Transcriber's note

Printer errors have been changed and are listed at the end. All other inconsistencies are as in the original.



MAN AND HIS ANCESTOR

A STUDY IN EVOLUTION

BY

CHARLES MORRIS

AUTHOR OF "CIVILIZATION: AN HISTORICAL REVIEW OF ITS ELEMENTS," "THE ARYAN RACE," ETC.

New York

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

LONDON: MACMILLAN AND CO., LTD.

1900

All rights reserved



COPYRIGHT, 1900, BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.

Norwood Press J. S. Cushing & Co.—Berwick & Smith Norwood Mass. U.S.A.



PREFACE

It would be difficult to find any intelligent person in this age of the world who has not some theory or opinion in regard to the origin of man, and perhaps almost as difficult to find any such person who can give a good and sufficient reason for the faith that is in him. This is especially the case with those who look upon man as a product of evolution, a natural outgrowth from the world of lower life, since here simple faith or ancient authority is not sufficient, as in the creation hypothesis, but scientific evidence and logical argument are necessary. It is to enable this class of readers to test the quality and sufficiency of their belief that this book has been prepared.

The question of the evolutionary origin of man has been by no means neglected by recent authors, yet it has been dealt with chiefly as a side issue in works of a more extended purpose, and largely in technical language, simple to the scientist, but difficult to the general reader. The only work that makes this subject its leading theme, Darwin's "Descent of Man," adds to it a still longer treatise on "Sexual Selection," so that the subject of man's evolutionary origin cannot be said to have been yet dealt with for itself alone. Darwin's work, moreover, is now nearly thirty years old, and to this extent antiquated, while at best it cannot be considered as well suited for general reading.

These considerations have given rise to the present work, in which an effort has been made to present the subject of man's origin in a popular manner, to dwell on the various significant facts that have been discovered since Darwin's time, and to offer certain lines of evidence never before presented in this connection, and which seem to add much strength to the general argument.

The subject is one of such widespread interest as to make it probable that a plain and brief presentation of it will be acceptable, both to enable those who are evolutionists in principle to learn on what grounds their acceptance of this phase of evolution stands, and to aid those who are at sea on the whole subject of man's origin to reach some fixed conclusion. For these purposes this little book has been set afloat, with the hope that it may carry some doubters to solid land and teach some believers the fundamental elements of their faith.



CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

I. EVOLUTION VERSUS CREATION 1

II. VESTIGES OF MAN'S ANCESTRY 5

III. RELICS OF ANCIENT MAN 21

IV. FROM QUADRUPED TO BIPED 39

V. THE FREEDOM OF THE ARMS 54

VI. THE DEVELOPMENT OF INTELLIGENCE 68

VII. THE ORIGIN OF LANGUAGE 100

VIII. HOW THE CHASM WAS BRIDGED 111

IX. THE FIRST STAGE OF HUMAN EVOLUTION 130

X. THE CONFLICT WITH NATURE 158

XI. WARFARE AND CIVILIZATION 195

XII. THE EVOLUTION OF MORALITY 206

XIII. MAN'S RELATION TO THE SPIRITUAL 225



MAN AND HIS ANCESTOR

I

EVOLUTION VERSUS CREATION

In any consideration of the origin of man we are necessarily restricted to two views: one, that he is the outcome of a development from the lower animals; the other, that he came into existence through direct creation. No third mode of origin can be conceived, and we may safely confine ourselves to a review of these two claims. They are the opposites of each other in every particular. The creation doctrine is as old almost as thinking man; the evolutionary doctrine belongs in effect to our own generation. The former is not open to evidence; the latter depends solely upon evidence. The former is based on authority; the latter on investigation. The doctrine of direct creation can merely be asserted, it cannot be argued; the statement once made, there is nothing more to be said; it is an ipse dixit pure and simple. The doctrine of evolution, on the contrary, founded as it must be on ascertained facts, is fully open to argument, and depends for its acceptance on the strength and validity of the evidence in its favor.

If the doctrine of the direct creation of man had been originally presented in our own day, proof of the assertion would have been at once demanded, and the only evidence admissible would have been that of witnesses of the act of creation. There could, of course, have been no human witnesses, as there would have been no preceding human beings, and witnesses not human have, in the present day, no standing in our courts. As the case stands, however, the doctrine arose in an age when man did not trouble himself about evidence, but was content to accept his opinions on authority; and this, strangely enough, is held by many to be a strong point in its favor, it gaining, in their minds, authenticity from antiquity. It is claimed, indeed, to be sustained by divine authority, but this is a claim that has no warrant in the words of the statement itself, and one to which no form of words could give warrant. To establish it, direct and incontestable evidence from the creative power itself would be necessary, and it need scarcely be said that no such evidence exists. It is not easy, indeed, to conceive what form such evidence could take. It would certainly need to be something far more convincing than a statement in a book.

It might have been better for civilized mankind if the opening pages of Genesis had never been written, since they have played a potent part in checking the development of thought. As the case now stands, the cosmological doctrines they contain can no longer claim even a shadow of divine authority, since they have been distinctly traced back to a human origin. It has been recently discovered that they are simply a restatement of the Babylonian cosmology, as given in a literary production ages older than the Bible, an epic poem of very remote date. They are, doubtless, an outgrowth of the cosmological ideas of early man, and those who accept them must do so on the basis of belief in their probability; it is no longer permissible to claim for them the warrant of divine origin.

Modern science stringently demands facts in support of any assertion, the word "faith" having no place in its lexicon. Facts are absolutely and necessarily wanting in support of the creation doctrine, and the only argument its advocates can advance is one that deals in negatives, and demands its acceptance on the ground that the opposite doctrine has not been proved. Such an argument is valueless. Disproof of one statement is never proof of another. Its effect is simply to leave both unproved, and neither, therefore, in condition for acceptance. In the present case the weight of disproof is small. The facts in support of the evolution hypothesis are multitudinous, and many of them of great cogency; the facts against it are few, and none of them absolute. It is simply argued that some questions remain unsolved, and that there are facts which seem inconsistent with the Darwinian theory of development, and which no supplementary hypotheses have explained. But no advocates of evolution hold that the Darwinian theory is final. Evolution is a growing doctrine. It has been expanding ever since it was first promulgated. Various seeming difficulties have been explained away, and it is quite possible that all may disappear as investigation widens. No such arguments add any weight to the opposite view, which has not and never could have any standing in science, since it is impossible to adduce any facts to sustain it. We shall therefore dismiss it from further consideration, and proceed to state certain general facts in favor of the evolutionary hypothesis of the origin of man.



II

VESTIGES OF MAN'S ANCESTRY

When, some centuries ago, men began to find fossil remains of animals in the rocks, a severe shock was given to the prevailing doctrine of the recent creation of the earth. The adherents of the old theology made strenuous efforts to explain away this unwelcome circumstance. The shells found had been dropped by pilgrims on their way to Jerusalem; they were mineral simulations of shells; they had been created by the Deity and placed where found; they were anything but what they appeared to be, the existing evidences of a long ancient period of animal life reaching back very far beyond the assumed date of creation.

It need scarcely be said that these explanations, especially the one that God had created fossil forms to deceive man, for some incomprehensible purpose, could not long be maintained. Some of them were inconsistent with the facts, others with common sense, and in due time it was everywhere admitted that the earth is of remote duration and has been inhabited by animals and plants for untold ages. Its structure revealed its history; its annals were found to be written in the rocks; its anatomy was full of the evidences of its origin.

When, not many years ago, men began to find the fossil remains of ancient structures in the body of man himself, theology was brought face to face with a problem as difficult to explain, from its special point of view, as that of the fossils in the rocks. As the latter had threatened and finally disproved the doctrine of the special creation of the earth, so the former assailed the doctrine of the special creation of man, and annihilated it in the minds of many eminent scientists. It formed a prominent argument in favor of the theory of organic evolution, and as such calls for consideration here, as a suitable groundwork for our special theme.

The structures referred to may justly be called fossil, since they present strong evidence of being the useless remains of structures which played an active part in the bodies of some former animals. A significant example of this exists in the vermiform appendix, a narrow, blind tube descending from the caecum of man, and detrimental instead of useful, since it is the seat of the frequently fatal disease known as appendicitis. This tube, usually from three to six inches long and of the thickness of a goose quill, is occasionally absent in man, occasionally of considerable size. It is quite large, as compared with the other intestines, in the human embryo, but ceases to grow after a certain stage of development. The caecum is extremely long in some of the lower vegetable-eating animals, and the vermiform appendix seems to be a rudiment of the formerly extended portion of this organ. It is large in the anthropoid apes, especially in the orang, in which it is very long and spirally convoluted. Its survival in man as a useless and dangerous aborted organ is a powerful argument in favor of his descent from the lower animals.

In the brain of man and many of the lower vertebrates, hanging by two peduncles, or strands of nerve fibre, from the thalami, or beds of the optic nerve, is a small rounded or heart-shaped body of about the size of a pea, known as the pineal gland. It is so destitute of any evident function that Descartes, in lack of any more probable explanation of its presence, ascribed to it the noble duty of serving as the seat of the soul. Late research has been more successful in tracking this organ to its lair. It is larger in the embryo than in the adult man, still larger in some lower vertebrates, and in certain lizards has been found to exist as an eye, its parts plainly distinguishable under the microscope. It is placed in the middle of the forehead, between the other eyes, and was no doubt an active organ of vision in some ancient batrachians.

The pineal eye, as it is now named, once useful, long useless, has persisted as a fossil structure through a far extended line of development. No more convincing evidence that man gained his body through descent from the lower animals could be asked for than the survival in the human brain of this wonderfully significant remnant of a formerly useful organ. Like various other vestiges of ancient organs, it is not only useless but detrimental. It occasionally enlarges and becomes the seat of large and complicated tumors, which may cause death by their compression of the brain.

Two other structures common to most of the vertebrate animals exist in man, though they render him little or no service. These are the thymus and thyroid glands, apparently vestigial structures. The thymus gland attains a considerable development in the embryo and shrinks away to the merest vestige in the adult. It begins to form early in the embryo life as an epithelial ingrowth from the throat, and extends from the neck into the chest. It continues to grow after birth, but later begins to shrink and nearly disappears in the adult.

The thyroid gland has a somewhat similar origin, it beginning as an ingrowth from the lower section of the pharynx and extending down to the lower part of the neck. It subsequently loses its connection with the pharynx, and in adult life is a bilobed structure on either side of the windpipe. Like the thymus it is a ductless gland, abundantly supplied with blood-vessels, and possesses a vast number of small cavities, lined with cells and containing an insoluble jelly. So far as appears, both these glands are useless, or nearly so, to man; or if the thyroid performs any useful service it is a minor and obscure one. Such functions as it may have could probably be performed by some of the other organs, while it is positively detrimental as the seat of goitre. This unsightly disease is due to its enlargement, either by a great increase of its blood-vessels or a development of the capsules and increase of their contained jelly. Dr. S. V. Clevenger considers these organs to have had a branchial or respiratory origin, saying that there are many reasons for believing them to be rudimentary gills. Owen says that the thymus appears in vertebrates with the establishment of the lung as the main or exclusive respiratory organ. It is wanting in all fishes, also in the gill-bearing batrachians, siren and proteus. The thyroid appears in fishes, and Gegenbaur believes that it may have been a useful organ to the Tunicata in their former state of existence.

Dr. Clevenger, in the American Naturalist for January, 1884, points out another curious structure in man, whose significance does not seem to have been previously observed. This is a strange and striking fact relating to the formation of the veins. It is well known that these organs possess valves, which permit the free upward flow of the blood toward the heart, but resist its descent through the action of gravity, in this way aiding its return from the extremities. The rule holds good throughout the quadrupeds that the vertical veins possess valves, while they are absent from the horizontal veins, in which they would be of no utility. But the singular fact exists that in the human trunk the valves occur in the horizontal and are absent from the vertical veins. In other words, they exist where they are useless for their apparent purpose and are absent where they would be useful.

The only conclusion that can reasonably be drawn from this strange fact is that we are here dealing with a fossilized structure, a functionless survival. It leads irresistibly to the inference that man has descended from a quadruped ancestor, and that when his body took the upright position the structure of the veins, not being seriously detrimental, remained unchanged. Those which had been vertical became horizontal, and retained their now useless valves; those which had been horizontal became vertical, and remained destitute of valves. The veins of the arms and legs, vertical in both forms, retained their valves.

Dr. Clevenger points out that the intercostal veins, which carry blood almost horizontally backward to the azygos veins and which would run vertically upward in quadrupeds, possess valves. These are not only useless to man, but when he lies upon his back they are an actual hindrance to the free flow of the blood. In like manner, the inferior thyroid veins, whose blood flows into the innominate, are obstructed by valves at the point of junction.

We quote from him as follows: "There are two pairs of valves in the external jugular and one pair in the internal jugular, but in recognition of their uselessness they do not prevent regurgitation of blood nor liquids from passing upward. An apparent anomaly exists in the absence of valves from parts where they are most needed, as in the venae cavae, spinal, iliac, haemorrhoidal, and portal. The azygos veins have imperfect valves. Place men upon 'all fours' and the law governing the presence and absence of valves is at once apparent, applicable, so far as I have been able to ascertain, to all quadrupedal and quadrumanous animals: Dorsal veins are valved; cephalad, ventrad, and caudad veins have no valves."

Of the few exceptions to this rule, he considers the valves of the jugular veins as in process of becoming obsolete, and the rudimentary azygos valves as a recent development. Valves in the haemorrhoidal veins would be out of place in quadrupeds, but their absence in man is a serious defect in his organization, since the resulting engorgement of blood gives rise to the distressing disease known as piles. The presence of valves would obviate this.

No one can argue that this useless and, to some extent, injurious condition is a designed result of creation. There could not, indeed, be stronger evidence that man has descended from a quadruped ancestor. Dr. Clevenger points out other serious results of the upright position of the body, from which quadrupeds are free. One of these is the liability to inguinal hernia, or rupture, which leads to much suffering and frequent death in man. Prolapsis uteri is another, and a third to which he particularly alludes is difficulty in parturition.

It has been suggested above that the thyroid gland may possibly be of some minor functional importance, and that the thymus is developed in the embryo sufficiently to be functional. As regards the latter, no one is likely to maintain that an act of direct creation would include the production of an organ of some slight and obscure utility to the embryo and useless in later life. The strong probability is that this gland belongs in the same category with other embryonic survivals yet to be pointed out. As regards the seeming function of the thyroid, it may be said that the surviving relic of an ancient functional organ is quite capable of varying in structure and taking upon itself a new function, of minor value, which in its absence would be left undone or be performed by some of the other organs.

A highly interesting example of this exists in the swim-bladder of the fish, which there is good reason to believe is a survival of an ancient structure used for quite a different purpose. It was originally developed, in the opinion of the writer,[1] as an air-breathing organ, in a very ancient semi-amphibious class of fishes, from which the existing bony fishes have descended. When the latter resumed the gill-breathing habit, this organ lost its original function, and its subsequent history is a curious and significant one. In some modern fishes it has quite disappeared. In others it exists as a minute and useless remnant, no larger than a pea. In many it has been converted into the swim-bladder, and in this form serves a useful purpose, but varies very greatly in shape and size. Finally, in a few instances, it retains some measure of its probably original function of air-breathing. It is a fact of much significance, that those fishes without a swim-bladder do not seem to be at any disadvantage from its absence, but are able to make their way vertically through the water quite as well as those which possess this organ. The presumption, therefore, is that it is of little utility to the fish, and that its employment for this purpose is a mere resultant of its survival and character. Such an organ could never have been evolved as an aid in swimming, since its shrinkage to a useless rudiment in some cases and its complete extinction in others show that this function is in no sense a necessary one. It is there and has lost its old use, and is, in some cases, adapted to another purpose; that is all that can be said.

Man is the one hairless mammal,—or hairless except on a few parts of his body. Yet the whole body is covered with a thin growth of hair, useless for any purpose of protection, and only explainable as a survival from the mammalian covering. The occasional considerable development of the hair is an indication pointing to such an origin. This applies not only to individuals, but to tribes or races, as in the instances of the Ainos of Japan and some of the Pygmies of Africa. The disappearance of the hair in man has been traced to no well established cause. Darwin's view that it may have been a result of sexual selection seems the most probable explanation. Certainly this is the case with the beard, whose absence in women shows it to be of no utility, and whose presence in man is in accord with the many structures in male animals apparently due to this form of selection.

Darwin has pointed out and explained a very curious peculiarity of the hair in man, which is absolutely inexplicable except on the theory of descent. This is the fact that the hairs on man's arms are directed toward the elbow from above and below, thus growing in opposite directions on the upper and lower arms. The same peculiarity exists in the larger anthropoid apes and in some of the gibbons, but is not found in the lower mammals. In the apes it is believed to be due to the habit of protecting the head from rain by covering it with the hands, the hairs turning so that the rain can run downward freely in both directions toward the bent elbow. This is so useless in man that it can be explained only as a survival.

There are some other survivals in man of ancient structures to which a passing allusion must suffice. In man's eye is a minute membrane, the semilunar fold, which is absolutely useless in his economy. There is every reason to believe that this is the rudiment of a membrane which is fully developed in many animals, and is especially useful to birds, the nictitating membrane, or third eyelid. Again, the muscles which move the skin in many animals, especially in horses, have left inactive remnants in many parts of the human body. These are normally active only in the forehead, where they serve to lift the eyebrows, but they occasionally become active elsewhere. Thus there are some persons who can move the skin of the scalp. Darwin cites some who could throw heavy books from the head in this manner. The same may be said of the rudimentary muscles of the ear. There are persons who can move their ears in the same way as is done by the lower animals. Again, the whole external ear may be looked upon as a rudimentary structure, since it does not appear to aid the hearing in man. As regards the pointed ear of man's probable ancestor, Darwin calls attention to what seems a trace in man of the lost tip.

Carrying this consideration farther, it may be asked, Of what use are the five toes to man? Would not a solid foot have answered the purpose of walking quite as well? But as survivals their presence is fully accounted for, since they are indispensable to many of the lower animals. Question may also be made of the utility of the large number of bones in the wrist and heel of man. Equal flexibility of the joint could certainly have been obtained with a smaller number of bones. It is only when these are traced back to their probable origin in the walking organs of the fish ancestor of the batrachians that their presence becomes explainable. They are apparently survivals of a very ancient structure, originated for swimming, and adapted to walking.

As regards the wrist of man, a curious prediction that a certain bone found in some of the lower animals, the os centrale, would be found in man has been made and verified, it being discovered as a very small rudiment in the human embryo. The tail, so common a feature in the lower animals, but absent from the higher apes and from man, has not vanished without leaving its traces. In the human embryo it is plainly indicated; and while it vanishes in man beyond the embryo stage, it is simply hidden beneath the skin, where its vertebrae are still apparent, usually three, sometimes four or five, in number. In addition to this, the muscles which move the tail have left traces of their presence, which not infrequently develop into true muscles.

In the human embryo, indeed, we find ourselves in the midst of highly significant indications of man's origin. The body of man passes in its early development through a series of stages, in each of which it resembles the mature or the embryo state of certain animals lower in the stage of existence. It begins its existence as a simple cell, analogous in form to the amoeba, one of the lowest living creatures, and later assumes the gastrula form supposed to have been that of the earliest many-celled animals. From this state it progresses by successive stages, each of which has some relation in form to a lower class.

The most significant of these is that in which the embryo is closely assimilated to the fish, by the possession of gill slits. There are four of these openings in the neck of the human foetus, and they are at times so persistent that children have been born with them still open, so that fluids taken in at the mouth could trickle out at the neck, the opening being sufficient to admit a thin probe.[2] These slits are utilized in the developing embryo, one of them being devoted to an important duty, that of conversion into the external and middle ear. Thus the opening for hearing is an adaptation of what was once an opening for breathing. Occasionally an ear-like outgrowth appears on the neck, indicative of the attempt of a second slit to develop into an ear. The purpose of the gill slits is made more apparent by the presence in the embryo of gill arches of the blood-vessels, like those normal to the fish. These disappear in common with the slits.

The temporary appearance of these gill slits is the strongest evidence that could well be demanded that the human embryo passes through the various stages which the adult has assumed in its long development in past time, and that one of these stages was the fish. And these form only one of the evidences of man's origin to be found in the embryo. Another which may be mentioned is the wool-like hair which covers the foetus, and whose presence is incomprehensible except on the theory of descent. Its most probable explanation is that it appears as a passing survival of the first permanent coat of hair of the lower mammals.

In the milk teeth of man we have another useless and often annoying survival of an ancient state of the dental organs. We cannot well imagine that in any direct creation a set of temporary teeth would have been provided as preliminary to a permanent set—an utterly useless provision. But when we find that in a lower stage of animal life the old teeth are periodically succeeded by new ones, we can understand how a trace of this condition has persisted in the mammalia.

Other evidences of man's origin in the lower animals could be drawn from the phenomena of atavism, or arrest of development in parts or organs of the body. Atavism is usually confined within the line of human descent, conditions appearing in many of us which belonged to some of our human ancestors a few generations, occasionally many generations, in the past. But conditions now and then appear which are abnormal to man, but which are normal to some of the lower animals. This tendency is exhibited by all organisms. In an occasional horse the long-lost stripes of the zebra-like ancestor reappear. Now and then a blue pigeon, like the ancestral form, crops up in a pure breed of domesticated birds. Even in the details of anatomy some long-vanished character suddenly appears.

Many instances of this in man might be cited, embracing various features of the muscular and other internal organs. The abnormality of club-foot may be pointed to as a reversion to the shape of the foot in the anthropoid apes. This, however, is a retention of a condition existing in the foetus of man, the foot being drawn up and the sole turned inward and upward. It is simply a passing testimony to the ancestral condition of man.

Again, we have the fact that man possesses normally only twelve ribs, one less than is found in the gorilla and the chimpanzee. This leads to the possibility that man may have lost a rib in his development, and in significant evidence of this is the fact that occasionally a thirteenth rib appears in the human framework.

The functionless organs in men are, as above said, closely analogous to the fossils in the rocks, in that both point back to a period in which they were active, vital forms occupying a definite place in the long line of animal life or animal structure. The argument that God directly created the fossils is no more absurd than the one that He directly created these useless and at times detrimental organs. It is impossible to offer a reason for such a futile exercise of creative power, unless that it was intended to make it falsely appear that man arose from the world of life below him. Will any one in this age assert that God placed useless and dangerous structures in the body of man for the incredible purpose of deceiving him in regard to his origin? And will it be further asserted that the Deity placed similar stumbling-blocks to the human reason in the embryo, in order to deceive those who should extend their researches to this low level? It would be difficult to conceive of a more preposterous idea, yet there is no other escape from what seems a self-evident fact, that man is a product of evolution from the lower animals, and bears the marks of his ancestry thick upon him.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: "On the Air Bladder of Fishes." Proceedings of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, 1885.]

[Footnote 2: Sutton, "Evolution and Disease."]



III

RELICS OF ANCIENT MAN

If now, instead of seeking for evidences of man's ancestry within the human body, in survivals of ancient anatomical structures, we seek for them within the crust of the earth, we find ourselves confronted with evidences of a great antiquity of the human race, partly in implements of human manufacture, partly in ancient or fossilized bones of primitive man. These indicate not only great remoteness of origin, but also a very gradual advance from the lowest stage of inventive ability to the high level now attained.

These relics of primitive man are divided by Dana into ten varieties, (1) Buried human bones; (2) stone arrow and lance heads, hatchets, pestles, etc.; (3) flint chips, left in the manufacture of implements; (4) arrow heads and other implements made of bone and deer horn; (5) bones, teeth, and shells bored or notched by human hands; (6) cut or carved wood; (7) bone, horn, ivory, or stone graven with figures, or cut into the shapes of animals; (8) marrow bones broken longitudinally to obtain the marrow for food; (9) fragments of charcoal and other indications of the use of fire; (10) fragments of pottery.

Relics of the kinds above cited have been found at intervals for many years past, but their age and significance were doubted, and only within some forty years has the great antiquity of man upon the earth been generally acknowledged by scientists. The most important early find of ancient implements was made by Boucher de Perthes in 1841 and subsequently, in the high level gravels of the valley of the Somme, in Picardy, France. In deep layers of these gravels, which were deposited at a period when the river occupied a wider and higher channel than at present, he found rude flint weapons and tools, bearing plain evidences of human workmanship, and mingled with the teeth and bones of animals, both of living and extinct species. Among the bones were those of the mammoth and the hairy rhinoceros, species evidently contemporary with man, though they have long since vanished from the earth. At a somewhat earlier date, implements of men, mingled with bones of the cave-bear, cave-lion, hyena, and other species, had been found in the caves of France and Belgium. These were frequently buried beneath deposits of stalagmite and other materials that must have taken a long time to accumulate.

The significance of these discoveries was long in forcing itself upon the attention of scientific men. Nearly twenty years passed before Boucher de Perthes could get the noted geologists of France and England to investigate the Somme gravels. When they did so they were quickly convinced of the genuine antiquity of these relics, and announced it as a fact beyond question that man had lived in the Somme valley and fashioned rude implements out of flint during what was known as the Quaternary or Drift Period of geology.

The discoveries here made set men actively at work investigating elsewhere. Excavations were made in other high level gravels, caverns were carefully and minutely examined, Kent's Cavern, England, was dug out to its rock bottom, dozens of important finds resulted, and the antiquity of man was proved to extend back from thousands to tens of thousands, if not to hundreds of thousands, of years. And the coexistence of man with the animals whose bones accompanied his relics was proved by unquestionable evidence, for drawings and carved forms of these animals were found, proving incontestably that man had gazed upon their living forms. Thus the sketch of a mammoth, showing the long hair which served to protect this animal from the cold, was found engraved upon a piece of mammoth ivory, and one of a group of reindeer on a piece of reindeer horn. There were also drawings of the cave-bear, the seal, etc., and one very interesting group showing the aurochs, a number of trees, and a man with a snake apparently biting his heel. The carvings consisted of the horn handle of a dagger, cut into the shape of a reindeer, and other forms.

That these relics belong to a far distant age is proved by the strongest evidence. It must suffice here to give some of the more striking of these proofs of antiquity. The flint hatchets found at St. Acheul, France, were obtained from a gravel bed which lay below twelve feet of sand and marl. On the surface was a layer of soil, in which were graves of the Gallo-Roman period, showing that it had been there for at least fifteen hundred years. The time needed for the slow accumulation of the whole series of deposits must have been very considerable.

A much more decisive proof of antiquity is given by the position in which this and similar gravel beds lie. They are found along the sides of rivers at a height often of a hundred or two hundred feet above the flood level of the streams. When they were deposited, the rivers must have run at this elevation, so that time has since elapsed sufficient for the streams to cut down their valleys to the present depths. The streams may have formerly been of greater volume, and had superior cutting powers, and they may have been aided by the ice of the Glacial Age, yet, however we estimate, the conclusion is inevitable that the men who dropped their implements into those gravels must have lived upon the earth ages before the beginning of historical times.

The presence there of remains of animals which ages ago perished from the earth is another circumstance indicative of high antiquity. These embrace the mammoth,—the great hairy elephant of prehistoric times,—an extinct hair-clad rhinoceros, the large and powerful cave-bear and cave-lion, the great Irish elk, and still other animals of whose existence we know only by their bones. Others, which existed in common with men of later date, are the reindeer and the musk-ox, species of which now inhabit the coldest regions of the north, and whose presence in southern Europe at that era seems to indicate a much colder climate than that of historic times.

The evidences of human antiquity here briefly presented are accompanied by indications of a gradual development of the human intellect. If man has "fallen from his high estate," he has left no traces of this high estate on his downward path. We possess abundant indications of his upward climb, we find none of a preceding descent. If we base our opinions on known facts, the theory of development is the only one that can be sustained; the doctrine of a fall is absolutely without warrant outside the pages of Genesis.

The successive stages of man's mental development, as indicated in the work of his hands, are well and clearly marked. At the lowest level we find tools and weapons of the palaeolithic or old stone age, made of roughly chipped stone, rude in form, and never ground or polished. These present some evidence of gradual improvement, but we must go to a higher level to find implements of a decidedly higher order, the neatly shaped and polished stone implements of the neolithic or new stone age. With the coming of these appears a much greater diversity in tools and weapons, and evidences of a growing skill in manufacture and a considerably greater power of invention. Still higher lie the deposits of the bronze age, in which metal replaces stone in human implements. Finally appears the age of iron, that in which we still remain. We need merely refer in passing to the lake-dwellings of Switzerland, with their many interesting relics of man during the later stone, the bronze, and the early iron eras; and the kitchen-middens, or refuse-heaps, of the Danish islands and elsewhere, which extend from the old stone age far down toward the historic period.

These are but a portion of the evidences of man's antiquity and his gradual progress in the arts of manufacture. Others have been found in many parts of the earth. Many of them exist in America, proving that man resided on this continent at a very distant era. When we consider that late discoveries in Babylonia appear to carry back the age of civilization and historical relics to some ten thousand years, and that semi-civilization must have extended very considerably beyond that time, the vista of man's gradual progress seems to recede interminably and the era of primitive man to stretch backward to an enormously remote period. In truth, discoveries have been made which are claimed to carry man back beyond the Quaternary and into the Tertiary Period of geology, since cut and scratched bones have been found in Pliocene deposits, which some geologists of experience believe to have been the work of human hands. Still more remote are some seemingly chipped flints and bones cut in a way that suggests human action, which have been found in deposits of the very far-distant Miocene Age. The immense remoteness of this epoch and the rudeness of the work have cast much doubt on the human origin of these remains, though their authenticity as the work of man has been accepted by several competent observers, among them the able anthropologist, Quatrefages.

If we confine ourselves, however, to the conclusions regarding ancient man which are generally accepted, we must say that he has not been clearly traced back beyond the Glacial Period, though some of the relics found in the older river gravels and in the lowest cave accumulations may well be of pre-glacial age. Many geologists believe that he reached Europe as early as the extinct mammals with which he was contemporaneous there, but how far back in time this would carry his advent it is impossible to say.

Coming now to the consideration of more immediate human relics, the bones of man himself, it must be said that well-authenticated remains of palaeolithic or early neolithic man are not numerous. As long as man left his bones to the unaided agencies of nature, they were little likely to be preserved. Of the anthropoid apes of Europe, probably numerous in individuals, a few remains of one or two species alone survive. Of pre-glacial man none remain, but this may merely indicate that he has shared the fate of numerous other species that died out and left no trace. It was only when the growing cold drove man from the open woods to seek shelter in caves that remnants of his body were likely to be preserved, and only when a growing sense of human dignity led to the art of sepulture that the preservation of his bones became assured.

The burial art was seemingly not practised by the hunters of the river-drift period or by men of still earlier date. The only remains of primitive man known are those found in caves and rock shelters. A number of human skulls have been discovered in these situations, and in a few instances skeletons have been exhumed. In the neolithic period interment became more common and more carefully performed, and the progress of this period is marked by many remains of man, which in later times were buried in elaborately constructed stone sepulchres, sometimes massive in materials and covered by great earth-mounds.

What is meant by the Glacial Age is probably well-known to most readers, but its close relations to ancient man render it important for those who are not familiar with its meaning that a passing description of it should here be given. It will suffice to say that there are found over much of the northern portions of America and Europe accumulations of clays, sands, and gravels, sometimes laid down in stratified beds, sometimes rudely piled together. In these occur blocks of stone, large and small, and other blocks, occasionally of great size, are found in isolated localities. The solid rocks which lie beneath these heaps are often scratched or polished, as if the material had been pushed over them with great force.

All geologists now believe that these accumulations were made by ice, at some remote period when a very cold climate prevailed in the northern hemisphere, and great glaciers slowly made their way southward, grinding and rending as they went, and burying the land under their mountain-like heaps, which sometimes were a mile or more in depth. In North America the glacial ice pushed southward to the 40th degree of north latitude. In Europe it extended to the Alpine region, but failed to reach the countries bordering on the Mediterranean.

The elaborate and minute investigation of the glacial deposits has made it highly probable that there were two glacial eras, two periods in which the ice pushed down far to the south, and that these were separated by a period in which the ice retreated and an age of warmer weather intervened. This is known as the interglacial period. So far as can be positively ascertained, all the authentic relics of man belong to the Glacial Age. They seem first to become numerous in the interglacial period, and continue to increase and become diversified as we descend lower in time. How long ago it was that the sea of ice began its downflow over the earth it is impossible to say. Some place it back six hundred thousand or seven hundred thousand years. Some seek to bring it down to a quite recent date. It is still so uncertain and such a matter of controversy that the utmost we are able definitely to say is that it was very long ago.

While there is no positive proof that men dwelt in Europe before the coming on of the glacial chill, we have no just reason to doubt it. That he lived there during glacial times is unquestionable, and we may be very well assured that a naked tropical animal, destitute of the hairy covering of the other animals, would not have chosen that frozen period to migrate to the north. The fact that he was there during the ice age seems satisfactory evidence that he was there before that age, during the mild climate of late Tertiary times, and that—for a reason which we shall hereafter consider—he was caught there and unable to retreat, and was forced to adapt himself to the new conditions.

During the warm preceding period he probably wandered as a hunter through the European forests. But with the gradual coming on of a wintry chill, as the advance of the ice began, shelter of some kind became necessary, and he sought refuge in caves. From being a forest wanderer he became a troglodyte. Everywhere in southwestern Europe we find traces of this period of man's existence. There is hardly a cave or rock shelter in that region within which he has not left his marks. He made his way to England, which was probably then connected by land with Europe, and dwelt long in its caverns. His period of cave residence, indeed, appears to have been a very extended one. While it continued, deposits many feet in depth gradually accumulated on the floors of the caverns, slowly filling them up. And that, in some cases at least, this cave residence ended a very long time ago, we are assured, for since then a great thickness of stalagmite, which is deposited with extreme slowness, has spread over the lower cave deposits and sealed them in.

It is in these caves that we find, not only the rude stone spearheads, scrapers, hammers, etc., the bone awls, borers, and other implements of palaeolithic man, but the bones of man himself. And it is significant of his primitive condition that these earliest relics indicate a man of a very low grade of development, mentally far above the ape, it is true, but mentally and physically much below modern man.

The most ape-like of those human remains is the famous Neanderthal skull, found in 1856 in a limestone cavern of the Neanderthal Valley, between Duesseldorf and Elberfeld, in Rhenish Prussia. The relics discovered consist of the brain cap, two femori, two humeri, and other fragments. The fragment of the skull attracted wide attention by its bestial aspect, it presenting a low, narrow and receding forehead, and an enormous thickness of the bony ridges over the eyes, like that seen in the gorilla. This skull, which was associated with remains of the cave-bear, hyena, and rhinoceros, is, with one exception, the most ape-like human relic yet found. Yet its cranial capacity is far above that of the highest apes, and is assimilated with that of Hottentot and Polynesian skulls.

It has been maintained that this is a pathological specimen, and does not represent normal man. But this theory has been disproved by the fact that other skulls of similar cranial characters are now known, indicating that the Neanderthal cranium represents a type of man, not an abnormal individual. In the Spy Cavern, in the province of Namur, Belgium, there were found, in 1886, two nearly perfect skeletons of a man and a woman, both of them with very prominent eye ridges, low, retreating foreheads, and large orbits. This was strikingly the case with the woman. The lower jaws in both were heavy, while the woman was almost destitute of a chin—a marked ape-like characteristic. The tibia was shorter than in any known race and stouter than in most. Its curious feature was the articulation with the femur, which was such that to maintain the equilibrium the head and body must have been thrown forward, as is the case in the anthropoid apes.

In the cave of Naulette, near Dinant, Belgium, has been found the lower jaw of a man of decidedly ape-like aspect. Its prognathism or protrusion is extreme, and the canine teeth were very strong, while the molars were evidently large and increased in size backward, a non-human characteristic. At La Denise, in the upper Loire, France, have been found the frontal bones of a man like the Neanderthal man in type, the forehead being depressed and retreating, and the superciliary ridges large and thick. Several other skulls of this general type are known, but the above will suffice as examples.

Remains of palaeolithic man of considerably higher type are not wanting. In the rock shelter of Cro-Magnon, France, were found the bones of three men, one woman, and one child, of more advanced character. These, however, are of late date and may have been early neolithic. At Engis, near Liege, Belgium, a deeply buried skull, associated with many remains of extinct animals, has been dug up, which is by no means ape-like in character. A still superior example of palaeolithic man is the skeleton found in a cavern at Mentone, east of Nice, France, which represents a man six feet in height, with rather large head, high forehead, and very large facial angle (85 deg.). The cave contained bones of extinct animals, but no trace of the reindeer.

There is no occasion to speak here of the many remains of neolithic man that have been exhumed. Sparse in the early part of the age of polished stone weapons, they gradually became numerous, and merged into the human remains of late prehistoric times. The American continent is not without its relics of ancient man, the most famous of which is the Calaveras skull, found in 1886 in the auriferous gravels of Calaveras County, California, at an extraordinary depth. The miners, in excavating a shaft, passed through several layers of lava and gravel, forming a total thickness of seventy-nine feet of lava and a considerable thickness of gravel, making nearly one hundred and thirty feet in all. At this depth a skull was found imbedded in the gravel, which, if authentic, must have been overflowed by several successive thick outpours of lava in the ancient volcanic era of that region. As its authenticity is, however, still a matter of controversy, nothing further need here be said about it.

Leaving these evidences of human antiquity, we come to the most remarkable and significant of all the known relics of man, if indeed it is man, for it seems to many a link between man and the ape,—not yet human, while no longer simian. This is the fossil find made by Dr. Eugene Dubois in 1891 on the banks of the Bengawan River, Java, and named by him Pithecanthropus erectus, he maintaining that it represents a new genus of upright animals, or even a new family. The remains found by him consisted of the upper part of a skull, a molar tooth, and a femur, possibly not belonging to a single individual, as they were somewhat separated. These were exhumed from a stratum of volcanic tufa, claimed to be of Tertiary age, but perhaps Quaternary, and lay at a depth of some forty feet beneath the surface.

The femur very closely resembles that of a human being of average size, and its shape, articulating surface, and other characters show clearly that the animal stood habitually erect. The principal significance lies in the tooth and the cranium. The former is like that of the chimpanzee in shape, but less rugose on its grinding surface. It seems to lie between the ape and the human type of dentition. The cranium has a low, depressed arch, with a very narrow frontal region and highly developed superciliary ridges. The cranial capacity was apparently about one thousand, that of man being from thirteen hundred to fourteen hundred. It is therefore said to be "the lowest human cranium yet described, very nearly as much below the Neanderthal as that is below the normal European."

Professor O. C. Marsh, in a paper on the subject in the American Journal of Science, for February, 1895, agrees with Dr. Dubois in his view of the distinct position of this form in the animal kingdom, and says that the discoverer "has proved the existence of a new prehistoric anthropoid form, not human, indeed, but in size, brain power, and erect posture much nearer man than any animal hitherto discovered, living or extinct."

We have here given a short review of a long story. The evidences of man's former existence upon the earth are multitudinous, but any extended consideration of them is aside from our purpose, which is merely to show that the proofs of man's descent found in his physical structure are strengthened by evidences which he has left strewn behind him in his long march down the ages. Only a single conclusion can be drawn from these vestiges of man excavated from caves and gravels, namely, that they indicate a gradual and steady progression upward from a very low condition, while they nowhere give evidence of the traditional fall of man.

This is certainly the case with the relics of human workmanship. They begin with the rudest chipped stones, and very slowly improve in form and finish and become more varied, as we move upward in our search. The ground and polished stones follow, and the variety of implements considerably increases, until at length the age of metal, with its developed industries, is reached. The only seeming evidence of superior intellect to be found in this gradual progress is that of the drawings and carvings left us by one group of palaeolithic men. But the actual mental development indicated by these becomes problematical when we consider that similar drawings are made to-day by the Bushmen of South Africa, a race of men occupying a very low mental stage. From this fact we may fairly conclude that the possession of a simple graphic art does not necessarily indicate any considerable intellectual advance.

If we consider the remains of man himself, the few bones which mark his early pathway through time, a similar conclusion must be drawn. Beginning with Pithecanthropus, which science is yet in doubt whether to class with the apes or with men, we pass upward to the bestial Neanderthal man and his fellows of the same low type. Of the sparse remains of palaeolithic man that exist, the most are of this degraded type. The cranial capacity is usually not small. They had the full brain development of man. But this simply assimilates them with the low races of existing savages, many of whom have not developed the simple art of chipping stone to form weapons and yet have brains of normal human weight.

In truth, the influences under which the development of the brain took place were not what we now call intellectual. Developing man used his mental powers actively in his dealings with the hostile forces of surrounding nature, and nearly all the forces of evolution were brought to bear upon the organ of the mind, the body remaining practically unchanged. His senses became acute, his cunning and alertness high, his use of weapons skilful, but his field of mental exercise was still the outer world, and the inner world of thought remained in its embryo state. The more recent development of the mind has been in its intellectual powers, while its physical aptitudes have somewhat declined. This has not yielded any marked increase in the dimensions of the brain, but it may have had a decided effect upon the proportion of its parts, the regions of the cerebrum devoted to intellectual activity probably increasing at the expense of the motor and sensory regions, while the convolutions may have grown considerably more complicated.



IV

FROM QUADRUPED TO BIPED

In the question which now confronts us, that of the evolution of man from the lower world of animals, it is necessary first to state in what particulars he has evolved, what are the conditions which distinguish him from the lower animals. Four marked distinctions may be named: his erect attitude, with the freeing of the fore limbs from use as agents in locomotion; his employment of natural objects, instead of his bodily organs, as tools and weapons; his development of vocal language; and his great mental superiority, with the general use of the mind in his dealings with nature.

In none of these particulars does man stand quite alone; in all of them an affinity with the lower animals exists. Steps of progress in these directions have been made by many animals, though none of them have gained any considerable advance. In man's strikingly developed social habit and organization he has no close counterpart among the vertebrates, but several among the insects. And it is of much interest to find that in the highest field of man's progress, his employment of the mind in his dealings with nature, he is chiefly emulated by such lowly-organized creatures as the ants and the bees.

We do not need to look far among the lower animals for the species which come nearest to man in structure and which seem to have immediately preceded him in the line of descent. We find these forms in the monkeys or apes, and especially in their highest representatives, the anthropoid apes. These possess in a partial degree all the special characteristics of man. They are social in habit; some of them are semi-erect in posture, and their fore limbs partly freed from use in locomotion; they possess some imperfect means of vocal communication; they employ the mind to some extent in place of the body; in short, they seem arrested forms on the road from brute to man, signal-posts on the highway of evolution. In physical organization their approach to man is singularly close. In anatomy man and the higher apes are in most respects counterparts of each other. The principal anatomical distinction has been considered to be in the foot, which from the opposable character of the great toe was classed by Cuvier with the hand, the apes being named Quadrumana, or four-handed, and man Bimana, or two-handed. Fuller research has shown that this distinction does not exist, the foot of the ape being found to agree far more closely with the foot than with the hand of man. Estimated according to use, the hand is, in the whole order, the special prehensile organ; the foot, however prehensile it may be, is predominantly a walking organ. And the opposability of the great toe is approached in some men, who have great mobility in this organ, and can use it for grasping.

In regard to the brain, the organ of the mind, the difference between the higher apes and man is almost solely one of comparative size, the lower intelligence of the apes being indicated by the smaller size of their brains. The largest ape brain is scarcely half the size of the smallest human brain. But anatomically they are nearly identical. All the structural features of the brain are common to both, and the details are largely filled out in the anthropoid apes, the convolutions being all present and the pattern of arrangement the same. The brain of the orang may be said to be like that of man in all respects except size and the greater symmetry of its convolutions, which are less complicated with minor convolutions than in man. In truth, the difference between the brains of man and the orang is almost insignificant as compared with the difference between those of the orang and the lowest apes. Mr. E. W. Taylor, who has recently made an exhaustive study of the minute anatomy of the brain of the chimpanzee, remarks, "The similarity between the brain of the anthropoid apes and of man is one of the most singular and interesting facts of which we have knowledge."

In any attempt, then, to consider the origin of man from the point of view of evolution, we are irresistibly drawn to the ape tribe as the next lower link in the long chain of development, and are led to consider the characteristics of the apes as the intermediate stage between the quadruped and the biped, the bridge crossing this great gulf in organic development. This is by no means to suggest that some one of the existing anthropoid apes is the direct ancestor of man. Such an idea has never been entertained by scientists. These animals cannot even fairly be considered as brothers to man's ancestor, but must be looked upon as more or less distant cousins, with a physical organization less favorable to high development than that of man. Man's ancestry lies much farther back in time, and his progenitor must have been constituted differently from any of the existing large apes.

In the ape tribe we are able to trace nearly every step by which the gulf between quadruped and biped has been crossed, from the quadrupedal baboon to the nearly erect gibbon. And in seeking to follow this development through its successive stages, the first point to be considered is how the apes gained their special power of grasping, that characteristic to which they undoubtedly owe the partial freedom of their hands and their tendency to assume the erect attitude.

The most distinguishing characteristic of the apes and of the nearly related lemurs has not hitherto been definitely pointed out. This is that they form the only group of strictly arboreal animals. The tree is not alone their native habitat, but they are specially adapted to it in their organs of motion, a fact which cannot be affirmed of any other animal group. If we consider, for instance, the squirrels, one of the best-known groups of tree-living animals, we find them to be members of the great order of rodents, whose native habitat is the land surface. Though the squirrels have taken to the trees, there has been no adaptive change in the structure of their limbs and feet. The same may be said of almost all tree-dwellers except the lemurs and apes. The sloth, indeed, is specially adapted in organization to an arboreal residence, but this change is individual, not tribal, this animal being an aberrant form of the ground-dwelling edentata. In the apes and lemurs, on the contrary, the ground-dwellers are the aberrant forms, stray wanderers from the host. Nearly all the species live in trees, to which they are specially adapted by the formation of their feet. It remains to inquire how this deviation in structure arose, what were the steps of development of the grasping foot and hand, the special characteristic of this group.

In considering this question, the first fact to appear is that the apes and lemurs are plantigrade animals. Their natural tendency is to walk on the sole of the foot, a habit which few other tribes of animals possess. Most of the larger animals walk on the knuckles or the toes, and develop claws or hoofs, but the ancestral form of the ape, ages in the past, was doubtless a sole-walking quadruped, its toes apparently provided with nails instead of claws. What the story of this very ancient quadruped was we are quite unable to say. It may, in the exigencies of existence, have come to a parting of the ways; a section of the group, drawn by a love of fruit, developing the climbing habit; the remaining section continuing on the ground and following a separate line of evolution. Perhaps only a single species took to the trees; for it is quite possible for a single form, in a new and advantageous habitat, to vary in time into a great number of species.

Of all this we can know nothing: but of one thing we may feel assured, which is that the plantigrade foot is the only one that could have developed into a grasping organ; such a development being impossible to the digitigrade or the hoofed animals. One can readily see how the habit of walking on the sole might tend to a spreading of the toes, in order to obtain a wider and firmer footing. And it is equally easy to see how a free and wide motion in the great toe would aid in this result. The animal may have been at first light in weight and able to support itself on its unchanged foot, but as it increased in size and weight it would need a firmer grasp, and the final result of spreading its toes for this purpose may well have been the opposable great toe.

It must be borne in mind, in this consideration, that the apes differ from the other tree-dwellers in being destitute of claws. The squirrels, the opossums, and other arboreal animals have sharp claws, by whose aid they can easily cling to the surface of the bark-covered boughs. The nails of the apes are incapable of affording them this service, and it is not easy to perceive how a foot like theirs could become adapted to locomotion in the trees otherwise than by the gaining of mobile action and grasping power in the toes.

The existing habits of the ape tribe lead us to the conclusion that the ancestral animal may have soon begun to seek support from upper limbs. The plantigrade foot is one capable of readily curving into an organ of support, and in the case of the forefoot the toes would tend to spread and gain flexibility of motion, and the first toe to become opposable to the others and yield a more complete grasping power. It does not seem difficult to comprehend, from this point of view, how the feet of a five-toed plantigrade animal may in time have developed into grasping organs, since there would be required only an increased flexibility of the joints, and a wider and fuller movement of the great toes. That such a change took place in this instance the facts appear to indicate, the most simple and probable explanation of the development of the grasping power in the hands and feet of the ape being seemingly that given above.

The relation of the lemurs to the apes is not clearly defined. It may be an ancestral one, or the two animals may represent distinct lines of descent. In the latter case we would have two lines of animal evolution in which the grasping power was gained and adaptation to arboreal life completed. Whatever their relationship, they both possess the opposable thumb as the hall-mark of their arboreal habitat, and whenever found walking on the ground they may be looked upon as estrays from their native place of residence.

Once the grasping power was gained, the first step of change from the quadrupedal to the semi-erect attitude was completed. The process may have begun in the effort to fit the sole of the foot to the rounded surface of boughs; or its first stage may have been in the seizing of overhead branches with the flexible hand; or both influences may have acted simultaneously. We see the result only, we cannot trace the exact process; but we have as an outcome the adoption of a method of locomotion different from that of all other tree-dwellers, the forefoot developing into the hand with its opposable thumb, and the hindfoot gaining a similar grasping power in the toes.

The power of walking on a lower limb and grasping an upper one once attained, a succeeding step in evolution quickly appeared, and one of prime importance to our inquiry. The animal had ceased to be in a full sense a quadruped, while not yet a biped, and a variation in the length of its limbs was almost sure to take place. This is an ordinary result when animals cease to walk on all fours. In the leaping kangaroo and jerboa a shortening of the arms and lengthening of the legs appear. Here the arms are relieved from duty and a double duty is laid on the legs, with the consequence stated. In the ancient dinosaurian reptiles, upright walkers, the same was the case. Those varied from quite small to very large animals, but in all known instances the fore limbs were greatly reduced in size. A similar condition may be seen in the birds, the bones of whose fore-limbs have largely aborted from lack of employment as walking organs.

In the case of the apes and lemurs, while a similar effect has taken place, an interesting difference appears, due to the difference in conditions. In these animals the fore limbs are not freed from duty as organs of locomotion. In many cases, on the contrary, they have an extra duty put upon them, with the result that they have grown longer instead of shorter. Very likely these animals differed considerably in the past, as they do to-day, in the degree of use of their legs and arms. Many of them walk in the quadruped manner, either on the ground or in trees. Others make much use of their hands and arms in grasping and swinging. Great differences in the use of the arms and legs may have arisen in different species. In some, the legs may have been mainly trusted to for support, and the hands used for steadying. In others the arms may have been the chief locomotive organs and the feet have given steadiness. Here the legs may have grown the longer, there the arms, the limbs developing in accordance with their degree of employment. In the lower monkeys and the lemurs, the bones of the pelvis are altogether quadrupedal in character. This is not the case in the higher forms, and in the highest apes the pelvic bones approach those of man.

Highly interesting examples of these varied results may be seen in the existing anthropoid apes. In all of them it would appear that the arm was a prominent factor in locomotion, for in each instance it is longer than the leg,—but it differs in proportional length in every instance. It is shortest in the chimpanzee, somewhat longer in the gorilla, still longer in the orang, and remarkably long in the gibbon. In all these instances the fact that the arms exceed the legs in length indicates that they must have played a large and important part in the work of locomotion, and especially so in the case of the gibbon. It is well known, in fact, that the gibbons progress very largely by the aid of their arms, swinging from limb to limb and from tree to tree with extraordinary strength and facility. The legs lend their aid in this, but the arms are the principal organs of motion, and seem to have developed in length accordingly.

As regards the other anthropoid species, Wallace's observations on the habits of the orang are of interest. This animal usually walks on all fours on the branches in a semi-erect crouching attitude, but our naturalist saw one moving by the use of its arms alone. In passing from tree to tree the arms come actively into play. The animal seizes a handful of the overlapping boughs of the two trees and swings easily across the intervening space. While seeming to move very deliberately, its actual speed was found to be about six miles an hour.

The organization of man, as he now exists, shows an interesting and important deviation from that of the manlike apes, and one which serves as strong evidence that none of these apes occupied a place in his line of descent. This is that he is a long-legged and short-armed animal, a condition the reverse of that seen in the anthropoid apes. While man's hands reach barely to the middle of the thigh, those of the chimpanzee reach below the knee, of the gorilla to the middle of the leg, of the orang to the ankle, and of the gibbon to the ground. All these apes have short legs and long arms. Man, on the contrary, has long legs and short arms.

The natural presumption from this interesting fact is that man's ancestor, which we may provisionally call the man-ape, differed essentially in its mode of progression from the other apes. The smaller forms of these usually move on all fours in the trees, though the arms are always ready for a swing or a climb. The anthropoid apes also show a tendency to a similar mode of progression, though with a difference in their mode of walking, which, as we shall see later on, is never that of the quadruped. As for the man-ape, it may have originally walked in the same manner as the related species, if we surmise that the variation in the length of the limbs was a subsequent development. Certainly after its limbs attained the proportions of those of man, its facility of swinging from tree to tree must have been diminished, while it would have found it inconvenient to move in the crouching attitude of the orang and its fellows. Its easiest attitude must then have been the erect one, and its motion a true biped walk, not the swinging and jumping movement of the other anthropoids. In short, the development of man's ancestor into a short-armed animal, however and whenever it took place, could not but have interfered seriously with its ease of motion in the trees. Though this change may have begun in the trees, it probably had its full development only after the animal made the ground its habitual place of residence.

It is of interest to find that all the existing large apes are arboreal, the gorilla being the least so, probably on account of its weight. Though they all descend at times to the ground, their awkward motion on the surface shows them to be out of their element, while they move with ease and rapidity in the trees. The organization of man renders it questionable if his primeval ancestor was arboreal to any similar extent. The indications would seem to be that it made the ground its habitual place of residence at an early period in its history, and that the result of this new habit and of its erect attitude was a change in the relative length of its limbs.

That this animal dwelt mainly in trees in the first stage of its existence, and possessed a powerful grasping power in its hands, we have corroborative evidence in recent studies of child life. The human infant, in its earliest days of life, displays a remarkable grasping power, being able to sustain its weight with its hands for a number of seconds, or a minute or more, at an age when its other muscles are flabby and powerless. It appears in this to repeat a habit normal to the ancestral infant, an instinct developed to prevent a fall from its home among the boughs.

Yet it is doubtful if the man-ape long remained a specially arboreal animal. The varied length of arm in the anthropoid apes was doubtless of early origin, and in all probability man's ancestor had originally a shorter arm than its related species. If so, this must have rendered it less agile in trees than other forms. If we could see this ancient creature in its arboreal home, we should probably find it more inclined to stand erect than the other apes, walking on a lower limb, and steadying itself by grasping an upper limb. This would be a more natural and easy mode of progression to a short-armed animal than the crouching attitude of the orang or the swinging motion of the gibbon, and its effect would be to make the erect attitude to a large extent habitual with this animal.

In short, man's ancestor may have become in considerable measure a biped while still largely a dweller in the trees, and to that degree set its arms free for other duties than that of locomotion. Like the other apes, it probably often descended to the ground, where its habit of walking erect on the boughs rendered the biped walk an easy one, or where this habit may have been originally acquired. While this is conjectural, it is supported by facts of organization and existing habit, and for the reasons given it seems highly probable that the ancestor of man took to a land residence at an early period in its history, climbing again for food or safety, but dwelling more and more habitually on the earth's surface. Even at this remote era it may have become essentially human in organization, its subsequent changes being mainly in brain development, and only to a minor extent in physical form and structure.

Fossil apes have not been found farther back than the Miocene Age of geology. It is quite probable, however, that they may yet be found in Eocene strata, since examples of their highest representatives, the anthropoid or manlike apes, have been found in Miocene rocks. The fact that these large apes are now few in number of species, is no proof that many forms of them may not have formerly existed, and among these we may class the ancestor of man.



V

THE FREEDOM OF THE ARMS

Man's ancestor is by no means the only form of ape that has made the earth's surface its place of residence. The baboon is one example of a number of forms that dwell habitually upon the ground, though they have not lost their agility in climbing. But these species have returned to the quadruped habit, to which the equal length of their limbs adapts them. All the anthropoid apes dwell to some extent upon the ground, but these can neither be called quadrupeds nor bipeds, their usual mode of progression being an awkward compromise between the two. The same may be said of one of the lemurs, the propithecus, the only member of its tribe that attempts to move in the erect attitude. It does not walk, however, but progresses by a series of jumps, its arms being held erect, as if for balancing.

Of the apes, though many can stand upright, the gibbon is the only one that attempts to walk in this position. This is a true walk, though not a very graceful one. The animal maintains a fairly upright posture, but walks with a waddling motion, its body rocking from side to side. Its soles are placed flat on the ground, with the great toes spread outward. Its arms either hang loosely by its side, are crossed over its head, or are held aloft, swaying like balancing poles and ready to seize any overhead support. Its walk is quickly changed to a different motion if any occasion for haste arises. At once its long arms are dropped to the ground, the knuckles closed, and it progresses by a swinging or leaping motion, the body remaining nearly erect, but being swung between the arms.

None of the other anthropoid apes ever walk erect, though they assume at times the upright posture. But though they use all their limbs as walking organs, they show no tendency to revert to the habit of the quadrupeds. Their motion is like that of the gibbon when in haste, a series of jumps or swings between the supporting arms. The shortness of their arms, however, prevents them from standing erect, like the gibbon, in doing this; and they bend forward to a degree depending on the length of their arms, the chimpanzee the most, the orang the least.

As a rule, the flat sole of the foot is set on the ground, with the toes extended, as in man, but the toes are sometimes doubled under in walking. The orang rarely touches the ground with the sole or the closed toes, but walks on the outer edge of the foot, the feet being bent inward as if clasping the rounded sides of a bough. The other species have a tendency in the same direction, the legs being bowed and the gait rolling. In using the hands in walking, the closed knuckles are usually placed on the ground, though occasionally the open palm is employed. The whole movement of these animals is strikingly awkward, and goes to indicate that there can be no satisfactory compromise between life in the tree and on the ground.

The significant fact in these attempts to walk is that none of the anthropoid apes show any inclination to revert to the quadruped habit. Their attitude is in all cases an approach toward the erect one, which posture is attained by the gibbon. The arms are used not as walking but as swinging organs. Evidently their mode of life in the trees has overcome all tendency toward the quadruped motion in these apes and developed a tendency toward the biped. But none of them have gained the muscular development of the leg known as the calf, nor an adjustment of the joints to the erect attitude, since none but the gibbon walks erect, and it does so only at occasional intervals.

The conclusion to be derived from all this is that the man-ape was in its early days much more truly a biped than are any of the species named. Like them, it had no tendency to revert to the quadruped habit. The shortness of its arms was unsuited to this, while rendering it impossible for the animal to progress in the semi-erect, swinging fashion of the other anthropoid apes. As a result of its bodily formation, it may have begun to walk erect at a very remote date, with a consequent straightening of the joints and muscular development of the legs. When this condition was fully attained, it was practically a man in physical conformation, though mentally still an ape, and with a long development of the brain to pass through before it could reach the human level of mind.

The far-reaching conclusions here reached are all based on one important fact, the shortness of man's arms as compared with the disproportionate length of arm in the anthropoid apes. This, for the reasons given, rendered the adaptation of the man-ape to life in the trees inferior to that of the long-armed apes; while, as has just been said, it unfitted it to walk on the ground either as a quadruped or in the jumping method of its fellow anthropoids. In short, the biped attitude was much the best suited to its organization and the one it was most likely to assume. This once adopted as its habitual posture, efficiency in walking would be gained by practice.

When once this animal became a ground walker, its facility of motion in the trees was in a measure lost. When the feet became accustomed to the flat surface of the ground, they became less capable of grasping the rounded surface of the bough. Fitness to the one situation entailed loss of fitness to the other. The feet of the apes can clasp the bough firmly, by curving around its opposite sloping sides, and to this these animals doubtless owe their bowed legs and their disposition to walk on the outer edge of the foot. This disposition the man-ape lost as its foot fitted itself to the surface of the ground. It was probably retained in a measure by the young, after it had been lost by the mature form, and is still manifested in the position of the foot in the human embryo.

These considerations bring us to an important question: Why did the man-ape gain a length of arm not the best suited to its arboreal habitat? Why, in fact, do changes in physical structure ever take place? How does an animal succeed in passing from one mode of life to another, when during the transition period it is imperfectly adapted to either, and therefore at a seeming disadvantage in the struggle for existence? The study of animal development has given rise to certain difficult problems of this character, some of which have been solved by showing that the supposed disadvantage did not arise, or that it was balanced by some equal advantage. In this way a considerable gap in life conditions has perhaps occasionally been crossed. Small gaps have doubtless been frequently passed over in the same manner.

In the case of the anthropoid apes, we perceive a considerable variation in the length of the arms, from the very long arms of the gibbon to the comparatively short ones of the chimpanzee. These differences are probably the result of some difference in their life habits, and accord with the possibility of a still shorter arm in the man-ape. There is, however, some reason to believe, as we shall show later on, that the arm of this animal was longer and the leg shorter than in man himself, their comparative length perhaps not differing greatly from that of the chimpanzee. Aside from all other considerations, the use of the legs as the sole organs of locomotion could not well fail to produce this result, the legs growing longer and stronger in consequence of the increased duty laid upon them, and the arms growing shorter and weaker through their release from duty in locomotion. The case does not differ in character from those of the dinosauria and the kangaroos, in both of which instances a release of the arms from duty in walking was followed by a considerable decrease in length and strength, while the legs grew proportionally stronger.

If any disadvantage attended the shortening of the arms of the man-ape, to the extent that this may have taken place in the tree, it was probably correlated with some advantage. In the various instances of short-armed animals cited this appears to have been the case, and it was probably so in man's ancestral form. While the hands continued useful in grasping and enabling the animal to maintain its place on the boughs, they may have been gradually diverted to some other service, with the result that the animal found the tree less desirable than before as a place of residence and sought the ground instead. This would be particularly the case if the new duty was one best exercised upon the ground.

Shall we offer a suggestion as to this new use? Such changes are usually the result of some change of habit in the animal, frequently one that has to do with its food. Change of diet or of the mode of obtaining food is the most potent influencing cause of change of habit in animals, and the one that first calls for consideration.

The apes are frugivorous animals, though not exclusively so. Carnivorous tendencies are displayed by many of them. They rob birds' nests of their eggs and young, they capture and devour snakes and other small animals. In zooelogical gardens monkeys are often observed to catch and eat mice. It is evident that many of them might readily become carnivorous to a large extent under suitable conditions. The large apes are usually frugivorous, but some of them eat animal food. This is the case with both the chimpanzee and the gorilla. The latter, while living usually on fruit and often making havoc in the sugar-cane plantations and rice-fields of the natives, also eats birds and their eggs, small mammals and reptiles, and is said to devour large animals when found dead, though it does not attempt to kill them for food. The young gorilla which was kept in captivity at Berlin became quite omnivorous in its diet.

With all this readiness to eat animal food, none of the existing apes are carnivorous to any large extent, but the fact of this inclination makes it not improbable that some of the apes of the past may have been much more so. It is quite within the limits of probability, for instance, that the man-ape at an early date became omnivorous in its diet. Its change in structure may well have been the result of a decided change in diet, such as that from fruit to flesh food. Such a radical change as that from vegetable to animal food would certainly demand a more active employment of the arms as agents in capture. Fruits and nuts wait to be pulled; animals must be caught before they can be eaten. The former is an easy matter to an arboreal animal; the latter might prove a difficult one, especially if large animals were to be captured.

In short, the pursuit and capture of any of the larger animals for prey could not fail to modify to a great degree the use of the arms. Their employment in locomotion would interfere seriously with their utility in this direction. To succeed in capturing nimble prey by an animal with the ape form of hands a considerable freedom of the arms would be necessary, and the feet would have to be mainly, if not wholly, depended upon for motion. The ape has not the sharp claws of the carnivora with which to seize and hold its prey. It must have been obliged to use its palms for this purpose, and this it could not well have done unless they were free in their action.

It is conceivable, indeed, that the man-ape may have run down its prey, or sprung upon it from covert, and seized it with the hands, but there is good reason to believe that this was not its mode of capture. The organization of the ape tribe gives it a characteristic action which is not to be found in any other group of the vast animal kingdom, that of handling and throwing missiles. In this it necessarily stands alone, since no other animal has a grasping palm. The power is one of prime importance, for without it we cannot perceive how man could ever have emerged from the general animal kingdom. The use of missiles is by no means uncommon with the monkeys. We cannot safely accept the story that American monkeys will throw cocoanuts from tree-tops at those who hurl stones at them from below, from the fact that the cocoanut seems too heavy and too firmly fixed to its support for the strength of those small species, but it is not uncommon for them to throw lighter objects. Yet in doing this they usually seem to have no idea of aim, but toss the missile aimlessly into the air. Of the large apes, the orang will break off branches and fling them at its tormentors, or will throw the thick husks of the durian fruit, but with similar lack of aim. The most skilful in this exercise are some species of baboons, which can hurl branches, stones, or hard clods with much dexterity.

It is of interest to find existing apes availing themselves of their grasping power in this manner, since it leads us irresistibly to the conclusion that the man-ape may have done the same thing. The species which use missiles fail to take aim for two reasons, one that they employ them only occasionally, often in imitation of human action, the other that their arms are ill suited to this motion from their constant employment in another duty. In the case of the man-ape we may justly look for a more effective result, since if the arms became relieved from duty in locomotion they were free to gain facility of action in other directions.

If in addition to this the man-ape began to use missiles with a definite purpose in view, that of striking down animal prey, so that the use of such weapons became habitual instead of occasional, it would soon gain some power of aim and a growing strength and skill in the throwing motion. It is quite probable, also, that an early use of weapons was in the form of clubs, which were retained in the grasp to strike down the prey when overtaken. In this case, we may imagine our primitive biped running swiftly after its prey, club in hand, striking at it when within reach; or, if it should prove too swift, hurling the club or a stone through the air with the hope of bringing it down in this manner. Such a flinging action, if now and then successful, would be likely soon to become habitual; while the arm would grow accustomed to this new motion, and attain skill in taking aim. We may reasonably infer, also, that the club would be used for defence as well as for offence, in case the man-ape were in its turn pursued by larger animals. Instead of fleeing to the nearest tree, it might now stand its ground and beat off its enemy.

All must admit the probability, in a large tribe of animals with grasping power in their hands, and in the habit of using missiles occasionally, of one or more species coming to use them habitually. All the anthropoid apes are certainly intelligent enough to do this, if it should prove advantageous to them. Its principal advantage, however, would seem to be to a species that became largely carnivorous and needed to capture running or flying prey.

The habit of using implements is one of supreme importance in animal evolution. To it we owe man as he exists to-day. While animals confined themselves to their natural weapons of teeth and claws, their development must have remained a very slow one and been confined within narrow limits. When they once began to add to their natural powers those of surrounding nature, by the use of artificial weapons, the first step in a new and illimitable range of evolution was taken. From that day to this, man has been occupied in unfolding this method, and has advanced enormously beyond his primal state. A crude and simple use of weapons gave him, in time, supremacy over all the lower animals. An advanced use of weapons and tools has given him, in a measure, supremacy over nature herself, and raised him to a stage almost infinitely beyond that of the animal which trusts solely to teeth and claws.

So far as we know, only one of the innumerable species of animals attained this development; unless, indeed, the various races of men had more than one ape ancestor. For the appearance of man there became necessary, first, the development of an order of animals with power of grasp in their hands; and, second, the development of one or more biped species, with hands freed from duty as walking organs and capable of use in other directions. A third necessity was very probably the exchange of the frugivorous for the carnivorous habit, which would act as a predisposing agency in inducing the animal to desert the tree for the ground, and to employ weapons in the chase. The final result of all this would be an erect, walking, and running animal, with arms and hands quite free from their old duty, except during an occasional return to the tree, and with the necessary straightening of joints and development of supporting muscles.

What has been advanced above is, no doubt, largely a series of assumptions and conjectures, few of which are sustained by known facts. But as the matter stands, no other method of dealing with it can be adopted, since the facts in the case have in great part vanished. What we know positively is that man exists, and that in physical structure he is very closely related to the anthropoid apes. What we have excellent reason to feel assured of is that man has descended from the lower animals, and in all probability from an ape-like ancestor. We know that one or more species of anthropoid apes have become extinct, and can reasonably conjecture that one ancient species became modified into the form of man. We know that human remains have been found that, to some small extent, fill the gap between man and the ape. Correlative evidence exists in the variations in length of limb in the existing anthropoids, their efforts to walk upright, their varied degree of dependence upon the arms for locomotion, and the occasional use of missiles by these and lower forms. To these may be added the carnivorous tastes shown by many members of the ape family, with the indication that more decided carnivorous habits might readily be assumed.

Taking the stand that such a partly carnivorous anthropoid ape, biped in structure, appeared and made the ground its usual place of residence, we find ourselves on the direct trail of man. Long ago as this may have been, and far and difficult as was the journey to be made, the way was thenceforth straight and well-defined. Such an animal, living largely on animal food, and using weapons superior to its natural ones in the capture of prey, was essentially a man, however low may still have been its level of intelligence. Its feet were firmly fixed upon the upward track, and only time and stress of circumstance were needed to carry it upward to the high level of civilized man.

We may, indeed, go further than this. We are in a measure justified in saying what this man-ape was like, this creature which had left its early home in the trees and began to walk upright upon the earth, pursuing the larger animals and capturing them for food. It was probably much smaller than existing man, little if any more than four feet in height and not more than half the weight of man. Its body was covered, though not profusely, with hair, the hair of the head being woolly or frizzly in texture, and the face provided with a beard. The complexion was not jet black, like the typical negro, but of a dull brown hue, the hair being somewhat similar in color. The arms were lank and rather long, the back much curved, the chest flat and narrow, the abdomen protruding, the legs rather short and bowed, the walk a waddling motion, somewhat like that of the gibbon. It had small, deep-set eyes, greatly protruding mouth with gaping lips, huge ears, and in general a very ape-like aspect. Our warrant for this description of man's ancestor must be left for a later portion of our work. We shall only say here that it is based on known fact, not on fancy.



VI

THE DEVELOPMENT OF INTELLIGENCE

The full adoption of the erect attitude gave the ancestor of man an immense motor supremacy over the lower animals, for it completely released his fore limbs from duty as organs of support and set them free for new and superior purposes. In all the animal kingdom below man there exists but a single form that emulates him in this possession of a grasping organ which takes no part in walking or in other modes of locomotion. This is the elephant, whose nose and upper lip have developed into an enormous and highly flexible trunk, with delicate grasping powers. The possession of this organ may have had much to do with the intellectual acumen of the elephant. Yet it is far inferior in its powers to the arm and hand of man; while the form, size, and food of the elephant stand in the way of the progress which might have been made by an animal possessed of such an organ in connection with a better suited bodily structure.

For a period of many millions of years the world of vertebrate life continued quadrupedal, or where a variation from this structure took place the fore limbs remained to a large extent organs of locomotion. Finally a true biped appeared. For a period of equal duration the mental progress of animals was exceedingly slow. Then, with almost startling suddenness, a highly intellectual animal appeared. Thus the coming of man indicated, in two directions, an extraordinary deviation from the ordinary course of animal development. Both physically and mentally evolution seemed to take an enormous leap, instead of proceeding by its usual minute steps, and in the advent of man we have a phenomenon remarkable alike in the development of the body and the mind.