Jainthology

SR No.: 006577
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Ganesh Lalwani
Publisher: Jain Bhawan Publication
Publication Year: 1991
Total Pages: 294
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 8 MB

Page 23

Mysterious human foot-prints at Bambuzi in Southern Rhodesia, Africa. These seemingly sacred carvings might be
the work of wilton people about 6,000 years ago.
tions, deposits and silts have brought to light different physical structures and cranial features of early man. The current researches have shown that the Ramapithecus with its insipient characteristics anticipated the emergence of man as early as about 14 million years before present. Surprising discoveries in the Olduvai Gorge in the Serengeti Plain of Africa as also at Lake Turkana and at Ethiopia in the same continent have indicated that the hominids of parallel lines with degrees of physical evolution appeared in the scene about 2 million years ago and in earlier times. In this connection it has been held by prehistorians that the hominids in course of their slow and diverse process of development engaged themselves in food-quest and eventually after thousands of years since the recognizable beginning of their career on earth their style of survival changed from food-gathering to food-growing. Originally relying on nuts, fruits, edible roots etc. in an arboreal environment at least at particular regions. An excerpt from an article published in Time, Nov. 1977, as given below sums up the trends as best as possible.
"Anthropologists now believe that man's family tree goes back to a primate called Dryopithecus, a true ape that appeared about 20 million years ago. Much later-by 14 million years ago the Dryopithecus line had split into three branches. One branch evolved into the ancestors of to-day's great apes- the gorillas, chimpanzees and orangutans, which are man's closest living cousins. Another produced a creature called Gigantopithecus, a huge ground ape that roamed the valleys of Asia for a few million years before it became extinct. A third branch gave rise to Ramapithecus, which most anthropologists believe was a distant ancestor of man.
2/ JAINTHOLOGY