Man's Place in Nature, and Other EssaysHuxley, Thomas Henry
Science
Man's Place in Nature, and Other Essays
Huxley, Thomas Henry
Apes; Ethnology; Human beings -- Origin; Indo-Europeans
When the gravest errors respecting points so easily settled as this
question respecting the posterior lobes can be authoritatively
propounded, it is no wonder that matters of observation, of no very
complex character, but still requiring a certain amount of care, should
have fared worse. Any one who cannot see the posterior lobe in an ape's
brain is not likely to give a very valuable opinion respecting the
posterior cornu or the hippocampus minor. If a man cannot see a church,
it is preposterous to take his opinion about its altar-piece or painted
window--so that I do not feel bound to enter upon any discussion of
these points, but content myself with assuring the reader that the
posterior cornu and the hippocampus minor, have now been seen--usually,
at least as well developed as in man, and often better--not only in the
Chimpanzee, the Orang, and the Gibbon, but in all the genera of the old
world baboons and monkeys, and in most of the new world forms, including
the Marmosets.[30]
In fact, all the abundant and trustworthy evidence (consisting of the
results of careful investigations directed to the determination of these
very questions, by skilled anatomists) which we now possess, leads to
the conviction that, so far from the posterior lobe, the posterior
cornu, and the hippocampus minor, being structures peculiar to and
characteristic of man, as they have been over and over again asserted to
be, even after the publication of the clearest demonstration of the
reverse, it is precisely these structures which are the most marked
cerebral characters common to man with the apes. They are among the most
distinctly Simian peculiarities which the human organism exhibits.
As to the convolutions, the brains of the apes exhibit every stage of
progress, from the almost smooth brain of the Marmoset, to the Orang and
the Chimpanzee, which fall but little below Man. And it is most
remarkable that, as soon as all the principal sulci appear, the pattern
according to which they are arranged is identical with that of the
corresponding sulci of man. The surface of the brain of a monkey
exhibits a sort of skeleton map of man's, and in the man-like Apes the
details become more and more filled in, until it is only in minor
characters, such as the greater excavation of the anterior lobes, the
constant presence of fissures usually absent in man, and the different
disposition and proportions of some convolutions, that the
Chimpanzee's or the Orang's brain can be structurally distinguished from
Man's.
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