The Mystery of Wandering Caveman - M. V. Carey [15]
Imagine finding an almost complete fossil skeleton and then not being able to examine it properly. And he wants to see if the find might alter the way we think about the origins of mankind. Not that I think it will — I think the little hominid in the cave is just another evolutionary dead end — but Brandon found it and he should have his chance to evaluate it. I’d be angry, too, if I’d made a major find and things had turned out this way.”
“What did Dr. Brandon want to do to the bones?” said Bob. “I’ve heard about carbon-14 dating.”
“That probably wouldn’t be useful in this case,” said Terreano. “When you use carbon-14 dating, you measure the amount of carbon-14 in your sample. Carbon-14
is a radioactive element, and fifty-seven hundred years after a plant or animal has died, it has just half as many carbon-14 atoms as it did when it was alive. Then, fifty-seven hundred years after that, it has only a quarter as many carbon-14 atoms, and so on and so forth. And after forty thousand years there wouldn’t be enough carbon-14
to tell anything.”
Bob looked startled. “You think the cave man is older than forty thousand years?”
“I would be astonished if he weren’t,” said Terreano. “However, carbon-14 dating isn’t the only way to find out how old an individual might be. There are other methods of dating, and there are various methods of judging how human a creature might be. We always have trouble with this one, because no one can say with real certainty what makes a human. Is it a matter of a creature walking upright, or is it the size of the brain in relation to the rest of the body, or the teeth …”
“Teeth?” echoed Bob. “What about teeth?”
“Human teeth are arranged in the jaw in a sort of arc,” said Terreano. “The teeth of other primates, like apes and monkeys, are in a U, with the two sides parallel.
There are differences in the size of the molars, too, and …”
“And here comes the waitress with our breakfast,” said Hoffer. “Thank heavens.”
“Sorry,” said Terreano. “I didn’t mean to bore you, Elwood.”
“It was really interesting,” Bob declared quickly. “I can see why Dr. Brandon is so mad. If Newt McAfee is tampering with the fossil man …”
“And he is,” said Terreano. “Not that we’re sure it really is a man.”
“Don’t labour the point, Phil,” said Hoffer. “I can’t see where a conclusion about it matters to more than a handful of scientists.”
Terreano grinned. “Dr. Hoffer’s research may be more immediately applied,” he told the boys. “If he can prove that heartburn is caused by the body’s effort to fight off the common cold, we will all be grateful.”
“It’s not impossible that heartburn is caused by an immune reaction,” Hoffer remarked stiffly. “I’m convinced that breakdowns in our immune system cause many of our troubles, and our genes — what we’ve inherited — are responsible for very few problems, no matter what Karl Birkensteen might say.”
Terreano looked downcast at the mention of the dead geneticist. “A brilliant man,” he said seriously. “It was a great loss.”
“Perhaps,” said Hoffer. “But genetic engineering is at least as risky as splitting atoms. Once you start, where do you stop?”
“Was Dr. Birkensteen actually hoping to improve humans?” said Jupiter. “Eleanor told us yesterday that he had bred smarter chimpanzees. Did he believe he could make smarter men?”
Terreano looked troubled. “I don’t think he envisioned anything as radical as a race of super beings, but he did think that too many people are born to live at a very basic level. He felt that man, who has a wonderful brain, should not have to spend twelve to sixteen years in school simply getting the skills to enable him to earn a living.”
“Impudence!” said Elwood Hoffer. “Meddling with nature that way can have terrible consequences. Birkensteen’s animals are proof of that. He bombarded their sires and dams with various rays, and he saturated them with chemicals. He has been able to train the horses to an extent, and the chimps do have large and nimble brains.
However, their life expectancy is only a fraction of what it would be for normal