Man And His Ancestor: A Study In EvolutionMorris, Charles
Science
Man And His Ancestor: A Study In Evolution
Morris, Charles
Human beings -- Origin
James Forbes, in his "Oriental Memoirs," relates a striking instance of
this kind. One of a shooting party had killed a female monkey in a
banian tree, and carried it to his tent. Forty or fifty of the tribe
soon gathered around the tent, chattering furiously and threatening an
attack, from which they were only diverted by the display of the
fowling-piece, whose effects they seemed perfectly to understand. But
while the others retreated, the leader of the troop stood his ground,
continuing his threatening chatter. Finding this of no avail, he came to
the door of the tent, moaning sadly, and by his gestures seeming to beg
for the dead body. When it was given, he took it sorrowfully up in his
arms and carried it away to the waiting troop. That hunter never shot a
monkey again.
This deep feeling for the dead is probably not common among monkeys. The
gibbon, for instance, is said to take no notice of the dead. It is,
however, highly sympathetic to injured and sick companions, and this
feeling seems common to all the apes. No human being could show more
tender care of wounded or helpless companions than has often been seen
in members of this affectionate tribe of animals.
Without giving further examples of the intelligence and sympathy of the
apes, we may say that they possess in a marked degree the mental powers
to which man owes so much, viz. observation and imitation. The ape is
the most curious of the lower animals--that is, it possesses the faculty
of observation in an unusual degree. What we call curiosity in the ape
is the basic form of the characteristic which we call attention or
observation in man. Its seeming great activity in the ape is what might
naturally be expected in an observant animal when removed from its
natural habitat to a location where all around it is new and strange.
Man under like circumstances is as curious as the ape, while the latter
in its native trees probably finds little to excite its special
attention. In both man and the ape it needs novelty to excite curiosity.
Again, the ape is imitative in a high degree. This faculty also it does
not share with the lower animals, but does with man, imitation being
one of the methods by which he has attained his supremacy. Observation,
imitation, education, are the three levers in the development of the
human intellect. The first two of these the ape possesses in a marked
degree. It is susceptible also to the last, being very teachable.
Education certainly exists to some extent among the apes in their
natural habitat, perhaps to as great an extent as it did in primitive
man. In the latter case it is doubtful if there was much that could be
called designed education, the young gaining their degree of knowledge by
observing and imitating their elders. The same is certainly the case
among the apes.
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