NARMADA HOMINID, AFRICAN PEDIGREE OR ASIAN KINSHIP

The spectacular evidences of once flourishing river valley civilizations in the Indian sub-continent might have germinated the seeds of the prevalent myth that India was the cradle of man in remote past. Eugene Dubois the Dutch physician who was so impressed by Darwin's theory (1859) on the 'Origin of Species' that he set sail to substantiate the theory by attempting to discover the hard evidences inform of human fossils from the middle latitudes of the Javan island. The Java and a large part of the territory formed part of Dutch colony in the 18th century. Presumably scared by the myth, Dubois traveled along the Siwalik hills confined to the foothills of the Himalayas en route to Java. After having discovered the first human fossil of the World the 'Pithecanthropus erectus' he could not resist to state that "the oriental myth that India was the cradle of man is now thrashed'. This all happened around 1892 (Hrdlicka, 1930.) Our efforts did not go unrewarded.