14 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1926 
canthropus—the valley of the Bengawan or Solo River, a fairly large river, 
beginning in the south of the island and running north and then east to 
Surabaya. Here exists a veritable treasure house for anthropology and 
paleontology where nothing has been done since the Selenka expedition of 
1910, which was the only one since the work of Doctor Dubois in 1891-1893. 
The lower deposits along the river are full of the fossil bones of Tertiary 
and Quaternary mammals, but among them at any time may be remains of 
greater value. Many of the fossils fall out of exposed strata every year and 
lie in the mud, where the natives occasionally gather them and take them to 
their homes. 
ok * * * a * * 
The data obtained in Australia, supplemented by those on the Tasmanian 
material in the College of Surgeons, London, throw a very interesting and, to 
some extent, new light on the moot questions of both the Australian and the 
Tasmanian aborigines. According to these observations, the Australian 
aborigines deserve truly to be classed as one of the more fundamental races 
of mankind, and yet it is a race which shows close connections with our own 
ancestral stock—not with the negroes or Melanesians (except through admix- 
ture), but with the old white people of postglacial times. They carry, however, 
some admixtures of the Melanesian blacks, which is more pronounced in some 
places than in others. 
* * * * * * * 
The two main objects of the visit to South Africa were the investigation on 
the spot of the important find of the Rhodesian skull and of the recent dis- 
covery of the skull of a fossil anthropoid ape at Taungs, which had been 
reported as being possibly a direct link in the line of man’s ascent. 
* * * * * * * 
The discovery in 1921 at Broken Hill in southern Rhodesia of the skull of 
the so-called “‘ Rhodesian man” was an event of much scientific importance. 
The find, moreover, is still enigmatic. The skull shows a man so primitive in 
many of its features that nothing like it has been seen before. The visit to 
the Broken Hill mine, in which the skull was discovered, proved a good dem- 
onstration of the necessity of a prompt following up by scientific men of each 
such accidental discovery. The impracticability of such a following up in this 
case has resulted in a number of errors and uncertainties on important aspects 
of the case, some of which have already misled students of the finds. It was 
possible to clear up some of the mooted points, but others remain obscure and 
can be definitely decided only by further discoveries. 
As one of the results of the present visit, it was possible to save and bring 
for study a collection of bones of animals from the cave, the lower recesses 
of which gave the Rhodesian skull, and also two additional mineralized human 
bones belonging to two individuals, all of which, to facilitate the study of the 
whole subject, were deposited with the earlier relics in the British Museum. 
The mine is by no means exhausted; and since the interest of everybody on the 
spot is now fully aroused to these matters, there is hope that more of value 
may yet be given to science from this locality. 
* * * * * * * 
Doctor Hrdlitka has returned deeply impressed with the opportunities for 
and the need of anthropological research offered by all these distant parts of 
the world and the openings everywhere for American cooperation. The story 
of man’s origin, differentiation, spread, and struggle for survival is evidently 
greater, far greater, than ordinarily conceived, and a vast amount of work 
remains for its satisfactory solution. 
