From lemurs or from some other similar sort of semi-apes developed the true apes—the flat-nosed (platyrhine) apes of the New World and the narrow-nosed (catarhine) apes of the Old World. There is considerable difference between the New World apes and those of the Old World. The differences between the two classes is, in fact, so striking that they are thought by some to have developed independently of each other from distinct species of semi-apes. The apes of the New World have flat noses, and the nostrils are far apart and open in front of the nose, never below. The Old World apes have narrow noses, the nostrils being close together and opening downwards as in man. The tail of (nearly) all New World apes is prehensile, being used regularly as a fifth limb, while among Old World apes the tail is never so used. The Old World apes all have the same number and kinds of teeth as man has, while the New World apes (excepting the Brazilian marmosets) have an additional premolar in each half-jaw, making thirty-six in all. The catarhine apes are, therefore, structurally much nearer to man than their platyrhine cousins. All tailed apes probably sprang originally from a single stirp of semi-apes, and spread over the earth at a time when the eastern and western land masses of the southern hemisphere were connected with each other. The earliest remains of apes appear in the Miocene Age.
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.
The man-like apes are the nearest living relatives of the human races. It is not probable that man has been derived directly from any of the existing races of man-like apes. For no one of them in all particulars of its structure stands closer to him than the rest. The orang approaches closest to man in the formation of the brain, the chimpanzee in the shape of the spine and in certain characteristics of the skull, the gorilla in the development of the feet and in size, and the gibbon in the formation of the throat and teeth. The earliest human races probably sprang from man-like races of apes now extinct, who lived in southern Asia or in Africa during the Pliocene Age (possibly as early as the Miocene), and who combined in their structures the various man-like characters possessed by existing anthropoids.
The earliest races of men were speechless—the ape-like ‘Alali’—beings, living wholly upon the ground and walking upon their hind-limbs, but without more than the mere rudiments of language. The vertical position led to a much greater development of the posterior parts, especially of the muscles of the back and the calves of the leg. The great toe, which in the ape is opposable, lost its opposability, or all except traces of it, after the abandonment of arboreal life. It must have been a sight fit to stir the soul of the most leathern, these children of the night, with low brows, stooping gait, and ape-like faces, armed with rude clubs, clothed in natural hair, and wandering about in droves without law, fire, or understanding, hiding in thickets and in the holes of the earth, feeding on roots and fruits, and contending doubtfully with the species around them for food and existence.
From the ‘Alali’—the speechless ape-men—we may imagine the true men to have evolved—talking men, men with erect posture and mature brain and larynx, the woolly-haired ulotrichi and the straight-haired lissotrichi. There are four existing species of woolly-haired men: the Papuans of New Guinea and Melanesia, and the Hottentots, Caffres, and Negroes of southern, equatorial, and north central Africa respectively. They all have long heads, slanting teeth, very dark skin, and black, bushy hair, each individual hair in cross-section being flat or oval in shape. In the straight-haired races the skin is much fairer than in the woolly-haired races, being seldom darker than brown, and each individual hair in cross-section is round like the cross-section of a cylinder. The principal species of straight-haired men are the sea-roving Malays of the East Indies and the Pacific, the round-faced Mongols of eastern and northern Asia, the aboriginal Americans of the western hemisphere, and the incomparable Aryans, including the ancient Greeks and Romans and the modern peoples of India, Persia, and Europe.
Man is to-day the pre-eminent animal of the planet. The successive ascendancies of the Worm, the Mollusk, the Crustacean, the Fish, the Reptile, and the Mammal, are followed triumphantly by the ascendancy of the Children of the Ape.
A large part of the life of the earth has remained steadfastly where it was cradled, beneath the waves. But more restless portions have left the sea and crept forth upon the land, or swarmed into the air. One migration, the most numerous, is represented by the insects. Another, the most enterprising, was the amphibian. After ages of evolution the amphibian branch divided. One branch acquired wings and sailed off into the air. The other divided and subdivided. One of these subdivisions entered the forests, climbed and clambered among the trees, acquired perpendicularity and hands, descended and walked upon the soil, invented agriculture, built cities and states, and imagined itself immortal. Human society is but the van—the hither terminus—of an evolutional process which had its beginning away back in the protoplasm of primeval waters. There is not a form that creeps beneath the sea but can claim kinship with the eagle. The philosopher is the remote posterity of the meek and lowly amoeba.
[1.] See ‘Genealogy of Animals,’ at the end of the chapter.
[2.] See table of geological ages, at the end of the previous chapter.
