant
evidences of primitive man. The older these evidences are, the more
likely they are to be distinctly below the grade of man of to-day, in
the size and shape of the brain case and in the length and massiveness
of the jaw.
There are probably more races than one represented among these skulls.
Some of them are surely well-deserving of the title of low brow. Their
heavy ridges over the eyes, their small foreheads, their massive,
heavy-set jaws show a race of men far less endowed mentally and much
better endowed in the matter of brute force than the men of to-day.
These skeletons, or parts of skeletons, are turning up every year, and
we are just beginning to know much about them. Capable men are
studying them with much care. The next fifty years may not improbably
make the history of the ascent of man as clear as is now that of the
horse, to which we shall refer later.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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