Omaha Daily Bee Newspaper, July 25, 1915, Page 17

g Princeton Univer- sity Scientists Searching for the Sunken Remains of the Ancient Bridge Which Con- nected Europe and America Thou- , sands of Years Ago By W. H. Ballou, Sc. D. tending from several hundred thou- sand years to 70,000 years ago; to the time of the evolution of the human race and of other mammalia. Let your {magination roam from that period ae far back as you like. It should not be diffi- cult for any one to set up a mental image of a world at that time considerably dif- ferent in its natural conformations to those which exist to-day. We know this tentatively because of the discovery of animal and plant remains in places which they could only have reached on land bridges. ‘Where were these land bridges aad what crossed them? Many men of sclence for several hundred years have given much attention to the subject and assem- bled vast collections and data and specl- mens in proof of the general hypothesis. Not a single man of science has thrown doubt on the existence of land bridges extending entirely around the region of the Arctic Circle in ancient times. The exact contours of such bridges, however, remain more or less of a mystery. At the present moment, the third ex- pedition of Princeton University, under Professor Gilbert Van Ingen, one of the greatest invertebrate paleontologlsts, is Investigating in Newfoundland and collect- ing fossils to establish such a bridge and its location, connecting that province with Scotland and Scandinavia. It may well be doubted it Professor Van Ingen will accept as such bridge the apparent ridge of rock on which the Atlantic cables are laid. The water over this ridge ranges to 5,000 feet depths and lies too far south of the Continental Shelf, the line around continents where the ocean abyss jumps from 600 feet to precipitous deeps. All that he will attempt to do will be to pre- pare a map of curvatures in lesser depths, which conservative investigators can accept. This latter class accept as vonclusive the hypothesis of Matthew that ocean abysses were never crossed by land bridges, connecting, for instapce, Australia, Madagascar and Cuba with the mainlands, Admitting tentatively, then, former land bridges that connected Asia and Alaska on one side of the world, and Scandi- navia, Scotland, Europe, Iceland, Faroe and other islands, Greenland and Labra- dor on the other side, there remains to show Missourians and others what peo- ples, animals and plants made use of these bridges for their migrations, using legs in place of Pullman cars. America was peopled before the last jc0 age set in. By whom and how? Mat- Slfl' your clock back to a period ex- ARCTIC OCEAN thew has shown that all life, animal and vegetable, was dispersed from a Hol- arctic-Asiatic reglon, of which Thibet was the centre, migrating in successive waves until the uttermost parts of the earth were reached. Boas has demon- strated that the Mongoloid type of men, from their habitat in northern and cen- tral Asia, reached Europe and the new world. As to the use of the natural bridge be- tween northeastern Asia and Alaska, Boas finds that the only people thaf pat- ronized it prior to the last ice age, were the Ainus of Japan and the Pacific north western tribes. No culture of these peoples, who intermin- gled at will, has ever been found existing among other American tribes. Boas 80 “Pottery neither reached the Pacific Northwest nor the extreme of South America, and the art forms of the North Pacific coast and of the Arctic coast, show no affiliation with those of the middle portions of the conti- nent.” Our New York State Indians are regarded as still primitive Aryans. What is the answer? Mon- golians could not have passed through Siberia and Alaska to Middle North America without leaving traces of their own culture and carry- ing along some of the culture of the Ainus or other north- erners. Further, Aslastics were cut off from northeast- ern migrations both by the terrible Mongolian steppe: and the vast ranges of and west running snow-clad mountains, They could have reached America in two ways only. They could have used some form of craft of they could have travelled acros the prehistoric land bridg from Europe to Labrador! Matthew well remarks that if a canoe full of Asiatics got blown across the Atlantic once in a century or once in tem cen- turies, it would be ample to populate iho world during the thousands of years man has existed on earth. These canoes, however, could not well contain dowestic animals, and there is ample evidence that the prehistoric Americans either brought @© AN.PETERS Phdm:l'of a Chinese Baby and an American Indian Baby, the Marked Similarity Between the Two. An American Indian in Aboriginal Costume, and the Same Indian in Chinese Costume. In the Latter Costume He Would Pass Anywhere a Chinaman, ATLANTIC OCEAN Diagram Showing the Probable Location and Shape of the Ancient Bridge That Connected America with Europe. The Black Portions Are Those Now Submerged. domestic animals and food plants with them across the land bridge or tamed the animals and plants they found h The idea of the Atlantic bridge fits best as the domestic animal and plant looms up on the historic horizon with first brainy men. It any Missourian still remains to be shown, he has only to try the experiment that has so often beer adopted to make good the hypothesis. Let him attempt to separate Chinamen or Indlans when & dozen or more of them are dressed alike. And then, there is that early Mexican culture identical with that of Egypt. There were vast populations of man- kind, enormously increasing, 250,000 years and more agone. Why sit in your easy chalr, puft up like a cobra, and im- agine that you have a monopoly on brains, mind and invention? In sume respects you haven't even advanced in civilization up to the age of the lost arts of 6,000 to 8,000 years ago. You haven't been able to reinvent those lost arts. Your brain case is even smaller than was that of prehistoric man. 1 doubt if any of us living in this lati- tude have brains enougl sudden descent of an fronted first men, side step it and sur- vive it. 1 doubt if there is a man living who can whip a gorilla with his hands or chimpanzee, orang or gibbon or other huge primate as prehistoric men did and had to do in order to exist, Professor Van Ingen's lend bridge around the Arctic Circle region must have been good travelling, according to Gelkie, Nansen, Knowlton, Stejnoger, Ewart and other noted investigators. The Arctic world was sub-tropical in those days before the formation of ice caps. The prehistoric Westons or nomads per- haps on horseback must have delighted in polar travels as much as you or I in a hike in Central Park on a balmy day in June. Bome of those same trees our prehistoric friends encountered, the inkgos, have been liberally transplanted In our parks, brought hither yea.s ago from Japan and transplanted. I regret to note that one of them is now being attacked in Central Park by the terrible saprophytic fungus, Fomes leucophaeus, Just one of the brackets of which will shed spores enough to destroy many other park trees. Knowlton says of the climate in those times, based on fosail flora, that it seems safe to assume a molst, warm, possibly sub-tropi.al ccndi- tion. More than 100 species of fossil flora unearthed in England, have been fcund in the rocks entirely around the Arctic Circle. Leonhard Stejneger, perhaps, did the most stupendous work in complling the faunae and florae, which he assumed could only have travelled across the land bridge between Scotland and Norway. In 80 doing, he had to admit similar hridges which others had mset up between Scot- land, Faroe Islands, Iceland, Greenland and Labrador. No scirntist can assert positively that such bridges existed, no matter how much data he collects. What he can prove is that uo other known method existed in former times by which & belt euntirely around the northern part of the globe was peopled with identical animals and plants, vertebrates and in- vertebrates. The fosell forms in collee- tions tell very near exactly where each Why Singing Is Such An Excellent Physical Exercise form the magic of his song. Singing 18 music married to a .man’s muscles. The melodious sounds which iss from the throat require as much mugcular exertion as you might apply to pump an organ. Stuging is a mosalc of stimulant and physical training. Every instant that you Jift up your voice in song there oc- cur heaves and contractions in the mus- cle of the ches!, the abdomen, the throat, the cheeks, and even inside the abdo- men and thorax, These muscles, as well as the lver, stomach, spleen and diaphragm all move in perfect harmony to the song. Othello says Desdegnona could sing the savage ness out of a bear. Sclentific experiments show the vibrations of vocal music soothe " PERSON'S physical virtues often both the singer and the listener by the athletic movements stirred up in the fibres and elastic elements of the muscles. Even where tuberculosis and some kinds of heart disease exist, the sufferer must needs exercise. Medical research shows that the absence of all exercise, except where fever is present, is by no means desirable. On the other hand, unless some gentle sort of muscular exertion is systematic- ally carried out, the tissues of the victim become soft, flabby and not adapted to strain ‘and tension, Singing is thus a most praiseworthy kind of calisthenics. It takes the place of violent athletics and strenuous phy: cal culture, It is harmless, always avall- able, and €an be made to serve the pur- pose at any proper time and place. Copyright, 1815, by the Star Compuny. Great Britain Rights Reserved The very breathing exercises which a vocal teacher institutes go & great way in training the muscles of the throat, neck, back, chest and belly, Furthermore, those same exercises cause the muscles 6f the stomach and other interior strugtures to squeeze to- gether and expand.- This alternate ex- pansion and contraction in their turn empty out the te, useless and accu- mulated materials. Thus constipation and its attendant ills are to a large ex- tent relieved by singing, In brief, therefore, the sweet concourse of vocal sounds, called singing, undoubt- edly acts in a fashion as a substitute for dumbells, Indian clubs, pitching quoits, playing golf, baseball and swimming. Like dancing, the exercise received in genus originated. How did these genera or thelr successors disperse? If they could not fly or were not transported, then he insists, they must have dispersed by means of existing land bridges and occasionally by natural marine grass rafts, The distance between Faroe Islands and Scotland and between tho latter and western Norway is 240 miles In each case, The water depths existing between them to-day and in the other spaces was caused, geologlsts mssert, by the welght of successive fce caps, depressing the earth crust. Some geologists figure as many as six successive ice caps. The number has little beariog on the natter since the last one was sufficiently appall- ing to make ofr perfect navigation at the present time, where walking had former- 1y been good. I say appalling because there s no doubt that the last ice cap, still receding, northward, pounded the earth crust down to stay where it is, while the first ice caps did no such stunt, One or several times, it is assumed, the earth arose several hundred or more feet after the first ice cap receded. Archibald Geikie accumulated a lot of data on the subject which remains in his still authoritative work on “The Great Ice Age.” 8o, the geologist's data is used by paleontologists to support hypotheti- cal land bridges in order to account for migrations of men, other mammals, flightless birds, reptiles, crustaceans, in- vertebrates, trees, and plants which had seeds too heavy to be borne by winds and ;vhltl::n sank in water rather than swim or it, Just how invertebrates migrate long distances is a matter which it is to be hoped Prof r Ingen or others will clear up. I have seen clams travel by suction, but only on the bottom of water areas. Stejneger sets up such Atalantic and Arctalantic blota as world girdlers on the land bridges, but without doscrib- ing the process. Among these he mnen- tions terrestrial moltuscs, eartiworms, isopod crustaceans, noctuid moths, bui ble bees and an entire series of {nsects of the orders of lepidoptera, hemiptera and coleoptera. Some of these are essentially slow travellers and probably required hun- dreds, perhaps thousands of years to dis- perse the tremendous distauces across those land bridges and over the moun- tains and plains of the mainlands. Give & pair of snails several millions of years and they and their descendaats could no doubt populate the entire earth with their kind, however slow a cartoonist might de- pict them, Among the mammals common to the whole sectional circle are the variable hare, the lemming, the red-backed fleld mouse, the wild reindeer, the red deer, very primitive horses and the oxtincf mammoth, When one considers the several types of men, other animals ¢nd plants that have apparently endured continuously since early Pleistocene times, and some of them wmuch. longer, in the cold storage section of the world, there ~annot be the slightest doubt that if lapd bridges ex- isted, there was ample travelling done over them in both directio The Princeton expedition will at I have the satisfaction :hat all of the evidence collected supports the hypothesis of a Labrador-Scotland land bridge. Even a :llnourlun cannot deny that it may bave een, By Dr. Leonard Keene Hirshberg, A.B, M.A, M.D,, (Johns Hopkins University.) singing is more enjoyable, soothing to the physical fabric than are gymnastics, which a man does merely from sheer duty. You sing with spirit and pleasure; often you will take the prescribed course of physical training or gymnasium work simply because your will dictates and de- mands it; because your better knowledge calls for it. If the encaged canary bird imprisoned in my lady’s chamber did not trill his briliant songs, he would die of inac- tivity, If the snarling, growling tigress in the circus or zoo did not emit her rumbling monotones her muscles would waste away until she could not spring for her tood