Man And His Ancestor: A Study In EvolutionMorris, Charles
Science
Man And His Ancestor: A Study In Evolution
Morris, Charles
Human beings -- Origin
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.
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