been climbed before, and a steamer was sent round for the others. Sir Ernest Shackleton made strenuous efforts to rescue the Elephant I. party first in a small steamer from South Georgia, then in a trawler from Montevideo, then in a little motor schooner from Punta Arenas, all of which were driven back by the ice floes near the South Shetlands, and finally in the “Yelcho,” a tug from Punta Arenas, in which he reached the island on Aug. 30 1916 and brought back the whole party without a casualty. Shackleton’s Ross Sea Party (1914–7). On the Ross Sea side the “Aurora,” under command of Capt. Aeneas Mackintosh, brought an auxiliary expedition to lay out depots on the Barrier to facilitate the latter part of Shackleton’s march from the Weddell Sea via the South Pole. The “Aurora” reached Cape Evans on Jan. 16 1915, and, while she remained there with the hope of wintering, Mackintosh and a sledge party laid out depots as far as lat. 80 S. by Feb. 20. This was a better record than in Scott’s autumn journey of 1911 ; but it was midwinter before Mackintosh found the ice strong enough to permit of his return to Cape Evans. Early next summer he started S. again; was at the 80 depot on Jan. 6 1916 and with five companions reached Mt. Hope at the mouth of the Beardmore glacier in lat. 83 30′ S. on Jan. 20 where he left a depot. The return journey was one of terrible hardship aggravated by scurvy, and the party narrowly escaped Scott’s fate. Mr. Spencer Smith died, but the rest reached Hut Point on March 18 1916. In their anxiety to get back to the Cape Evans party, Mackintosh and Hayward attempted the journey on the sea-ice on May 8, but the ice was not strong enough and they were lost. It was July before the rest of the southern party reached Cape Evans.
On May 6 1915 the “Aurora,” which had been frozen in and made fast by many cables to the shore at Cape Evans, was blown out to sea with all the ice and was held fast for 315 days, during which time she drifted northward through Ross Sea nearly in the same direction and at nearly the same rate as the “Endurance” was drifting at the same time in the Weddell Sea. She had been severely damaged by ice pressure; but Lt. J. R. Stenhouse, who was in command, rigged a new rudder, and when she was released on March 16 1916 in lat. 62 27′ S., long. 157 30′ E., he brought the disabled vessel safely to New Zealand. The ship was repaired by the New Zealand Government and dispatched under the command of Capt. J. King Davis with Sir Ernest Shackleton on board, and on Jan. 7 1917 she reached Cape Royds and rescued the seven survivors who had come safely through their two winters in spite of shortage of supplies, the winter stores not having all been landed when the ship was blown away. All of the 53 men who returned from the expeditions of the " Endurance " and “Aurora” served in the navy, army or air force during the World War, three being killed and five wounded.
Scientific Results. The scientific results of the expeditions described above could not yet in 1921 be adequately summarized, for the war had retarded the investigation of the collections and the discussion of statistics. It would be impracticable to draw general conclusions as to the physical and biological conditions of the Antarctic regions until the researches of all the expeditions had been published in a comparable form.
All the inferences from earlier work required revision, but specialists of different expeditions had already committed themselves to views which could not be reconciled in the absence of full information from all explorers. This observation applies in particular to the general theory of the meteorology of the South Polar area, as expounded for the Gauss expedition by Prof. Meinardus and for Scott’s last expedition by Dr. G. C. Simpson. The results of the Australian and German expeditions, which were for a great part of the time synchronous with those of Scott and Amundsen, required to be taken into consideration before a general theory of the atmospheric circulation within the Antarctic circle could be established. This is also the case as to geology, and the bearings of geological evidence on the probable nature and extent of the Antarctic continent, and the relations of that land mass to the other continents.
See, in addition to the books referred to in the 11th ed., R. Amundsen, The South Pole (two vols. 1912); L. Huxley, Scott's Last Expedition (two vols. 1913); R. E. Priestley, Antarctic Adventure, Scott’s Northern Party (1914) ; G. Taylor, With Scott, the Silver Lining (1916) ; Sir D. Mawson, The Home of the Blizzard (two vols. 1915); J. K. Davis, With the “Aurora” in the Antarctic (1920) ; Sir E. Shackleton, South (1919). (H. R. M.)
ANTHROPOLOGY.—The earlier article (see 2.108), discussing the problem of man’s origin and the possibility of recovering
fossils which would throw further light on early types of man,
included the remarkable statement: “It seems as if anthropology
had in this direction reached the limits of its discoveries”
(see 2.119). This prediction has fortunately been stultified
almost every year since it was made, for later years have yielded
an abundantly rich harvest of anthropological data and a clearer
vision of their significance. In fact they have witnessed a profound
revolution in every branch of the study of man. New and
important information has been acquired concerning man’s
ancestry, and the factors that brought the Primates into
existence and transformed one branch of the Order into the
human family. Hitherto unknown types of fossil men have
been found in the Mauer Sands near Heidelberg, at Piltdown in
Sussex, at Talgai in Queensland, at Wadjak in Java and at Boskop
in the Transvaal. So many examples of Neanderthal Man
have been found at Le Moustier, La Chapelle-aux-Saints, La
Quina, La Ferrassie, in Jersey and near Weimar, that we are now
able to get a very clear idea of the appearance and distinctive
features of the brutal species of man that preceded Homo
sapiens in Europe. Much new information has been acquired
of the different races of Homo sapiens that made their way into
western Europe after Homo neanderthalensis disappeared from
the scene; and the discovery of their paintings on the walls of
caverns in southern France and in Spain and their plastic art
has been an astounding revelation of the genius and skill no less
than the artistic feeling of these earliest known members of the
species to which we, and all men now living, belong.
The brilliant researches of French anthropologists have made it possible to classify the phases of culture of the so-called upper palaeolithic age and assign to each its distinctive features and its chronological sequence with reference to the other phases. Intensive studies of the older civilizations of Egypt, Elam, Sumer (and Babylonia, which succeeded it), Crete, the Aegean, Palestine, Syria and Asia Minor, have made it possible to understand the origin of civilization in a way that was undreamt of hitherto; and it is now possible confidently to sketch out the process whereby this common civilization was diffused into Europe, to Turkestan and India, to Siberia and China, to Indonesia and Oceania, until finally it crossed the Pacific to Central America and Peru. But perhaps the most profound change that was initiated in anthropology during the decade 1910–20 was the demolition of many of the dogmas which for half a century had paralyzed ethnological investigation and prevented those who were collecting the evidence from appreciating its real significance. This fundamental change of view had not in 1921 been generally accepted by ethnologists, but there were already then very obvious signs that many of them were preparing to repudiate the fashionable doctrine, which had been expressed in its most extreme form in the earlier article in this Encyclopaedia.
The Evolution of Man. In spite of not infrequent attempts to disprove man’s kinship with the apes, recent research in anatomy, embryology and comparative pathology, as well as the conclusive tests of blood-relationship, has definitely established the fact of man’s close kinship with the anthropoid apes, and especially with the gorilla. But this fundamental conclusion is not in any sense invalidated by the clear recognition of the further fact that the ancestors of man and the gorilla respectively became differentiated the one from the other at least as early as the middle of the Miocene period. This does not mean that man’s forebears assumed their human characteristics at the period mentioned, but rather that the ancestors of the gorillas and chimpanzees had begun to assume their distinctive specializations and to fall out of the race for intellectual supremacy which was eventually to be attained by the descendants of their unspecialized Miocene brothers. It is in the highest degree
