The Doctrine of Evolution: Its Basis and Its ScopeCrampton, Henry Edward
Science
The Doctrine of Evolution: Its Basis and Its Scope
Crampton, Henry Edward
Evolution
Moreover, the human body is a veritable museum of rare and interesting
relics of antiquity. This characterization is justified by those vestigial
and rudimentary structures that represent organs of value to human
relatives among the lower animals, though they play a less active part at
the present time in human economy. There is scarcely a single system that
does not exhibit many or fewer of these rudimentary structures, but only a
few need be specified. As compared with those of the apes, the human
wisdom teeth are degenerate; in the gorilla they are cut at the same time
as the other molars; and in the lower human races they come through the
gums in early youth, while in the more advanced Caucasic races they are
cut only in later life or not at all. The reduced vermiform appendix of
man, a source of much ill health, is another structure that is a
counterpart of a relatively larger and useful part of the digestive tract
in the lower primates and other animals. Furthermore, the human tail is a
reality, not a fiction. Now and then an individual is born with a tail
that may reach a length in later life of eight or ten inches; such
structures are, of course, abnormal. But in every normal human being there
is a series of little bones at the lower end of the vertebral column,
constituting the coccyx, and this is just where the abbreviated tail of
the ape and the still longer prehensile tail of the monkey arises from the
body. Unless the coccyx is a tail, what can it be? And if it does not
represent a reduced counterpart of the tails of other mammals, what does
it represent?
Many of the vestigial structures of man appear more clearly in infancy and
in embryonic development. The human embryo possesses a complete coat of
hair, called the lanugo, which usually disappears before birth. This hair
cannot be regarded as any less significant than the coat of hair which the
infant whale possesses; it means a completely haired ancestor. The
elements of this coat are arranged precisely as they are in the apes; upon
the arm, for example, they point from shoulder to elbow and from wrist to
elbow. Unless the anterior limb of the hairy human ancestor was held in
the position of the climbing ape's, this arrangement would be
disadvantageous, for the hair as a rain-shedding thatch would be effective
only upon the upper arm, while the hairs upon the forearm would catch the
rain. In a word, this vestigial coat indicates in the clearest possible
manner that the ancestor of the human species was not only hairy, but also
arboreal in its mode of life.
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