Page:The World's Most Famous Court Trial - 1925.djvu/240

236 differences of degree rather than of kind. The animals most closely resembling man are the anthropoid apes. A careful study shows that they have specialized in their way quite as much as man has in his, so that while they are very similar, yet it is evident that man's line of descent is not through any of these anthropoids. It does appear, however, that both man and the other primates have a common precursor, but that the anthropoids must have branched off from the common stock in very remote limes. If this is true, then we might hope to find in ancient strata of the rocks some evidences of earlier forms of men, who might perhaps more closely approach the common ancestor. This is exactly the case. The geologists have established the relative age of the strata of the rocks, while the palaentologists have made plain the forms of life which lived in the epochs when these strata were deposited.

In the strata laid down at the end of the Pliocene period, at least 500,000 years ago, there has been found the bones of a being which appears to be an attempt of nature toward man. Tn the year 1891 on the island of Java, there was found the bones of an animal which in many ways seems to be intermediate between man and the anthropoids. These bones were found in undisturbed strata, forty feet below the surface, at a point where a river had cut through the mountainside. There can be no doubt that these bones were laid down at the time that stratum was deposited and by studying the associated fauna, consisting of many extinct animals, the age of these rocks was established. These bones were not lying together, but had been scattered over a distance of about forty-five feet by the action of the ancient river which deposited them.

These semihuman bones consisted of a skull cap, a femur, and two molar teeth. The skull was very low with narrow receding forehead and heavy ridges of bone above the eye-sockets, while a bony ridge extended from between the eye-brows to the top of the head approaching a condition found in the cranium of the anthropoids. The brain capacity of this individual was between 850 and 900 cubic centimeters, or a little more than half of that of modern man. On the other hand it is half as much again as that of the adult gorilla, and the special development has taken place in these regions whose high development is typical of the brain of man. Hence in this respect this being seems to stand midway betwenbetween [sic] man and the highest anthropoids. The teeth approach the human type and indicate the peculiar rotary mode of mastication of the human, which is impossible in animals having their interlocking canine teeth. The thigh bone is straight, indicating an upright posture and ability to run and walk, as in man. And the muscle attachments show he was a terrestialterrestrial [sic] and not an arboreal form. If, as seems probable; these four bones belonged to the same individual, he must have been more man-like than any living ape and at the same time, more ape-like than any human known to us. He is known as Pithecanthropus erectus or the erect ape-man.

Another find of somewhat similar nature was made only a few months ago in Bechnanaland of South Africa by Prof. Dart, of the University at Johannesburg. This find consisted of the skull of an animal well developed beyond modern anthropoids in just those characters, facial and cerebral which are to be expected in a form intermediate between man and the anthropoids. Neither of these two beings are of certainty, directly ancestral to man, but they do seem to indicate that nature at a very early period was making experiments toward man.

Two other fossil beings, found in the early strata of the rocks, also seem to indicate a development toward man. In the strata of the second interglacial period, probably at least 250,000 years ago, there lived a being with a massive jaw, a jaw human in every respect, except that it had no chin and the ramus or upright portion toward the socket was