A CLEVELANDER, Dr. Wilton M. Krogman, associate professor of physical anthropology at Western Reserve University, has just released the results of several years’ study of skulls unearthed by three great American archeological expeditions.

The Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago is spending Rockefeller money in Egypt and Asia Minor. The University of Pennsylvania is at work in Persia. The Boston Museum of Fine Arts has its camps in Mesopotamia and northwestern India. The sites from which skeletal material has been sent are Alishar in Anatolia; Tepe Hissar in Persia, Chanhudaro in Sind, India, and Tell Judeideh in Syria.

All skulls obtained by these expeditions are sent to Dr. Krogman, who has studied a greater number of early historic specimens than any other man. Among his important findings are the origins and migrations of the present-day races of Europe.

Millions of years ago, in the Miocene age, there developed a form which appears to be ancestral to present-day man as well as to the present anthropoid apes, gorilla and chimpanzee. It is known as the Dryopithecus. This happened 900,000 generations ago. This form was neither ape nor man. It was so primitive that it had characteristics common to both but peculiar to neither. From it man went in one direction, the anthropoid apes in another. We are, therefore, related to the apes only through a remote heritage; they are cousins of ours hundreds of thousands of generations removed.

It is the dream of anthropologists and archeologists to set up in a museum skulls and skeletons tracing the complete development of man.

But that is not possible yet, although occasional discoveries bring scientists nearer the goal. Forms which are both ape-like and man-like have been found deeply buried in the earth. The Java Man, found in Java in 1892; the Dawn Man found in England in 1912, and the Man of China, found there in 1930, are about 1,000,000 years old.

“Careful study of these specimens demonstrates that the main line of development has had side branches,” Dr. Krogman said. “The Man of China has advanced in the development of the teeth, The Dawn Man in the expansion of the brain, the Java Man in the perfection of walking upright. No one of these ancient types has combined in an equal degree the development of all bodily traits. This fact, at first confusing, is the best possible evidence that nature is continuously trying out new ideas. The record of the past is like an inventor’s workshop; it is littered with imperfect experiments, trial and error, failure and success, until we finally reach the results of today.”

“The first dim glow of civilization began when man sought to make nature a friend instead of foe. Neanderthal Man, the cave man of prehistory, made the first step in the direction of family organization, made the first steps toward social security. After him came Cro-Magnon Man, named after the place in France where he was discovered, the first human type identical with our own species, that is, identical with modern man. With him religion emerges, art flourishes and an organized society becomes a fact.

“Then come in rapid succession a polished Stone Age, an Age of Copper, an Age of Bronze, an Age of Iron, an Age of Steel. They come so fast that we cannot say where one begins, the other ends.”

So it is that millions of years, a multitude of evolutionary forms and ages of ceaseless endeavor have contributed to the origin of man and his civilization. It is little wonder, therefore, that the pattern of individual development reveals from time to time many different elements that have entered into its formation.

“It is commonly stated that man is primarily distinguished from all other animals by the tremendous expansion of his brain, his upright posture and the adaptation of his limbs for walking, and by the development of his hand as an instrument of precision.”

The human child is born with twice the brain mass of the adult chimpanzee. At five years of age his brain is three times that of his cousin 900,000 times removed. The backbone of the chimpanzee forms a single curve, like that of a bow bent backwards. It lacks the curves of the human body; that is, a forward curve at the neck, a backward curve at the shoulders, a forward curve at the waist, and a backward curve over the hips.

“Man’s history as a distinct physical type goes back approximately 1,000,000 years, a relatively short period of time,” Dr. Krogman continued. “If the age of the earth, generally accepted as 2,000,000,000 years, be thought of as a straight line extending from New York to San Francisco, a distance of approximately 3,000 miles, the presence of man as man on the earth would extend for just about a mile on this path. But, if we go back still farther and include the first very primitive man-like beings, the distance would of course be longer, and turns out, in fact, to be about ten miles.

“Man’s pedigree, you see, is a very recent one when the time scale is measured in terms of the age of the earth. It is this very fact that is so important, for there are certain characteristics of his growth and development which have been carried over from prehistoric ancestors; but there are other characteristics which have developed within himself during his evolution.

“About 100,000 years ago the men of the Old Stone Age appeared. Here nature took an active hand in man’s progress. Huge ice sheets moved down from the North, not once but four times. Man was forced to live in caves, was forced to struggle for existence, was forced to pit his wits against the hardships of the world about him.

Skulls are an important source of study, because cranial characteristics are definite and because the skull remains in a better state of preservation than other parts of the skeleton.

The Nordic race has a long head and narrow face. The skull is rugged and has a high vault. These people are the northern Europeans, the Scandinavians and the Germans. The Mediterraneans are the “long heads,” but the skull is smooth and graceful. The face is of moderate breadth, but the vault is not so high nor so well arched as the Nordics. These are the south Europeans, Spanish, Italians, Greeks. The “round heads” (Alpines) have a round skull, broad face and high vault. They are the central Europeans, south Germans, Swiss, eastern French and Austrians.

Dr. Krogman points out that there is today no racial purity, that intermingling of races was as great 6,000 years ago as now.

The Mediterraneans are Europe’s “first families,” that is they were the basic population, developing in and around the Mediterranean basin. They evolved from the Old and New Stone Age people and spread across the lands bordering the Mediterranean and the Persian Gulf.

The round heads originated in eastern Asia and began to filter into Europe through Russia about 10,000 years ago, a branch pushing down into Asia Minor. By 2000 B. C. they were a majority in central Europe and became the Alpine type.

Meanwhile, the Nordic type was evolving in the Aral-Caspian area. It, too, was descended from the Old Stone Age and New Stone Age Cro-Magnons, but it apparently reached its ultimate form outside of Europe. By 5000 B. C. the Nordic type was on the march. At 4000 B. C. we find it in Persia at Tepe Hissar, and there it is in the majority by 2000 B. C., by which time it is at Alishar in Anatolia and at Chandu-Daro in northwest India. This is the southern wave and is the carrier into India of the Aryan civilization. Meanwhile, it was on the march to the north and west. By 2000 B. C. it was in northern Europe as the Nordic or Teutonic type.

It is thought that a backwash of this type might have sacked Troy in 2250 B. C., although pottery and other objects found there might have been carried through hand-to-hand exchange.

Students believe that the cradle of man is to be looked for in Central Asia—the Gobi Desert—or possibly the foothills of the Himalayan Mountains. Roy Chapman Andrews has given the Gobi Desert publicity in his searches for the first man.

The search is here although the most primitive types have been found in China and England. This may sound contradictory, but students liken the spread of men to the rings evolved when a stone is dropped into a pool of water. The first ring is pushed farther and farther from the center by the succeeding rings. So it is with man. It is the nature of all animals to migrate, and the first type was pushed farther and farther from the cradle by the ensuing types, students believe.

These archeological expeditions work on gigantic scales. They employ as many as 500 native laborers and they dig down 100 feet or wider areas. The soil is literally sifted for skeletons and art objects. Asia Minor and Mesopotamia are important areas because the inhabitants lived in big cities when the peoples of northern Europe were still forest dwellers.

Archeologists dig so deep because civilizations grew one upon the other. At Troy seven distinct cities have grown one upon the other, at Tepe Gawra in Persia there are fourteen or more levels. It is possible that droughts caused the people to migrate, leaving a site for perhaps 200 years. Or came a flood—the flood of the Bible—and one city was destroyed, another to bloom on the site hundreds of years later.—Sunday Cleveland Plain Dealer.

LOSE no time in vain regret over the mistakes of the past, for all the seeming errors are but mile-posts on life’s highway pointing the way to better things.

Thank God for the experience, and profiting by the lessons learned, make them the stepping stones to greater and greater achievement.—Grace Layton.