Joseph McCabe

“ In a word, the very fact of a change from the trees to the ground suggests a line of brain-development which may plausibly be conceived, in the course of a million years, to evolve an Ape-Man out of a man-like ape. And we are not introducing any imaginary factor in this view of human origins.
The problem of the evolution of man is often approached in a frame of mind not far removed from that of the educated, but inexpert, European who stands before the lowly figure of the chimpanzee, and wonders by what miracle the gulf between it and himself was bridged. ”

“ The first appearance of man in the chronicle of terrestrial life is a matter of great importance and interest. Even the least scientific of readers stands, so to say, on tiptoe to catch a first glimpse of the earliest known representative of our race, and half a century of discussion of evolution has engendered a very wide interest in the early history of man. ”

“ The very close analogy of structure between man and the ape at once suggests that they had a common ancestor. There are cases in which two widely removed animals may develop a similar organ independently, but there is assuredly no possibility of their being alike in all organs, unless by common inheritance. Yet the essential identity of structure in man and the ape is only confirmed by every advance of science, and would of itself prove the common parentage. ”

“ Some imagine that a sudden and mysterious rise in intelligence lifted the progenitor of man above its fellows. The facts very quickly dispel this illusion. We may at least assume that the ancestor of man was on a level with the anthropoid ape in the Miocene period, and we know from their skulls that the apes were as advanced then as they are now. ”

“ It is hardly necessary to say that science does not regard man as a descendant of the known anthropoid apes, or these as descended from the monkeys. They are successive types or phases of development, diverging early from each other. Just as the succeeding horse-types of the record are not necessarily related to each other in a direct line, yet illustrate the evolution of a type which culminates in the horse, so the spreading and branching members of the Primate group illustrate the evolution of a type of organism which culminates in man. ”

“ In other words, man occupied about a million years in travelling from the level of the chimpanzee to a level below that of the crudest savage ever discovered. If we set aside the Java man, as a possible survivor of an earlier phase, we should still have to say that, much more than a million years after his departure from the chimpanzee level, man had merely advanced far enough to chip stone implements; because we find no other trace whatever of intelligence than this until near the close of the Palaeolithic period. If there is any mystery, it is in the slowness of man's development. ”

“ The vestigial structures must be interpreted as we interpret the buttons on the back of a man's coat. They are useless reminiscences of an age in which they were useful. When their witness to the past is supported by so many converging lines of evidence it becomes irresistible. ”

“ We seem to have the most plausible explanation of the divergence of man from his anthropoid cousins in the fact that he left the trees of his and their ancestors. This theory has the advantage of being a fact—for the Ape-Man race of Java has already left the trees—and providing a strong ground for brain-advance. A dozen reasons might be imagined for his quitting the trees—migration, for instance, to a region in which food was more abundant, and carnivores less formidable, on the ground-level—but we will be content with the fact that he did. ”

“ But, though there is no such thing as an absolute standard by which we may judge the "higher" or "lower" status of animals or plants, the extraordinary power which man has by his brain development attained over both animate and inanimate nature fully justifies the phrase. The Primate order is, therefore, of supreme interest as the family that gave birth to man, and it is important to discover the agencies which impelled some primitive member of it to enter upon the path which led to this summit of organic nature. ”

“ A much more interesting fact, but one less easy to interpret, is that the human male has, like the male ape, organs for suckling the young. That there are real milk-glands, usually vestigial, underneath the teats in the breast of the boy or the man is proved by the many known cases in which men have suckled the young. Several friends of the present writer have seen this done in India and Ceylon by male "wet-nurses." As there is no tribe of men or species of ape in which the male suckles the young normally, we seem to be thrown back once more upon an earlier ancestor. ”

“ The brain is a useful organ like any other, and it is easy to conceive that the circumstances of one group may select it just as the environment of another group may lead to the selection of speed, weapons, or colouring. In fact, as we saw, there was so great and general an evolution of brain in the Tertiary Era that our modern mammals quite commonly have many times the brain of their Tertiary ancestors. Can we suggest any reasons why brain should be especially developed in the apes, and more particularly still in the ancestors of man?
The Primate group generally is a race of tree-climbers. ”

“ The early story of mankind is gathered, not so much from the few fragments of human remains we have, but from the stone implements which were shaped by his primitive intelligence and remain, almost imperishable, in the soil over which he wandered. The more primitive man was, the more ambiguous would be the traces of his shaping of these stone implements, and the earliest specimens are bound to be a matter of controversy. ”

“ On the one hand, the anthropoid apes were highly developed by the Miocene period, and it would be almost incredible that the future human stock should linger hundreds of thousands of years behind them. On the other hand, when we find the first traces of man in the Pleistocene, this development has already proceeded so far that its earlier phase evidently goes back into the Tertiary. Let us pass beyond the Tertiary Era for a moment, and examine the earliest and most primitive remains we have of human or semi-human beings. ”

“ Let us further recollect that it is a common occurrence in the calendar of life for a particular organ to be especially developed in one member of a particular group more than in the others. The trunk of the elephant, the neck of the giraffe, the limbs of the horse or deer, the canines of the satire-toothed tiger, the wings of the bat, the colouring of the tiger, the horns of the deer, are so many examples in the mammal world alone. ”

“ Hence we need not be puzzled by the fact that the lemurs have remained at one mental level, the monkeys at another, and the apes at a third. It is the common experience of life; and it is especially clear among the various races of men. A group becomes fitted to its environment, and, as long as its surroundings do not change, it does not advance. A related group, in a different environment, receives a particular stimulation, and advances. If, moreover, a group remains unstimulated for ages, it may become so rigid in its type that it loses the capacity to advance. ”

“ It is sometimes suggested that social life was the great advantage which led to the superior development of mind in man. But such evidence as there is would lead us to suppose that primitive man was solitary, not social. The anthropoid apes are not social, but live in families, and are very unprogressive. On the other hand, the earliest remains of prehistoric man give no indication of social life. ”

“ The hair on the body is a vestigial organ, of actual use to no race of men, an evident relic of the thick warm coat of an earlier ancestor. It in turn recalls the dwellers in the primeval forest. In most cases—not all, because the wearing of clothes for ages has modified this feature—it will be found that the hairs on the arm tend upward from the wrist to the elbow, and downward from the shoulder to the elbow. This very peculiar feature becomes intelligible when we find that some of the apes also have it, and that it has a certain use in their case. ”

“ In any case the male breasts are vestigial organs. Another peculiarity of the mammary system is that sometimes three, four, or five pairs of breasts appear in a woman (and several have been known even in a man) . This is, apparently, an occasional reminiscence of an early mammal ancestor which had large litters of young and several pairs of breasts.
But there are features of the human body which recall an ancestor even earlier than the quadruped. The most conspicuous of these is the little fleshy pad at the inner corner of each eye. It is a common feature in mammals, and is always useless. ”

“ We have reserved for a closer inquiry that order of the placental mammals to which we ourselves belong, and on which zoologists have bestowed the very proper and distinguishing name of the Primates. Since the days of Darwin there has been some tendency to resent the term "lower animals," which man applies to his poorer relations. ”

“ Hence in turning the fore foot into a hand, for climbing and grasping purposes, the primitive Primate entered upon the path of brain-development. Even the earliest Primates show large brains in comparison with the small brains of their contemporaries.
It is a familiar fact in the animal world that when a certain group enters upon a particular path of evolution, some members of the group advance only a little way along it, some go farther, and some outstrip all the others. The development of social life among the bees will illustrate this. ”

“ Now we know that it is similarly useless in all tribes of men, and must therefore come from a pre-human ancestor. It is also vestigial in the higher apes, and it is only when we descend to the lower monkeys and femurs that we see it approaching its primitive useful form. One may almost say that it is a reminiscence of the far-off period when, probably in the early Tertiary, the ancestors of the Primates took to the trees. The animals living on the plain needed acute senses to detect the approach of their prey or their enemies ”

“ A more curious reminiscence is seen in the fact that the very young infant, flabby and powerless as it is in most of its muscles, is so strong in the muscles of the hand and arm that it can hang on to a stick by its hands, and sustain the whole weight of its body, for several minutes. Finally, our vestigial tail—for we have a tail comparable to that of the higher apes—must be mentioned. In embryonic development the tail is much longer than the legs, and some children are born with a real tail, which they move as the puppy does, according to their emotional condition. ”

“ When the experiments were multiplied, it was found that the amount of destructive action exercised by one specimen of blood upon another depended on the nearness or remoteness of relationship between the animals. If the two are closely related, there is no disturbance when their blood is mixed; when they are not closely related, the serum of one destroys the cells of the other, and the intensity of the action is in proportion to their remoteness from each other. ”

“ The Primate is, except in a few robust cases, a particularly defenceless animal. When its earliest ancestors came in contact with fruit and nut-bearing trees, they developed climbing power and other means of defence and offense were sacrificed. Keenness of scent and range of hearing would now be of less moment, but sight would be stimulated, especially when soft-footed climbing carnivores came on the scene. There is, however, a much deeper significance in the adoption of climbing, and we must borrow a page from the modern physiology of the brain to understand it. ”

“ If they do not, we have remains of two or three individuals of the same intermediate species. Nor does it matter whether or no this early race is a direct ancestor of the later races of men, or an extinct offshoot from the advancing human stock. It is, in either case, an illustration of the intermediate phase between the ape and man The more important tasks are to trace the relationship of this early human stock to the apes, and to discover the causes of its superior evolution. ”

“ We might take a very large number of parts of the actual human body, and discover that they are similar historical or archaeological monuments surviving in a modern system, but we have space only for a few of the more conspicuous. ”

“ The particular relationship of the various families, living and dead, will need careful study.
That there is a general blood-relationship, and that man is much more closely related to the anthropoid apes than to any of the lower Primates, is no longer a matter of controversy. ”

“ The human ear has the appearance of being the shrunken relic of such an organ, and, when we remove the skin, and find seven generally useless muscles attached to it, obviously intended to pull the shell in all directions (as in the horse) , there can be no doubt that the external ear is a discarded organ, a useless legacy from an earlier ancestor. ”

“ All that we need further suppose is—and it is one of the commonest episodes in terrestrial life—that one branch of the Miocene anthropoids, which were spread over a large part of the earth, received some stimulus to change which its cousins did not experience. ”