Diversions of a NaturalistLankester, E. Ray (Edwin Ray), Sir
History
Diversions of a Naturalist
Lankester, E. Ray (Edwin Ray), Sir
Natural history
"prognathous" jaws than among Europeans.
A definite habit of the human infant, that of "crying"--the peculiar
spasmodic howling of very young children--seems to be unknown in
any of the apes. I do not know what ingenious reason may have been
assigned for this difference. Apes laugh under the same circumstances
as do men, but with less production of sound than is the case with
man and the hyena. Man was, far back in his monkey-days, a social
and companion-loving animal, and the fact that his laughing and his
weeping are accompanied by noise is due to the desire for attention
and sympathy from his friends. A great difference between man and apes
is the greater power of expression of various feelings or emotions by
the face, and also the greater variety and significance in man of the
gestures both of the upper and the lower limbs. These again are methods
of seeking for and gaining sympathy and co-operation. Though not all
men and not all races in an equal degree have mobility and constantly
varying expression in the face, yet it is the fact that the man-like
apes which have been studied in life (the chimpanzee and orang) have
even less variety and range of expression than the most unintelligent
savages. Man seems to have developed in an ever-increasing degree
the habit of watching and interpreting the face and of giving by it
expression to his emotions and states of mind, thus establishing
a ready means of producing common feeling and interest in a group
of associated individuals. This seems to have led to a special
appreciation of the features of the face, and so to the exercise of
sexual selection, resulting in what we call "a standard of beauty" in
regard to both shape and expression. It is quite possible that the
reduction of the threatening canine teeth and projecting jaw may have
been furthered by sexual selection when once a bite had become less
effective than a blow with a sharp flint, and when persuasive sounds
and gestures gained more adherents than the display of tusks by a snarl.
What I have written in this and the preceding chapters, on the
differences and likenesses between apes and man and the probable steps
of the transition from ape to man, may assist the reader to form a
judgment as to the importance of such remains of extinct races of men
as the skeleton of the Sainte Chapelle, the Heidelberg jaw, and the
Piltdown jaw and cranium lately dug up in Sussex, in helping us to
further knowledge of those steps. It should be definitely noted that
we have not yet found any extinct animals, definitely to be classed
as apes, which come nearer to man than the chimpanzee and gorilla,
although we are led to infer that such creatures existed, and that
their fossil remains will probably some day be discovered. On the other
hand, we have in the jaw and skull recently discovered in the gravel of
Piltdown, in Sussex, evidence of a man-like creature which was in most
important features more ape-like than any fossil man yet discovered.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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