Well-known Explorer's Enthusiasm over the Discovery of the Sinanthropus Pekinensis: Brain Capacity to be Ascertained Peking, Jax, 1.
The following statement regarding the recent discovery of the "Peking, man," or Sixanthropus Pekinensis, near Peking has been handed to Reuter by the well-known scientist and explorer, Mr, Roy Chapman Andrews:
"The Peking Man is without question the most: important known link in the whole broken chain of human ancestry. The discoverers are be congratulated. World science will forever owe them a debt of gratitude, The work has been well done, It is the result of intelligent and friendly international ce-opera~ tion: of careful planning and of selentifie, execution. The brilliant success is well-deserved.
"The layman can hardly wax enthusiastic about that shell of brown bone. It does not seem 30 different -to untrained eyes from any other skull, But it is difficult for a scientist to discuss it without using superlatives, Science has now for the first time a very primitive human cranium which is complete; one in which the bones are in their original positions, uncrushed, not even distorted, "When one thinks of the almost pitiful fragments of other primitive human skulls which have been studied for so many weary hours, this suburb specimen seems like an embarrassment of riches An Ausplefous vent "Tt may be the most ancient type. Ib is the first of which the geological age ang position are positively known, It is the only tone which was studied from the moment of its discovery and removed by trained observers.
"Phere has ben much guess work about all the other very primitive finds. Of the Java ape man, for instance, we have only the skull cap. Of the Piltdown man considerably more of the skull but all of it badly broken, Different facientists have restored these specimens according to their owa Ideas, Tu every ense bitter controversies have arisen. One man: the progress of human evolution, but it will settle many disputed points. For instan: tion of the ape-like jaw of the! Piltdown man with the skull fragments gave rise to a scientific controversy that raged for years, It is rather satisfying to find that the Peking man has a similar jaw.
It tends to confirm several theory fes which are important. During the last decade there has been a strong tendency to push man's ancestry farther and farther back 10 the remote past. Some sei tists now believe that the human stem is rooted in the early part of the age of mammals.
The Peking man lived in the very beginning of the ice age. Already at that remote period he had advanced far along the road. of human development. That means that the ancestral stock from Which he sprang had started long' ago, certainly in the early Pliocene, possibly in the Miocene. No geologist likes to assign a definite term of years to these remote periods. Estimates of time are too uncertain. One method which has recently found wide acceptance would put the beginning of the Miocene period at 19,000,000. years ago.
Another theory which the Peking man tends to support is the Central Asian origin of the human famil This is particularly satisfying to me because the Central Asiatic Expedition was organized to test that theory.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.