Jain Journal 1980 07

Author(s): Jain Bhawan Publication
Publisher: Jain Bhawan Publication

Page 24

Tirthankaras, Pratyeka Buddhas
And The Ascent Of Man
P. C. DAS GUPTA
Since the era of scientific researches initiated in the last century by Charles Darwin, Thomas Henry Huxley and other stalwarts much truth in respect of the evolution of man has been revealed. The gradual discovery of fossil man in Europe, Africa and Asia by explorers and scientists have helped reconstructing some of the most important accounts of the history of the hominids who evidently passed through various stages and branched off in situations profoundly enigmatic for convergent, disappearing or parallel features and tendencies in respect of members representing distinctive physical structures and attitude towards subsistence in their peculiar environments. In this field of investigation the views of Darwin could be prophetic at times. As J. S. Weiner has pointed out, “In the Descent of Man (published twelve years after the Origin) he made 'predictions about the earlier stages of human evolution. The remarkable accuracy of his reconstructions has not perhaps been fully appreciated. Darwin did in fact depict the main features of two stages which now a days we should see as corresponding to the Dryopithecus level (roughly 20 million years ago) and the Australopithecine level (roughly 11 million years ago)”.
(Foreword to the Guide to Fossil Man by Michael H. Day, Cassel, London 1965).
By the efforts of anthropologists, palaeontologists and archaeologists uptil recent years the gradual progress of hominids from their most primitive stage ushered perhaps by apes like the Ramapithecus of the Indian Siwalik and their corresponding members of Kenya in Africa and elsewhere in the prehistoric world has been studied with brilliant results. Whether from Taung (Tswana), Sterkfontein or Ternifine in Africa or from Swanscombe (Britain), Fontechevade (France) or Heidelburg (Germany) in Europe or from sites in Java and China among a list of other places, the physical remains of early man appear to be of perpetual interest. The dedications of scholars in the field amidst ancient formations, 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