The Age of Man

In British India a generation ago, scientists unearthed two small fossils that consisted of no more than partial jawbones and a few teeth. For many years, they gathered dust--one in London's British Museum, the other in the Calcutta Museum. The ancient bones were largely ignored by professionals and the public alike. That oversight may have been one of paleontology's biggest bloopers. After carefully studying those neglected fossils, two Yale investigators have now become convinced that they are rare remnants of the first manlike creatures on earth.

The bones belonged to an extinct primate that paleontologists call Ramapithecus (the Latin word for ape, with a bow to the Indian god Rama). Scientists already knew that the creature lived in Asia and Africa 8,000,000 to 15 million years ago. But they have never known exactly where to place him on the evolutionary ladder. Did he belong to the family of apes? Or was he already a member of the family of man? The questions puzzled Yale Paleontologist Elwyn L. Simons, and his former student, David R. Pilbeam, both of whom had strongly suspected for some time that Rama was really more man than ape.

To test their theories, they engaged in some shrewd scientific detective work. Not only did they go through the usual painstaking steps of precise measurement, but they also ingeniously used the tiny fragments to reconstruct the creature's habits and habitats. Teeth, in particular, lend themselves to such paleontological probing.

Almost immediately, Simons and Pilbeam noted that the jawbones lacked the large overlapping canine teeth that are characteristic of all apes. Thus, Rama could grind his food with manlike side-to-side movements. Apes, on the other hand, mostly chomp up and down on their food, since their canines prevent lateral motion of the jaws. The Yale investigators also decided that Rama's molars had emerged one after another, as in man, rather than almost simultaneously, as in apes. From this evidence they drew two important conclusions: 1) Rama probably ventured into open country to forage for tougher foods than were available to apes ("the lotus eaters of the primates"), who stayed behind in the forests; and 2) he matured more slowly than apes, and more as human youngsters do, thus gaining valuable additional time to learn more skills during childhood.

In making their persuasive case for Ramapithecus as the first hominid, Simons and Pilbeam dispute a competing claim by the Kenyan anthropologist, Louis Leakey. Two years ago Leakey announced that 20 million-year-old fossils that he had discovered near Africa's Lake Victoria and dubbed Kenyapithecus africanus belonged to the earliest known manlike creature (TIME, Feb. 3, 1967). After applying their dental tests' to casts of Leakey's prehistoric fragments, the Yalemen decided that Kenyapithecus lacked the characteristics of early man. Though Leakey still insists that Kenyapithecus is a hominid, most other scientists now believe that he is an ape.

The identification of Ramapithecus has even more profound implications to paleontologists. If he is indeed a hominid, Rama would be the direct predecessor of a creature called Australopithecus (southern ape), who, in turn, has long been accepted by scientists as being man's most immediate ancestor among the primates. Unlike the ape: who lived with him in East Africa, the short (just over 4 ft.), heavy-jawed man ape, Australopithecus, stood erect, eating meat as well as fruits and vegetables and was probably the first creature to make and use tools of stone.* Until recently, most paleontologists were certain that Australopithecus lived no more thar 2,000,000 years ago--or at least 6,000, 000 years after Rama. The Yalemen's discovery thus creates a huge gap in man's history between Australopithecus and Rama.

As it happens, new fossil finds made by other investigators, operating quite independently, are closing the gap by showing that Australopithecus is really much older than had been thought--in fact, as much as 6,000,000 years.

Ferocious Neighbors. The evidence comes, in part, from Africa's Omo River Basin, a fossil-rich area where the borders of Ethiopia, Kenya and the Sudan meet. There, a University of Chicago expedition has found 40 prehistoric teeth and two jawbones buried in volcanic ash that is perhaps 4,000,000 years old. The expedition's leader, Anthropologist F. Clark Howell, is convinced that the creatures are members of the Australopithecus family, even though they must have belonged to a branch that probably did not eat meat or make tools. Despite their proximity to various ferocious neighbors in the fossil bed, says Howell, these man-apes were apparently able to survive with no other weaponry than their wits.

A few miles west of Kenya's Lake Rudolf, Harvard Paleontologist Bryan Patterson discovered the fragment of a jaw that he reckons is 5,000,000 years old. In roughly the same area, the University of London's William Bishop found a lone primate tooth that may be several million years older. Most tantalizing of all, jaws and teeth dating back 6,000,000 to 8,000,000 years have been uncovered in Southern Europe and mainland China.

The discoverers have not yet acknowledged their finds in formal reports to scientific journals, perhaps because the bones upset too many old theories. Their scientific caution is understandable. In a few short years, man's fossil record has been extended from less than 2,000,000 years to possibly more than 14 million. Yet even that startling leap back into the past amounts to only a few moments in the 4.5 billion-year history of the earth. Three billion years before man's ancestors took their separate evolutionary path from the apes, life already existed and flourished. Despite the new paleontological evidence, man remains a mere infant.

*He was also close kin to a pygmy-sized creature called Homo Habilis. Last week Leakey's anthropologist wife, Mary, unveiled the most intact habilis skull ever found. It was dug up in Tanzania's Olduvai Gorge, and is about 1,750,000 years old.

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