THE EVOLUTION OF MAN 



It is precisely at this point that we meet with 

 something which has the great advantage of not 

 being merely a logical assumption, but rather a 

 tangible scientific fact. 



The beautiful island of Java in the tropics has 

 long been known on account of its violent vol- 

 canic eruptions. As late as the Tertiary period 

 there was an eruption of a certain volcano which 

 buried an entire section of land with loose masses 

 of ashes in the same way in which Mt. Vesuvius 

 buried the city of Pompeii in historical times. 

 On this occasion a multitude of living beings were 

 buried. Their bones remained in that volcanic 

 mass and were later on carried to a certain place 

 by waters washing their way through this mass. 

 The name of this place to-day is Trinil, and the 

 old mass of volcanic ashes is now a part of the 

 bed of the Bengavan river. In 1891 a Dutch 

 physician, Eugen Dubois, made excavations in 

 the banks of this river, and incidentally he dis- 

 covered masses of old bones, mostly the bones 

 of large mammals of the Tertiary period, such 

 as elephants and hippopotami which do not live 

 in Java in our day. But among those bones 

 Dubois found also a thigh bone and skull cap and 

 a pair of molar teeth of a peculiar creature which 

 had evidently lived in those primitive days with 



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