The reports this week that Chinese Dragon Man (Homo Longi) could be our closest relative reminded me of similar reports received at the time, about 1907 I believe, when an alleged "Piltdown Man" was discovered in Sussex.
Later in 1953 when fluorine dating was possible, scientists from Oxford university discovered that Piltdown Man was a fraud, his alleged bones being but an amalgam of carefully stained human and ape bones.
The Piltdown Man fraud amuses some of those including yours truly, who were educated by the Jesuits at the long since closed Beaumont College, because Father Pierre Teilhard de Jardin SJ, a French Jesuit assisted with the excavation of 'the remains'.
However his posthumously published work entitled "The Phenomenon of Man" did cover his account of the commencement of the cosmos, the evolution of matter to humanity and our reunion with Christ.
The Chinese Dragon Man, a perfectly preserved skull of which has been discovered in northern China, was apparently around some 146,000 years ago. It is said eg in The Times that he was powerfully built hunter gatherer. His skull is massive and apparently could hold a brain equivalent to a modern man's though his eye sockets are squarer than ours, his mouth wider and his teeth larger.
It seems that our view of the history of the development of mankind is altering quite sharply of late. In Western Asia for example, a new human species has been unearthed which The Times suggests may have coexisted with humans and in a Siberian cave soil analysis indicates that several species including perhaps Neanderthals and humans, may have lived there.
The rest is history.
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