IN THE LIGHT OF THE PAST - On the Trail of
Ancient Man. By Roy Chapman Andrews. (Putnami. 256.) • TIrEse two books have in common the endeavour and the success of throwing the light of the past on the present ; but they make a striking contrast—almost like science and art ! The story of palaeontological exploration which Dr. Andrews tells is lively, personal, and artistic, while Professor VVilder's exposition of man's pedigree is severe and almost detached, a fine example of cold science, whose light might find its emblem in that of the fire-fly, which wastes none of its energy on heat-rays. Indeed, the author confesses that he has for his ideal a Martian scientist who is not more interested in man than in other mammals, and does not in his recon- struction of man's evolution take stock of any data which are beyond anatomy. This resolute detachment is almost superhuman, and while it may serve the inquirer well when the question is what living apes or what fossil-forms are nearest man's lineage, we cannot believe that it is other than
filllacicius when a more synoptic view is taken. Even in the strictest palaeontology, the extinct forms must be studied in relation to all that can be discovered regarding their haunts and habits. Part of the distinctively modern progress in palaeontology has just been this ecological outlook.; and we submit that the same must hold when we are studying man's pedigree. How can we hope to understand the disappearance of the Neanderthal men before Homo -sapiens, or the dwindling Of the splendid Cro-Magnon people before physically less distinguished supplanters, unless we try to see man as a whole ? This is a criticism that can be made not of Professor Wilder's book alone, but of every attempt to restrict the scientific view of evolving man to remains" entirely nude and stripped of all extraneous results of civilization." This is anatomism.
But the virtues of Professor . Wilder's book are many ; it is seholarly, terse, and clear; it is divided into numbered sections and is well-illustrated ; it is fair-minded and cautious in its conclusions. An account is given of monkeys and apes, Of related extinct forms, of fossil "men," or, as we should Prefer to say, "tentative men," of the characters to be paid most heed to in estimating affinities, of the races of mankind and their classification.
From a generalized Primate stock, derivable from arboreal Insectivores, the various families of monkeys arose. From a vaguely-known generalized Simian stock there diverged in one direction the gibbons, in another the larger Anthropoid Apes (chimpanzee, gorilla and orang), in a third direction the human sub-family (Handrail-we), including Pithecanthropus of Java, near the foot, and the Piltdown man, much higher up. On the interesting genealogical tree which Dr. Wilder submits modern man is _represented as diverging from the branch on which Neanderthal man and the Heidelberg man have their places. There is, of course, no suggestion of the vulgar fallacy of deriving man from any living ape ; but the Miocene fossil ape, Dryopithecus, is inserted near the forking of the stem into human and ape branches. I regret that Professor Wilder should try to change the use of the family name Hominidae, so as to make it include the larger and the smaller apes as well as " men " and "tentative men " ; but thank him for leaving us in a sub-family by ourselves, Hamininae. Perhaps the change of a "d" into-an " not matter much. An interesting new classification of hvg races is proposed.
In 1900'Professor H. F. Osborn, the distinguished Palaee tologist and the President of the American Museum of Nato History, ventured to assume the role of prophet, He dedae his confident belief that Central Asia would prove to be kind of Garden of Eden for mammals. The American Musey expedition of 1922, 1923, and 1925 was rewarded by diseaveii in the Central Asiatic homeland fossil representatives eight of the thirteen great orders of mammals. Prophe was fulfilled. It looks as if ancient Asia had been" the mall of the life of Europe to the far west and of North Amen to the far. east." This is especially true as regards reptg and mammals ; and the story of the proving of this is admi told by Dr. Andrews, the energetic and resourceful I of the expeditions. No small part of the territory explo was very inhospitable, with deserts and sandstorm darning mirages ; and the quest must often have n faith. But as Dr. Osborn says in his introduction, "pa tology is the Aladdin's lamp of the most desert and lif regions of the earth ; it touches the rocks and there sp forth in orderly succession the monarchs of the past and ancient river streams and savannahs wherein they flourish The rocks, he says, usually hide their story in the most di and inaccessible places ; but the American palaeontologists there !
Much of the book was written on the spot, and the well. story has the charm of the open air and something of glamour of the wilderness. What pictures the author us—the great Cretaceous "bad lands" lava basin, surro with flaming blood-red cliffs, and with a dinosaur " every bush " ; the unearthing of the dinosaur eggs the —dozens of them—some nine inches long and others only some thick-shelled and others thin, laid in the warm sand a million years ago ; the finding of the gigantic browsing extinct Baluchitheriuin, a foot higher than tallest African elephant ; the quarries full of Titanot and a medley of fossils that make one green with en There are racy excursuses too, such as a hunting trip to Altai Mountains after the Mongolian big-horn sheep, and filming of a combined herd of antelopes and wild asses. the chief merit of this fascinating narrative is just its picturing of what might be called palaeontological The only criticism which might be made is of the title, may be said to start us on 'a false scent. But the book well written and superbly published.
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