THE DISCOVERY OF PRIMITIVE MAN IN CHINA 



By G Elliot Smith 



[With 9 plates] 



At the time when Darwin published his Descent of Man compara- 

 tively little was known of the fossil remains either of men or apes, 

 so that the discussion of the evidence of paleontology played an alto- 

 gether insignificant part in his argument. Apart from the discov- 

 eries that had been made in the Neanderthal cave and at Gibraltar, 

 nothing was known of fossil man, and what little was known was 

 puzzling rather than helpful. Little more had then been recovered 

 of the fossil remains of apes than a few fragments of Pliopithecus 

 and Dryopithecus. 



During the 60 years that have elapsed since those times, however, 

 the evidence of paleontology has come to play an increasingly promi- 

 nent part in the discussion of human evolution, until at the present 

 day it is the aspect of the problem that appeals most to the man in 

 the street when the question of man's origin comes up for considera- 

 tion. It is only 40 years since any reall}^ early remains of the human 

 family were discovered, and it is a matter of some interest to discuss 

 the circumstances which have led to the recovery of the remains of 

 early Pleistocene man. 



Pithecanthropus was discovered 20 years after the publication of 

 Darwin's Descent of Man. There had been much discussion, not 

 merely on the morphological side of the question, but also on the 

 problems of geographical distribution of apes and men that so closely 

 affected the problem of man's evolution. The anthropoid apes 

 ranged from Africa and Europe in the west as far as the eastern 

 limits of the original Asiatic continent at a time when it included 

 Borneo and Java as part of the unbroken land-mass. But whereas 

 the chimpanzee, gorilla, and Dryopithecus seem to have wandered 

 toward the west from their original home in the region of the Si- 

 walik Hills of northern India, the orang-utans seem to have pre- 

 ferred the Far East, where also the gibbons, after wandering west 

 and east, have survived. Their presence in Borneo and elsewhere 



1 Reprinted by permission, with author's revision, from Antiquity, March, 1931. 

 102992-32 35 531 



