Giant ape: clue to human evolution

Title

Identifier

When comes another?

Language

English

Source

Panorama Volume XII (No. 2) February 1960

Year

1960

Rights

In Copyright - Educational Use Permitted

Fulltext

When comes another? GIANT APE: Clue to Human Evolution A “magnificent” photograph of a jaw of a giant ape that lived in China half a mil lion years ago has been received from a Chinese scientist. The giant apes roamed the for ests when the cannibal called Pe king Man was alive. Whether these fearsome-looking ancient apes and ancient men preyed on each other is not known. But the existence of both at the same period of pre-history has been established beyond doubt by fossil relics. The giant ape is called Gigantopithecus. It is estimated that it stood between twelve and thirteen feet in height. This correspondent has now re ceived a description and a photo graph of the ape’s jaw, the first to be seen outside China, from Dr. Pei Wen-chung of the Aca demia Sinica. Dr. Pei was the man who found the first skull of Peking Man in 1929. Besides the jaw and fifty teeth of the giant ape, Dr. Pei says, “there are five more or less com plete skulls of Peking Man, four teen jaws and a hundred and fiftytwo isolated teeth.” This is the first news heard about the famous relics since 1941, when a major of the United States Marines tried to bring them back to the United States in his personal baggage. He was interned by the Japanese and the baggage was lost. 1}r. Pei stresses the fact that in appearance the new jaw is more like that of a man tnan. any other ape alive or dead. It was found recently in a high cliff cave at Liucheng in Kwangsi province, South China, by a peas ant, Tan Hsiu-huai, who was dig ging for bone manure. Thinking that the jaw was a “lung-ku” Cdragon bone), used in certain Chinese medicines, he tried to sell it at the local mar keting co-operative, where officials had been warned to look out for anything of scientific or cultural value. Dr. Pei writes: "My opinion concerning the giant ape of Kwangsi at the pres ent time before finishing the ex cavation and studying tne speci men in detail can be condensed as follows: “The geological age of GigantoDithecus is Middle Pleistocene” (400,000 to 600,000 years ago by 16 Panorama Dr. Pei’s reckoning, but 200,000 to 400,000 years ago on the more conservative European time-scale). “It is fundamentally a giant ape, therefore I endorse Koenigswald’s first idea.” (The Dutch pa leontologist Dr. G. H. R. von Koenigswald found and named the first teeth of the giant in Hong Kong and Canton drug stores in 1935 and 1939. He saia they were the relics of a manlike ape. Others thought they were the teeth of an ape-like man.) “Gigantopithecus possesses more * human characteristics than any other known fossil of recent age. “It is contemporary with Sinan thropus (the scientific name of Peking Man). That means that during the Middle Pleistocene there lived a branch of human ancestor which developed gradual ly toward the stock of recent man while one line of anthropoid ape struggled with nature but, due to its gigantism of body and inferior skill in primitive labor or hunt ing animals for food, became ex tinct.” * ¥ Antique Phonograph THhat is believed to be one of th? oldest phono graphs in the world was discovered among piles of junk at the National Science Museum in Tokyo, Japan. Records showed that the machine, named the "sound reviving machine” was made in 1878, just one year after Thomas Edison invented the talking ma chine. Creator of the machine is believed to have been a British physicist then visiting Japan at the invita tion of Tokyo Physical Science University. ¥ February 1960 17

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