ARTICLES 



THE PROBLEM OF THE RHODESIAN 



FOSSIL MAN 



By a. smith woodward, LL.D.. F.R.S. 



Compared with the discoveries in caves of the temperate 

 regions, those in the corresponding shelters of the tropics have 

 hitherto proved disappointing. In Western Europe we find 

 remains of extinct races of primitive men associated with the 

 skeletons of mammals which are either extinct or no longer 

 living in the same country. In the tropics nearly all the caves 

 hitherto explored have yielded evidence only of existing races 

 of men associated with remains of animals which are identical 

 — or nearly so — with those still living in the same district. 

 An important exception to this general rule was reported in 

 1920 by Prof. Eugene Dubois, when he described his discovery 

 of skulls and other remains of a primitive Australoid race in 

 rock-shelters at Wadjak in Java.^ A still more important 

 exception was the finding last autumn of a primitive human 

 skull, with other human remains, in a cave at Broken Hill in 

 Northern Rhodesia. 



Until last year the Rhodesian cave had proved as dis- 

 appointing as most of the others in the tropics. It was first 

 discovered in 1907, during mining operations, by the Rhodesian 

 Broken Hill Development Co.,^ and since that time enormous 

 numbers of more or less fragmentary bones have been removed 

 from it. At first, these remains were carefully preserved and 

 submitted for examination to Dr. C. W. Andrews, of the British 

 Museum, and to Mr. E. C. Chubb, of the Bulawayo Museum. 

 So far as they could be named, however, they all appeared to 

 belong to species still living in Rhodesia, or to others only 

 slightly different from these.' They therefore excited little 



1 E. Dubois, "The Proto-Australian Fossil Man of Wadjak, Java," Proc. 

 Roy. Acad. Sci. Amsterdam, vol. xxiii (1921), pp. 1013-1051, with 2 plates, 



2 Franklin White, " Notes on a Cave containing Fossilised Bones, etc., 

 at Broken Hill, North- Western Rhodesia," Proc. Rhodesia Sci. Assoc, 

 vol. vii (1908), pp. 13-23. 



^ F. P. Mennell and E. C. Chubb, " On an African Occurrence of Fossil 

 Mammalia associated with Stone Implements," Geol. Mag. [5], vol. iv (1907), 

 pp. 443-8. 



574 



