Examining the structure of man more closely, we find this strong
suggestion of relationship greatly confirmed. It is now well known that
the human body contains a number of vestigial "organs"--organs of no
actual use, and only intelligible as vestiges of organs that were once
useful. Whatever view we take of the origin of man, each organ in
his frame must have a meaning; and, as these organs are vestigial and
useless even in the lowest tribes of men, who represent primitive man,
they must be vestiges of organs that were of use in a remote pre-human
ancestor. The one fact that the ape has the same vestigial organs as man
would, on a scientific standard of evidence, prove the common descent of
the two. But these interesting organs themselves point back far earlier
than a mixed ape-human ancestor in many cases.
The shell of cartilage which covers the entrance to the ear--the gristly
appendage which is popularly called the ear--is one of the clearest and
most easily recognised of these organs. The "ear" of a horse or a cat is
an upright mobile shell for catching the waves of sound. The human ear
has the appearance of being the shrunken relic of such an organ, and,
when we remove the skin, and find seven generally useless muscles
attached to it, obviously intended to pull the shell in all directions
(as in the horse), there can be no doubt that the external ear is a
discarded organ, a useless legacy from an earlier ancestor. In cases
where it has been cut off it was found that the sense of hearing was
scarcely, if at all, affected. Now we know that it is similarly useless
in all tribes of men, and must therefore come from a pre-human ancestor.
It is also vestigial in the higher apes, and it is only when we descend
to the lower monkeys and femurs that we see it approaching its primitive
useful form. One may almost say that it is a reminiscence of the far-off
period when, probably in the early Tertiary, the ancestors of the
Primates took to the trees. The animals living on the plain needed
acute senses to detect the approach of their prey or their enemies;
the tree-dweller found less demand on his sense of hearing, the
"speaking-trumpet" was discarded, and the development of the internal
ear proceeded on the higher line of the perception of musical sounds.
We might take a very large number of parts of the actual human body, and
discover that they are similar historical or archaeological monuments
surviving in a modern system, but we have space only for a few of the
more conspicuous.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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