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The Origin of Man
By HUMPHREY JOHNSON, Cong : Orat.
(C.-ricIiided fi'mn Last Week.)
In spite .1' the fragmentary nature <>t
:V- material. b->th Knth and Gregory :n-
(iTf :> tin- '.ww til..: Pr'-nliopithecus stood
v» ry near t th» l.n- o;' human 'am-est ry,"
-igniricart that W Junes, despite the
radical ok. <rg<nce f h- standpoint from
that of th<>»- two anthropologists, is pre-
b lity. In the at»e?no of further palaeon-
t T-gval < v ii-iia can we permit ojrsthas
to mnu ge .'i Aider >;h . illation with regard
to t'n- i j; : n >f the h»minidae? I think
that w. van.. The exist. ng distribution of
i riiv.at- s >« m.- t < shed some light on the
problem of t;-... crcum.-tanees umb r which
the euiv hominids or manlike creature
iame int - U-mg. We ran hardly suppose
:h«m t< have orig.riated in New Zealand,
v. hiUi lontain.-d no indigenous land mam-
l -a r.maii:.n fauna consisted, except for
huts and rodenU. s- iely < f niarsup.ais and
!.: retrenies. Ani'-r.ia is again unlikely,
s.jk'o latge apes, t-itlar living or fossil,
rave be n f -and in I. The attempts of
tin-n: ita\e b<-» n completely discredited.
W, arc therefore left with the Oid Worui.
-a he r>- anthropoid apes survive m Asia an-l
A ca and have been found m a f-.s.sil
pom-o-rha the habitat of the goriila atiJ
the ri-.mpanz.v is tr-. ideal Afr.ca. the lat
ter being f und a- far west as the Gold
< ' a.-t. < if the A- at e group the orang ;s
.w corgin-!, to. the is lands of Sumatra anj
P ri-. , while the gibh -n >s found also c r»
tfe Asiatic mainland throughout Indo
china and on the islands of Java. No
antrropomorpha now survive in India, but
;n Miocene Units northern India was a
gn a: breeding-ground of anthropoid apes.
If then it be the case that the early Plei.--
c< ntr«-s of distributi-n of both these fami-
es v..;! n.-t bave been far apart. The ev.-
«i' :ae of human pala«-< ntoiogy lends sup
port ;> tn.s vit vv. Of the four early Pleis-
tocen- hominids known t. us. two, E..an-
throrus and Pala.-anthropUi (Heidelberg
mar. ». are found at the western end of the
great Eurasuitic land-mass, while the other
tw>. Pithecanthropus and Sinanthropus,
are found at its eastern extremity. This
suggests, though does not of course prove,
a ventral Asiatic origin for the family. It
is a widely accepted tiie-oy that the geo
logical hist <ry of this area throws some
ignt un ci the urig.n of the early homini-
In E ene times it is believed to have
been a l<w-l\;ng well-forested and semi-
tropwal region, but as the Tertiary epoch
advanced an elevation of the land induced
a v >lder and drier climate and converted a
land ..f forest into a country of open
pla.ns. It is a plausible hypothesis that
the influence of tiu-e changes either set in
motion or at bast accentuated the division
f the common ancestral stock into prot- -
humar. and anthropoid groups, the apes in
the more ge:i al lards to the south of the
Himalaya i> taming their ancestral arboreal
habits, wh it- the j nmutes on the northern
plateau, c -nfr nted by the fall in the tem
perature w.th an economic crisis, were
compelled to descend from the trees in
order to replenish their stomachs. From
these Terreetral primates, so it is conjee
tured.were evolved the early Plei-toiere
hominids. Proof of such a theory is at
present lacking. Yet some evidence in fav
our of it may b? supplied when the an
cient fossil life of Central Asia has been
more intimately studied. In the meantime,
we should not forget that we are here in
the region of speculation rather than of
fact.
A materialist may date the origin of man
from the day when a particular group of
primates began to assume manlike charac
ters of skull and limb. For a Catholic,
however, the origin of man is the moment
at which there appeared in the world an
animal which differed from all other ani
mals which had hitherto existed in that it
was endowed with a spiritual principle. Do
Pithecanthropus. Sinanthropus, and Eoan-
thropus correspond to such a being? In ac
tual volume the brain of the Java man may
just attain the lowest limit met with among
primitive human races, but its inferior de-
velopnunt in those areas associated with
the superior intelligence of man makes it
i.ard to beiievt- that it could ever have
served as the instrument of a human in
telligence. Doubtless its possessor could
utter sounds which bore some kind of re
semblance to numan sjH>eeh, but it is d.fli-
cult to believe that the Java "man" on id
have been capable of abstract thought. In
deed, only recently has it been rec« gnise.l
that in its general organisation the bra:n
of Pithecanthropus was more human than
anthropoid. The Sinanthropus was a more
highly evolved type than Pithecan
thropus. It had attained some skill as a
tool-maker, and couid possibly make a
limited use of fire. As a chimpanzee is
capable' ol trr.»-j.:ng a situation before which
a dog w, u!d helpless, s« Sinanthropus
c >u'd doubtless cope with problems w ho-,-
complexity wouiei deft;,; a chimpanzee. Ye t
according to IVo!,-ser Black "h.s craft
ep-pla.vs a crud.ty which indicate-. that he
with which he worked" ("Nature. 17 Dec .
1WJ).
Euanthrepiis was in. -re advanced! m ore-
b: al de\elotnm>nt thaii either the Peking
mar. <r th-- Jaa n an, but his brain wa>
so prim.t.w that Kelt!) hesitates to ali<-w
him more than th-- "potentia'jty" f
speech. Ill fiat the I'iltdown roan creates
- a the imagination the impression of a
creature mak ng \ahart. but only partial
ly - ucee-s.-fu I . efforts to be.-otr.e a true man.
lie had shaken < >tf tin vast brow-ridge-s
- I tli- g oriiia and the' Pithecanthropus, but
had not succeeded m divesting himself of
apelike traits ->j jaw and te-eth.
What is tin- relation of modern man to
these early Pleistocene submen? Of late
years there has grown up the custom of
dividing the remains of fossil man into
two groups. palaeanthropie and nean-
thropic, the f->rmer including early and
middle Pleistocene' types, the latter m-
bracing the- late Pie istocene races, such as
the Cromagnon, Chancelade and (Jrimaldt
ones, which are ,-earcely distinguished from
existing raee-s.' The great defect of this
elasrificat en i> that it plates in one group
both the primit.ve Pithecanthropus and
the far more recent Neanderthal man,
whose bra.n capacity was equal to that of
modern man, while- his mind stems to have
worked in much the same way. Whatever
view we take of the origin of modern man
must be larg.-Jy determined by the posi
tion which we assign to Neanderthal man
in th< family tree. It is of course generally
known that. though possessing certain
specialised characters in the points in which
he differs from modern man, it is in the
direct on of liken s- to the ape. Now there
are three ways in which we may visualise
the relation of modern man to Neanderthal
man. It may be -supposed that he repre
sents the last of the evolutionary stages
uniting modern man with his anthropoid
forebears. in othir words that he is the
direct and i»nn.< diate ancestor of modern
man. Thri v a v.- was widely current a
generation ago, bet.. re the prdblem of
man's origin had been complicated by the
discovery of I'iltdown man. Recently
Hrdlicka revived it in his Huxley Memorial
Lecture in 1927. A mere common w'ew
ri that Neanderthal man is a descendant
of Heidelberg man and constitutes the
terminal point of a branch of the human
phylum which separated as far back as
late Pliocene times from the stem from
which modern man is derived. Stated brief
ly, this theory would make of Neander
thal man a kind of first cousin once re
moved of modern man. This seems to be
the view now taken by the majority of
anthropologists. To my mind it.- weakness
lie :n ;t> failure to account for the
psychic similarities of Neanderthal man to
mod- i n man. -one it presupposes that both
derive from a common ancestor certainly
n- nv-r,- ad'.ained :n the evolutionary scale
titan P'tb-A amhronus. Tins m its turn
trta;!- tin -tianae supposition that the
o>t .ia t r. < . \ human ps>ch:c attubutes were
atqu.rt'd two- over, once by Neanderthal
man and nv by neanthropic mand No
theory the origin of Neanderthal man
whbh fa. Is to take account of his psychic
oualiti--- can lx- l-egarded .as sati-factory.
A third \ a w .» that both neanthropic and
Neanderthal man derive from an ancestor
w !-. bad acquired full human status both
a- regard- body and mind.
It up; c;;'- to me that there is more to bo
-a d t -i tii.s \ .eu than is gen rally recog-
nised. In 1931 there was discovered in
the \Vad> -el-Mugharet caves at the foot
of Mount Carmel a new race which ap
pears to bridge over the gulf between
Neanderthal man and neanthropic man. A
sufficient number of skeletons has been dis
covered to justify the creation of a new
racial type, to which Keith has g:\x_n the
nam-- Homo Palestinus.
The Palestine man possesses the power
fully developed supraorbital rmges -!
Neanderthal man! though the vault of h s
skull ;> higher and he has a wvi'.-definr-d
chin. The Ehrtngsdorf skull f-.ur.d near
Weimar in 19-o points to a simitar c -nclu-
Moii It is the oldest skull found on the
cor.r nent of Europe, ami. with the excep
tion of the Heidelberg jaw. the oldest
human fossil. Though definitely Neander
thal in several important characters, "it is
1es> primitive than mosj Neanderthal
skulls, and yet is the oldest if the Nean
derthal type known to u» so far." (Keitb,
"N»w Discoveries relating to the Antiquity
of Man 19:51 , 327).
The Ehringsdorf man was at least Mous-
U-nan, possibly pre-Mousterian. ,n date.
Profe.-sor Weidenreich (says K ith) has
formed the opinion that the Ehringsdort
man takes us towards the common » arent,
(U ntinued on Pag.- 11.)
*The blood of these races almost cer
tainly flows in the veins of modern Euro
peans. The Cro-Magnon type possibly
survives to-day in the Plynlymon district
of Wales and the French "Massif Central."
It may not be out of place to point out
here that the virtual extinction of the
human race by a great flood at any time
later than the appearance of Neanderthal
man cannot be harmonised with our know
ledge of the distribution of early races.
-: J t r. R Broom says of Neanderthal
mi.ir !' i.i i.\-d m England to-day he
vcu untie-- have a \ute" ("The Com-
i:- 1 Man. If I". 171 >.

The Origin of Man
(Continued from Page 10.)

for he regards th? Ehrirtp?ciorf individual
as representing an intermediate t; pe. one
which share Neanderthal and nounihrop.c
characters (ib., 37, M
If this view he correct, then v» :iro led
to regard as retivgre.-sivt> in character
S'-tie v. the lr.are j r. m>untvd pithecoid
traits found :n >uvh X anderthal skuli.s as
that of La ChapeUo.
Some light may b.'1 thrown «>n this pro
blem by the discovei"y in a twelfth-century
Viking cemetery at U:;rdar in S.W. (3reen-
lan l of an unfossiled skull cntl lower jaw
r. s-mblin- t.ith in their ma.-sivc n- ss and
in their pr.nntive characters the crania of
La Chapelle and "f Kh'-desian nun. That
the llardarcne man was a belated represen
tative <f prehistoric humanity which had
lingered in (irtenland till mediaeval times
,-cf ois ijuite iiu reil.bie. The disc verer »f
tiardarene man, Professor Hansen of Copen
hagen, recounts for his pLcaliar quali:ie«
by po.-tulatnig an atavi-t.c reversion to an
cariy t.vpe jm-xluced by close inbreedin;; in
;b.e jobnst stu.k represented bv this iso
lated Norse ny. Keith bans n a third
ix;i!;,::.:.'.n and believe tluit this ,-i:u 1
: path do:.'c;.l. ts owner sutfering fmm
lends s'tr.c su; nor: t-> t ! ; i s v:, v. by citing
evidence from early Norse literature f >r
the prevalence of the former disease amcng
the old Northern "Nature", Aug. S,
I: rrav be that there is a mea
sure of truth the theories m th of llan-
s(n and >( Keith, and that G ir-lar.ne man
may un.k r . m. in nnui.ai conditions have
rip:\idu( ed 'n a pathological form trads
which had bet n rue. a! in Neanderthal man.
If ;i.»n the su r/estion that has been made
b. correct, that bef..rc his extinctitn Nean-
derthaMnan had begun t> develop features
lorr.m- n ancestor both of Neantk-rthal man
and of neanthropic man will be more ac
curately rojiresonted b> the Ehringsdorf
tnan by the La Uhapelle skull. In that ca-e
we shall «>:pict to find certa n Neandertha-
i id traits in the eariiest representatives of
Hom » sapiens or neanthropic man.
Not many years ago no fossil rema ns of
neanthropic man were known older than the
up.p-T palaeolithic- though it was of course
inferred by those who did n t believe that
modern man v.'n- the descendant of Nean
derthal man that the former must have
been n exist , nee, somewhtire, earlier than
the Aurignacian age.
Recently, hi wever, remains of nean
thropic man of Mousterian or even prc-
Mousterian date have come to light in
l'calitie- as far apart as the Thames Val
ley and Kenya Colony. The London skull
was found in 1925 during the excavations
for Lloyd s new building at the junction < f
Lcailenhal! Street and Lime Street. Of
this skull, probably female in sex, the
hinder two-third alone have been recov
ered. The face, forehead and base which
would have most precisely determined its
racial affinities are unfortunately lacking.
Keith >e-s in th < Lloyd's :kult certa. n
rr.td.-wn ch.aractei s and pLiusddy suggests
that it may represent a subsequent evolu
tionary development of Eonanthropus. Ac
cording to Elliot Smith it has Australoid
afiniUes. Now the native Australians are
of all existing races the one most reminis-
cent . f N< andevthr.1 man. Tho considera
tion sugge.-t that the Ehrmgsdurf skud
end the Lloyd's skull may take us near
to the point at uh.ch Neanderthal man
and neanthropic man diverged from a com-
mon stock.
Eoanthropus was already in early FLV
t.Kcne times b- 'gsnhing to acquire s >me «
the characters of neanthro:»c man in sk d
and brain, though still re tain ng apel.ke
traits of jaw and te-th. If these latter
rule out Piltdown man as the direct an
cestor of neanthropic man they by no
means preclude the possibility, nay, even
probability, that this ancestor may have

l»een clostly related to Eoanthropus.
After surveying the distribution of the
<xit tig races of mank nd and the remains
of palficolothic man, Elliot Smith says:
Wlien one considers the many points
of analogy between the most primitive
the Australian aboriginal and the
I J .iy d's id-vd f rom England, the c; n-
viction is strt ngtbened thai possibly a
divergence b.iwr. n Homo sapiens and
Homo neaniierthaicnsis may have taken
place somewhere i n th? neighbourhood
of Western Asia ("Early Man" 19-'il,
V- 19).
Tn- discoveries of fossil man in East
Africa have during the last three years :«-
t ra ted much attention, and the view that
th.'- part < f the world was the cradle of
Ho:n<» sap ens is now widely accepted. Two
skulis from Kanjera to the north-east of
Victoria Nyanza scarcely distinguishabV
from those of modern man are on con
verging evidence, geological, cultural an i
and faunistic, now accepted as cf noddle
Pleistocene date. This fact would not by
itself lessen the probability of Elliot
Smith's suggestion that Western As a may
have been the cradle-land of neanthropir
man. Vet from an older and probably
lower Pleistocene horizon at Kanam only
thr-e miles away there is forthcoming a
fragment of a mandible which a Cam
bridge anatomical ccmmittee last March
was prf paivd to i-iass plovitionaliy" in
Homo lapi. ns. The- , list. .very of an early
Pleistnei.no hominid in which the chin s
well developed b of course a somewhat re
volutionary event. Dr. Leakey, the dis-
,-:veur, has erect. <1 a new specks, ilomo
Kanamcn s, and regurds this creature as
th? true ancestor of modern man. Frag
mentary as is this discovery. Homo Kana-
rhin, can put forward a more rcspt ctable
claim to rank a our ancestor than any
other of the early Pleistocene hominids.
Yet we must bear in mind that his skull
i< not yet known, and hold our judgment
in suspense.
That the facts of human palaeontology
readily admit o any other than an evolu-
tiunaiy (xpiannt'on I think that few un
prejudiced persons will assert. At all
events no alternative explanation of a
rem< telv plausible character is at present
fortrtt oaiing.
Yet we should not, of course, allow our
irir.ds to bciume so wedded to the idea
. f evolution that sh. uld an alternati ve
explanation be forthcoming we should be
unabie to examine it impartially. May we
not find a certain parallel between the
orijrn of the earth and the origin of man?
In the evolution of the solar system many
planets were formed, yet. save in the
equatorial regions of Mars, in no part of
our planetary system could human life
support itself. The earth alone among the
sun's satellites is a possible arena for the
development of human civilisation. For
aught we know, "ndced, the only one in the
. ntirv Universe. It appears to me that
.we may s<v u parallel phenomenon in the
ki-tory of that order of placental mam
mals which we call the primates. Several
typr s of "man" were evolved, but one only
developed a brain which could serve as
the nudiuvi through which a sp ritual prin
ciple could lind « x ' cession.
The progress of human palaeontology has
eiimtnated the n.ciasity of invoking a
"mutation" to account for the origin cf
man. W tum' i n. t. however, deny, though
the question is necessarily one of great
ob uMt>, that some final modification of
the brain and nervous system brought
ab. u: by dirict divine action was necessary
U f.-.e the nv-st highly organised and pro
gressiva of the horrt nds was elevated into
a true man by being united to a spiritual
soul. At all events the orthodoxy of such
a theory is now being admitted by an in
creasing number of representatives of the
scholastic tradition in theology.

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