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Why Science DBolievesWeAre On Our Woy Back so the Prgmies
Science Verifying the Scriptural Statement That ‘“There Were Giants in Those
Days’’ Explains How All Forms of Life Started Little, Grew Into Gigantic
e, Beings and Are Now on the Downward - .
~ = . Grade to Dwarfs Again |
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By Dr. W. H. Ballou.
N Genesis, chapter 6, verse 4, it is sald:
I “There were giants in the earth in
those days.” And in all the legends
of all the nations of the world there persist
stories of gigantic men. Frazer, in his
“(Giolden Bough,” and Spencer, in his dis
cussipn of myths, both point out that a
tradition, no matter how seemingly impos
gible, usually has its basis in solld fact—
even though that fact be exaggerated and
distorted. The mind of man is incapable of
conceiving anything original; it must first
have its basis of fact upon which to build.
Extraordinary confirmation of the text
in Qenesis so widely quoted and justifica
tion for this widespread belief in glants,
has recently come into existencé through
the studles of various expeditions upon
fossil remains, and particularly where
mankind is concerned, by the American
Mugeum Belgian Expedition, under Dra.
Lang and Chapin, who have just returned
from the Congo Teglon of West Africa with
various collections of the culture of the
pygies, the oldest existing human race
which inhabite that reglon. .
“ Waturally, the expedition could not
-fi?Bt. trap and secure the skins and
sleieton of the iittle negroes, but they did
secure and bring back model plaster casts,
photographs and drawings from which a
group of these most Interesting humans
has been modeled and set up in the Hall
of "Man.
The observations of Drs. Lang and
Chlapin have aroused much discussion in
geientific elrcles concerning the whole of
pygmyism in nature generally.
».And the astomishing conclusions+ have
bben reached that every form of life on
earth, including man, begun in littleness,
reached an apex of giantism and, with very
few exceptions, is now on the downward
grude agaln, perhaps to pygmyism.
~'For instance, Pithecanthropus, the dawn
man, has been discovered to have been a
pygmy. What s called the cephalic
msasure of his skull—that is the contentse
fu cubic inches—was only forty-five. His
skeleton and skull continued to increase,
cuiminating in the Heidelberg giant of Ger
muny, the largest human being who ever
exigted, whose cephalic fndex was 100 or
more, and who stood most probably eight
to ten feet high. The dawn man was prob
&by not more than four feet high. To-day
tHE' hitman skull is reduced to an average
of. seventy-ive on the cephalic Index, and
she average tallest frame s six feot.
. Erom Pithecanthropus Erectus to the
Neanderthal giant was 260,000 years. The"®
@ants died out approximately 75.000 vears
A#6." Man has, therefore, shrunk a quarter
trom s highest point during 75,000 years.
. The most useful of the domestic aniwals,
the horse, started out 2500000 years ago
as's tiny foot long little animal who was,
q;éept for certain differences in hoofs, &
wminiature replica of certain breeas of
Wovse of to-day. It took him almost
2100.000 years to grow up to the size of the
gigantic horses of the Pleistocene age.
which were almost twice the height of the
Percheron of to-day, which is now our big
geit horse. But these' instances of small
tulk increasing in size to giantness, then
Aéblining again toward the original propor
tibvs, runs through the whole animal King:
dom, including the !n.octs
;Qunm.“ was caused, if we follow the
ésnelusions of Professor Osborn’s new
work, “The Origin and Bvolution of Life”
hy a gradual increase in the size and ca
phdity of the pituitary and thyrold girnds
{h All genera of animals
«80 KO back to the horse
* %he first horse was Eohippus, of Lower
Eopene times in Europe, which migrated
across Asia to western North America, one
eadt liigh, with four toes, 18 SUCCOESOT WaR
wegoliippus, of Lower Oligocene times,
(& Tént high, with three toes. It was fol
lewed by Moerihippus, of Miocene’times,
three feot high and with three toes, which
did not touch the ground as in the case
of the former and were functionless. These
were followed by varied species of horses
of the genus Equus, ranging from Pliocene
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o é How the Horse Grew
from a Pygmy Into a L 5
Giant and Is Now b }
E Steadily Gonl? Smaller G
Again. (1) The Little ;- y
y Two-Foot High Ances
s 4 tor of the Horse, Which
D in Turn Came from a ; ' ¢
5& 3 One-Foot High Similar i : S
y / 1 Animal. (2) The Ex- g
P gnc! Giant Horse Equus :
o 8000 A iganteus of Texas 3
AAT ’ »
(4 fa 4& ‘m}k W{.e Was Twice the \ N
ki Pl Hoi:ht of Three of the \ isl e v
) Modern Percherons, One Fas
5 e ' of the Biggest of Mod- S :
S ern Horses. ) : A
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times to the present. They culminated in
size in the huge Equus giganteus of Texas
in Pleistocene times. Giganteus, according
to Scott, exceeded in size modern draught
horses. He may have been (twice their
size, :
It ig notable, however, that a pygmy
horse also persisted, Equus tau, of
Mexico, becoming extinet with gi
ganteus and all other species of
American horses in Pleistocene
times, through serving as prey to
carnivorous mammals and Pleisto
cene man, and through epidemic
diseases. The draught horses, the
Shetland pony and other varieties
of to-day present the respective re
tur) to smaller sizes. .
The elephants began their career
as exceedingly small mammals.
Whether we start them with Moeri
therium or Paleomastodon of Lower
Oligocene times of Egypt, or with
the American Mastodons of Miecens
times in America, they were not
more than six feet high. The series
culmivated in size in the huge
American elephant of the Pleisto
cene era, Elephas imperator, four
teen feet high at the shoulder, with
immense tusks, which, by rising,
could add many feet to fits
helght.
Here again the size of the tusk- !
ers has gradually diminished to some
ten feet in height. And here again |
a pygmy elephant has persisted
almost from~ the beginning and
wolld still be .dominant on the islands
of Cyprus and Malta if modern men had
not hunted it to extinction.
The dinosaurs began as little fellows,
trom one to two feet high or long, in the
3 The Rise and Fall of & Dinessur. I.~—ls phe Foot Leng
" P Primitive Amphibian of Fifteen Million Years Ago, Which
0 T Later Evelved Inte (2) a Four Foot Lisard Form Called
o $ 5 £ et | Rhytidodon. 3.~1s the Gigantic Armored Stegosaurus Un.
J 5 NG * gulatus, Which Attained a Length of Thirty Feet; and (4)
# ;-fl} s ol ¢ P is the Modern Two Foot Lizard Called Moloch, Which Is
4 L g ; i et ¢ . the Dwarfed Descendant of the Monster Beside Him.
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) 1919, Interoational Feature Service, Ine. Great Britalp Rights Resarved
Triassie era of Connectiout, where their
footprints are found in the valleys and
ionumerable quantities of their bones.
Anchisaurus holds the honor as the orig
ina] dinosaur. Gradually they increase in
bulk until Jurassic times, when such awk
ward monsters as brontosaurus reached s
Afi
-
A Comparison of the Four Foot High 40
Unit Skulled Pithecanthropus Erectus, Man's
Ancestor; in the Centre Is the Gigantic Nine
Foot High, 100 Unit Skulled Neanderthal Man,
Whe Evolved from Him During a Quarter of
a Million Years; Last, Modern Man, Average
Six Feet and Head 75 as Against the Nean
derthal’s 100 Sisze.
length of sixtyfive feet, atlantosairus a
height of tweuty-five feet, while in Africa
gizgantosaurus was higher and bulkier
. than all.
» In our owp MNontana Rex tyrannosaurus
was the hugest carnivorous animal that
ever lived. The American Museum has a
pair of skeletons, one erected with head
towering nineteen feet above the floor and
with a length of forty-seven feet from nose
to tail tip. -
Brontosaurus fs supposed to have
weighed twenty tons and to have
consumed 4,000 pounds of leaves at
a meal. We don’'t know positively
what type of reptile it descended
from, probably from a small gen
eralized lizard, or rhyneocephalian,
of Permian times in Texas. If the
creature has any descendants they
comprise some small lizard of mod
ern times, say a moloth or the Tua
tara or Sphenodon of New Zealand.
The cats, dogs, bears, etg, or,
rather, the carnivora, began as small
animals, creodonts, in the Eocene
era. Each type evolved into huge
beasts as large as oxen, mostly in
North America, but also in Europe
and Africa. After lower Oligocene
+ times they gradually dwindled in
size to that of the modern llonm,
tiger, grizzly, dog and domestic cat.
The hugest lions, wolves, tigers and
bears are characteristio of the fos
sils found in the rocks of Califor
nia and ldaho. Of these the cat
tribe !s the most peculiar, having
230 separate bones and more than
400 muscles. .
All of the cat famlily dislike
water and will seldom entsr it,
probably due to the experiences
of faroff ancestors with water rep
tiles and fear of being hauled under by
large fish. First, cats had prehensile tails
by which they hung to imbs of trees over
water and caught passing fish. To this day
a cat loves fish above all other foods, but
will not enter the water to capture the
finny onés. The ,utntic cave bear was a
true_carnivore of elephantine size, His
descendants, however, are carnivores
only in skeletonic form. As a matter of
fact, the modern bear is a vegetarian.
The former gigantic oxen-sized wolf has
become so reduced in form that he has
now greater speed for catching prey and
fleeter limbs for escaping his one enemy
~—man. He has more brains than msgn, in
& way, since there is no mammal extant so
difticult to catch or kill as the wolf. Trap
one, and every wolf around will thereafter
avoid traps. Poison one, and every wolf
learns how it was done and thereafter can
not be poisoned. Wolves somehow enter
closely guarded corrals and get away with
sheep, lambs, calves, etc., at night without
detection. First they slay the victim si
lently with sharp fangs at its throat, then
leap the femce with the carcass and are
gone. Pursuit is vain. Cunningly they
conceal thelr lairs where the young are
born and reared, and seldom are these
lairs ever detected and robbed by hunters.
Whales started as small primitive car
nivorous land mammals, ambitious to get
into the water where there was food in
abundance. Thus, the Zeuglodon was first
on deck, looking more like & sea serpent
than a wilale. The toothed forms, coming
in with Hocene fimes, grew to enormous
bulks, but have gradually dwindled to mod
ern socalled dolphins, porpoises and nar’
whals.
The toothless, or whalebone forms, such
as the right whale, and the humpback,
ete., of uncertaln origin, are now at their
most gigantic perfod and later will be
tound only in smaller bulks or become ex
sinet. Of these the right whale has deen
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sractically exterminated by man for its
whalebone for women. The other species
are being killed at the rate og 1,000 car
casses annually for food and oil, Owing to
the increased demand, the annual capture
will be soon be doubled until finally there
will be no whales extant, or only much
smealler ones.
The same may be said of existing gigan
tic sharks and rayfish, such as the sixteen
ton basking shark, whale shark and the
eight-ton Manta, or ray, or devil fish.
Their hides are wanted for leather, and
they, too, will soon disappear entirely or
be found only in diminutive sizes. FEx
termination of the only existing gigantic
land mammals, such ag the elephant, hip
pos, rhinos, ziraffes, etc,, is likewise going
on to feed the maw of commerce. Of
these only & few elephants will soon be
left as drawers of wood. All of these ani
mals are now undergoing their period of
glantness, preliminary to a general decline
in size all along the line.
Snakes commenced some thirteen million
years ago as small lizards, elongated like
whipcords and having but slender limbs.
Williston thought Araeoscelis, a lizard of
the Texas Permo-carboniferous era, might
well have been a sufficlently generalized
lizard to have been ancestral. Having dis
carded all of its lizard limbs and all of its
skull bones except a mere skeleton frame,
80 it could swallow prey larger than itself,
the snake, after nine million years, came
to very near its present form, but of the
most gigantic size.
Thus in the red sandstones of the
Cretaceous era of Patagonia of 4,000,000
years ago, Dinilysia was found by Wood
ward to be upward of fifty feet long.
The last of the glant snakes was in the
Edcene period, Marsh finding the remains
of Dinophis in the green sands of Mon
mouth County, N. J., a enake possibly even
larger and more terrible than Dinilysia,
and certainly having wider opening of jaws
and throat.
Thereafter snakes dwindled in length
and girth down to our little tame garters.
At best we have no specles existing longer
than twentyfive feet or much larger
around than a stovepipe, such as the
python, the boa and the anaconda.
In the same Patagonian times with
Dinilysia was the most gigantic turtle of
any era, Miolania, armored and terrible,
lfving in marshes with one of the bulkiest
dinosaurs, Genyodectes. Thus the turtle
arose in the Triassic era as little fellows,
gradually increasing in bulk, then declining
in size down to such marine turtles from
the West India as are seen in the markets
The largest modern turtles, the learner
backs, at most do not exceed 1,200 pouncs
welght, and would have made but few
mouthfuls for Miolania. Out of that Pata
gonian age of huge creatures, which in
plude one of the most glgantic of birds,
Phororhacos, two forms have managed to
survive the several million years of wear
and tear of earth, that doubly armored her
ring, Diplomystus, the rivers of Chile,
and the mudfish, Ceratodus, in the rivers
of Queensland, Australia, once connected
with Patagonia by the Antarctic route,
when that now frozen region grew
bananas