Evening Republican, Volume 19, Number 112, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 May 1915 — New Pen Portrait of the Missing Link [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

New Pen Portrait of the Missing Link

* . ITHECANTHRQM A PUS ERECTUS was hi* IJg 19 name - He couldn't pronounce it, much less spell It. Yet this illiterBH ate person was something of a personage — the first man; the Missing Link! “ |~ , We're all of the Erectus family, you know. Old Pithecanthropus was the founder of the line; he makes us kin to kings and emperors, to Thomas Edison and Andrew Carnegie; to Sitting Bull and Raisuli as well. He gives us a family tree which reaches back to the Pliocene age, making American colonial genealogies mere Bprlgs on its most extended boughs. And our great-great-great (repeat ad infinitum) grandfather was quite a chap, take it all in all. G. P Scott Elliot has been making an extended study of the old fellow and presents the result in his newly published book, “Prehistoric Man and His Story.” (J. B. Lippincott Co.) No family portraits remain, it seems. Old Ean Pith-etc. was not much on beauty and,' anyway, he couldn’t paint or photograph. “Yet,” says Professor Elliot, “it is possible to give a rude, blurred picture of the Pliocene precursor when he was just on the point of venturing on the great step upward.” So here goes—and remember you owe him respect as the head of your family; "His body would be covered with hair or fur except on the palms or soles of his feet. On tda head the hair grew long and thick and was continued, in all probability, down his cheeks and chin to form a combined beard and whisker fringe. We do not think he had much of a mustache, but probably his eyebrows ‘beetled.’ “The hair was wavy or curly; it may have had a tendency to be lank, straight and stiff on his head, but this is doubtful. It was not so woolly as that of the negro. His children probably had p rich Titian red or bronzy eoat of fur like that which one sees on young Galloway cattle. In the epidermis as well as .in the hair were both black and orange pigment, but on the whole he was probably moderately dark skinned. “The face would probably be low and broad, as compared with modern races. “His nose would be as broad as It was long,-with nostrils wide apart and facing a little upward and outward. The bridge would be almost concave upward, and the nose itself —all that there is—of the most retrousse. The eyes were small and deeply sunken under the rather prominent eyebrow ridges. It would not be easy to distinguish the peculiarities of his jaw on account of the hairy beard, and perhaps it was best so, for he had no real chin and a very retreating lower jaw; a long and.narrow slb well as projecting or prognathic upper jaw, heavy cheekbones and extremely large teeth, often with five roots to them. Those muscles which are at work when chewing hard food would he enormously developed, but those which are used in speaking would be feeble and weak. “Seen from in front, his appearance would be the reverse of prepossessing —the narrow, receding forehead, beginning with Its strong eyebrow ridges, would seem to disappear under the mop of dark, thick hair, out of which the little apelike ears could hardly be seen. He might have stood about four feet high, with hands, when so standing, reaching to the knees; both hands and feet would be large, chest narrow; he would be slightly bandy-legged, but

nothing to signify, for even at this period he probably chased small animals and hunted on foot. “At night he would retire to a roughly woven nest In the branches of a tree. When sleeping his head would be bent forward over his wrists; these would be crossed in front of his chest, with elbows down and outward. His legs would be strongly bent or flexed, so that the knees were also near* the wrists. His waist measurement would be excessively small or he could not assumed this position, which is, as a matter of fact, hardly possible and certainly painful for civilized man. On a similar nest close by would be his wife or wives, with Titian red or bronze babies sound asleep, and yet clinging round their mother’s neck. “Should a raging gale, with sheets of driving rain, fall upon him, he would still sleep on. The rain would be conducted away by his hair and beard, by his elbows and hip joints, so as to drip nearly clear of the face and body. The hair on the arm, even of those civilized men who retain sufficient to trace the arrangement, turns down both upper and forearm to the elbow; outward and downward from the wrist. Morevoer, if the reader tries to realize this attitude he will see that what with hair, whiskers, beard and eyebrows, even midges and mosquitoes might be puzzled; they might lose heart, being diverted and led astray by the tangled labyrinthine masses of his chevelure. But we must leave him in this position asleep, perhaps dreaming, i. e., apprehending by hirf senses some particularly delectable dainty (perhaps with corresponding motor reflexes).” Can you trace, from" this description, a family likeness in any of his descendants? And here was his 4 diet: “Fruits of all kinds (nuts and fleshy fruits), small birds and eggs, honey, grubs and insects. “He may, of course, have eaten shellfish, and especially oysters; West African monkeys are still fond of them, and for many primitive peoples shellfish are of the first Importance.” Barring the grubs and insects, he was something of an epicure, it seems plain. i Even in those diys, it seems, “the female of the species was more deadly than the male.” Mrs. Pithecanthropus Erectus was a fighter—a dangerous foe for beasts, no matter how ferocious. Professor Elliot says:

"One of the hardest problems in the story of the earliest ancestors is to understand how early man succeeded in surviving through a period when many ferocious carnivora undoubtedly existed. Suppose that Pithecanthropus was caught, when munching fruit, by the redoubtable Fells Groeneveldtii, the name (somehow appropriate enough) of the fearsome creature, half lion and half tiger, which was one of her contemporaries in Java.

“She would at once draw herself up to her full height (about 1,700 millimeters). Her appearance would then be sufficiently alarming; the strongly marked eyebrow ridges, the powerful S\ « - w * V

Jaw, huge grinding teeth, retreating forehead, widening behind and covered with tangles of black or brown woolly or wavy hair —all these would impress his mind. She would certainly exercise her power of speech, such as it was, in yells, howls and resonant exclamations. Perhaps* she was intelligent enough to throw stones, sticks, fruits or whatever came to her hand, at the enemy. “These three things, all very unsuual in the Pliocene world—energetic if inarticulate vituperation, an erect position and action at a distance — would surely confuse and impress the primitive brain of Fells Groeneveldtii, and he would probably retire, with dignity, to seek some easier prey.” The description is based on a skull fragment discovered by Doctor Dubois in Java—the skull of a creature almost exactly on the line between man and the higher anthropoid apes. The very origin of the human race according to Professor Elliot, may have been in North America. On this subject he writes: “It seems probable that it was in North America that the very first primate originated. These interesting animals are found in the lower Eocene deposits, which mean that they are perhaps the most ancient of all known mammals.”

Later, primates —that is, the very first links in the chain binding man to his beginnings in antiquity, the forms of mammal life aeons older than even the Missing Link—were living in Egypt. Near Paris and in South America more Eocene* lemurs dwelt—they were widely scattered. Though the primate probably originated in North America, Professor Elliot believes man did not come to the new world until after the Ice Age—long after he was to be found in the old world.