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Fossils Trace Man Back 600,000 Years In Gorge in Africa

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LEOPOLDVILLE, Belglan Congo, Aug. 23 (Reuters)—Human fossils about 600,000 years old—possibly the earliest known trace of man—have been found in Tanganyika.

Dr. Louis S. B. Leakey, a prominent anthropologist, said that his wife, also an anthropologist, had found the fossils among animal remains in the Oldoway Gorge in Tanganyika, July 17.

Dr. Leakey, 56 years old, a British expert on East African anthropology, has searched for many years to prove his belief that man originated in Africa. He is curator of the Corydon Museum of Natural History in Nairobi, Kenya.

Dr. Leakey reported his wife’s find to the Pan-African Congress of Prehistory here yesterday. Sixty delegates from fifteen countries, including the United States, are at the congress.

Crude tools were found with the fossils, suggesting some form of human culture, Dr. Leakey said. He said a reconstruction of the bones showed a skull that was estimated to date from the second half of the Pleistocene geological era 600.000 years ago.

N.Y.Times, Aug.24, 1958.

National Geographic Magazine, Sept. 1960, has a picture of one skull, and quotes Prof. Leakey as saying that it was that of the first tool-making human; and that the discoveries “strongly support Charles Darwin’s prophecy that Africa would prove to have been the birthplace of mankind.”

Prof. Leakey has since discovered a still older skull “considerably more than 600,000 years old.” With it were other human relics, one of them a child. (New York Times, Feb. 25, 1961).

N. Y. Times, Aug. 24, 1959.

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The age of the skulls is now set at 1,750,000 years. (New York Times, July 23. 1961.)

PREHISTORIC AFRICA

Map prepared by Albert Churchward, M.D. renowned British archaeologist and authority on the origin of races, showing where world civilization originated. It is the area marked “Home of the Pygmies.” Dr. Churchward asserts that Freemasonry originated among the Nilotic Negroes (upper right) and found its grand climax in the Great Pyramid. The map is from his “Origin and Evolution of Freemasonry.” (See especially Chaps. 4 & 5.) He gives the earliest known freemason signs. Other books by him on the subject are: Arcana of Freemasonry, 1915; and Origin and Evolution of the Human Race. 1921.