Anthropoid ape

“ This memoir of forty pages contains a full description, with illustrations, of part of a skull, a molar tooth, and a femur, found in the later Tertiary strata of Java, and pertaining to a large anthropoid ape, which is believed to represent a new genus and family intermediate between the Simiidæ and Hominidæ. This would make it a veritable "missing link" between the higher apes and man, the discovery of which has so long been confidently predicted by many anthropologists. ”

“ The other anthropoid apes, while favored by the formation of their hands, lacked that freedom of the arms to which man mainly owes his success. No other animal has ever appeared with arms freed from duty in locomotion and at the same time endued with the power of grasping, and these are the features of organization to which the evolution of the human intellect was wholly due in its first stages. The man-ape was not able to contend successfully with the larger animals by aid of its natural weapons. ”

“ And as similar homologies connect man with all members of the group of mammals, similar blood-relationship must exist. And homologies, less close but equally unmistakable, connect all backboned animals one with another; and the lowest backboned types are closely joined to worm-like forms not usually classed as vertebrates.
It is perfectly true that, with the higher or anthropoid apes, the relations with man are extremely intimate. But man is not simply “a developed ape.” Apes and men have diverged from the same primitive stock, apelike, manlike, but not exactly the one or the other. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The faculty of learning by imitation comes out in the apes in an almost human way. The anthropoid ape Mafuka, kept lately in the Zoological Gardens at Dresden, saw how the door of her cage was unlocked, and not only did it herself, but even stole the key and hid it under her arm for future use ”

“ Modern man thus could not have been developed from any of the living species of the Anthropoid Apes, but he might have had a common origin in the physical, chemical, and vital forces that produced the apes. One line of specialization made the ape, another line made man. Subsequently the separation of man into the various races and species came about by the survival of some races for a time, and then to be superseded by a branch of the same race which differentiated in a period of development before high specialization had taken place. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Besides the myths and legends in which the face of an ape now and then appears—fables, the fundamental idea of which carried out by skillful and careful minds assumes a scientific value—we meet, among the more ancient peoples who made the anthropoid apes the subjects of scientific disputes or invested them with religious or ritual interest, far more important expressions of a supposed relationship of those creatures with man. ”

“ Two or three other fossil remains, possibly of anthropoid apes of smaller size, have been found, and Europe seems to have been well supplied with apes of a considerable degree of development at a remote geological period. Among those may have been the form we have designated the man-ape, the ancestor of the human race, though no fossil relic attributable to such a species has been recognized.
Coming down to a much lower period, we begin to find traces of man, first in his rudely chipped and later in his polished stone weapons and tools. ”

“ What is true of individuals is also true of classes. The anthropoid apes and the negroes are much higher in physical characteristics, with potential mental results, before puberty than after. The infant ape, as Havelock Ellis [63] points out, is very much nearer to man than the adult ape. “The infant ape is higher in the line of evolution than the adult, and the female ape, by approximating to the infant type, is somewhat higher than the male. Man, in carrying on the line of evolution, started not from some adult male simian, but from the infant ape and, in a less degree, from the female ape. ”

“ The distance which separates the man of Spy from the modern anthropoid ape is undoubtedly enormous; but we must be permitted to point out that if the man of the Quaternary age is the stock whence existing races have sprung, he has travelled a very great way. From the data now obtained, it is permissible to believe that we shall be able to pursue the ancestral type of man and the anthropoid apes still further, perhaps as far as the Eocene and even beyond. ”

“ One band of explorers is engaged in seeking on the plains of South America for recent remains and possible survivors of the giant ground-sloths. Another expedition is engaged, in the island of Java, in an even more interesting quest. Great as is the difference between even the lowest human intelligence and the mind of the man-like apes, the likeness both in form and action of the latter to man has never failed to suggest that there may have existed, or may even still exist, a higher anthropoid ape nearer to the human being than those now known. ”

“ And such a comparison is, above all, impossible in the case of anthropoids, which display no hostility toward men or other animals unless they are first attacked. In this respect the anthropoid ape stands upon a higher plane than many men. ”

“ From the Old World tailed apes were developed the tailless, man-like, or anthropoid apes—the gorillas and chimpanzees of Africa, and the orangs and gibbons of Asia and the East Indies. The anthropoids arose from the tailed apes by the loss of the tail, the thinning of the hairy covering, the enlargement of the fore-brain, and by structural adaptations to a more nearly vertical position. No remains of anthropoids are found earlier than the Pliocene Age. ”

“ Lastly, the apes are all hairy animals, like the majority of other mammals, man alone having a smooth and almost naked skin. These numerous and striking differences, even more than those of the skeleton and internal anatomy, point to an enormously remote epoch when the race that was ultimately to develop into man diverged from that other stock which continued the animal type and ultimately produced the existing varieties of anthropoid apes. ”

“ By the anthropoid apes we understand those which in their structure most resemble man, but are externally distinguished from him by the very prominent canine teeth, the relatively long arms and short legs, the structure of the hand, the ischial callosities present in some species, and the hairy covering of the body. They inhabit the tropical countries of Asia and Africa (the former being richer in species) , and they are divided into three families, of which one is confined to Africa. Each of these families embraces only a few species, but probably we do not know nearly all of them as yet. ”

“ These early remains, some of which are true fossils, resemble much more closely the corresponding parts of the highest Old World apes, than do the latter our Tertiary Primates, or even the recent American monkeys. Various living and fossil forms of Old World Primates fill up essentially the latter gap. The lesser gap between the primitive man of America and the Anthropoid apes is partially closed by still lower forms of men, and doubtless also by higher apes, now extinct. ”

“ If they be artificial, then I would suggest that they were made by one of the higher apes then living in France rather than by man. As the evidence stands at present, we have no satisfactory proof either of the existence of man in the Miocene or of any creature nearer akin to him than the anthropomorphous apes. These views agree with those of Professor Gaudry, who suggests that the chipped flints and the cut rib may have been the work of the Dryopithecus, or the great anthropoid ape, then living in France. ”

“ The details of anatomy which show the kinship between man and the apes are numerous and astonishing. All the facts brought to light during the last forty years have supported this truth, and no single fact has been brought against it. Quite lately it has been shown that there are remarkable characters in the blood, such that, though by certain tests the fluid part of human blood can be readily distinguished from that of any other creature, the anthropoid apes, and they alone, furnish an exception to this rule. ”

“ But, on the contrary, if such creatures were obliged to contend against powerful enemies, and to feed on flesh, all analogy would lead us to believe that they would become in their structures more like carnivorous beasts than men. On the other hand, the anthropoid apes, in the circumstances in which we find them, are not only as unprogressive as other animals, but little fitted to extend their range, and less gifted with the power of adapting [368] themselves to new conditions than many other mammals less resembling man in external form. ”

“ Apatite supplies to soils almost all the phosphorus available for plants in a state of nature.
Ape, a common name of a number of quadrumanous animals inhabiting the Old World (Asia and the Asiatic Islands, and Africa) , and including a variety of species. The word ape was formerly applied indiscriminately to all quadrumanous mammals; but it is now limited to the anthropoid or man-like monkeys. The family includes the chimpanzee, gorilla, orang-outang, &c., and has been divided into three genera, Troglodўtes, Simia, and Hylobătes. See Chimpanzee, Gibbon, Gorilla, Monkey, Orang, &c. ”

“ To-day, since the old interpretation of the direct descent from species to species has been abandoned in the light of modern theories of biological evolution, we can no longer speak of atavistic revivals. It is true that the anthropoid apes, as may be seen in Fig. 13, have extremely long forelimbs, and that man is characterised by the shortness of his arms, free to perform work and obedient instruments of his brain. ”

“ The evidence we now possess of the exact nature of the resemblance of man to the various species of anthropoid apes, shows us that he has little special affinity for any one rather than another species, while he differs from them all in several important characters in which they agree with each other. ”

“ But this objection is hardly valid, because existing anthropoid apes are wholly dependent on a perennial supply of easily-accessible fruits, which is only found near the equator, while not only had the south of Europe an almost tropical climate in Miocene times, but we must suppose even the earliest ancestors of man to have been terrestrial and omnivorous, since it must have taken ages of slow modification to have produced the perfectly erect form, the short arms, and the wholly non-prehensile foot, which so strongly differentiate man from the apes. ”

“ I am thinking, of course, of the great man-like or anthropoid apes, in whose uncouth, satyr-like forms, and grotesque physiognomies, we no doubt see, if not actual copies of what our remote ancestors were, yet something very similar to what they must have been. ”

“ Their walking is as awkward as their climbing is excellent. Other anthropoid apes are able to traverse a considerable distance in an upright position—that is, on their feet alone, without special difficulty, though when in haste they always fall on all-fours, resting on the inturned knuckles of the fingers and the outer edges of the feet, and throwing the body laboriously and clumsily forward between the extended arms. But the long-armed apes move in an upright position only in cases of extreme necessity, and then they hop rather than walk. ”

“ 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 ”

“ Together with man and the baboons, the anthropoid apes form the group known to science as Catarhini, those, that is, possessing a narrow nasal septum, and are thus easily distinguishable from the flat-nosed monkeys or Platyrhini. The anthropoid apes are arboreal and confined to the Old World. ”

“ Thus among the anthropoids the orang is perhaps most similar to man in cerebral structure, the chimpanzee in form of skull, the gorilla in feet and hands. No evolutionist would claim that any existing ape represents the ancestor of man. The anthropoids represent very probably the culmination of at least three distinct lines of development. But we must remember that in early tertiary times apes occurred all over Europe, and probably Asia, many degrees farther north than now. ”