The Universal KinshipMoore, J. Howard (John Howard)
Philosophy
The Universal Kinship
Moore, J. Howard (John Howard)
Evolution; Human beings; Sociology
From lemurs or from some other similar sort of semi-apes developed
the true apes—the flat-nosed (platyrhine) apes of the New World
and the narrow-nosed (catarhine) apes of the Old World. There is
considerable difference between the New World apes and those of the
Old World. The differences between the two classes is, in fact, so
striking that they are thought by some to have developed
independently of each other from distinct species of semi-apes. The
apes of the New World have flat noses, and the nostrils are far
apart and open in front of the nose, never below. The Old World apes
have narrow noses, the nostrils being close together and opening
downwards as in man. The tail of (nearly) all New World apes is
prehensile, being used regularly as a fifth limb, while among Old
World apes the tail is never so used. The Old World apes all have
the same number and kinds of teeth as man has, while the New World
apes (excepting the Brazilian marmosets) have an additional premolar
in each half-jaw, making thirty-six in all. The catarhine apes are,
therefore, structurally much nearer to man than their platyrhine
cousins. All tailed apes probably sprang originally from a single
stirp of semi-apes, and spread over the earth at a time when the
eastern and western land masses of the southern hemisphere were
connected with each other. The earliest remains of apes appear in
the Miocene Age.
From the Old World tailed apes were developed the tailless,
man-like, or anthropoid apes—the gorillas and chimpanzees of
Africa, and the orangs and gibbons of Asia and the East Indies. The
anthropoids arose from the tailed apes by the loss of the tail, the
thinning of the hairy covering, the enlargement of the fore-brain,
and by structural adaptations to a more nearly vertical position. No
remains of anthropoids are found earlier than the Pliocene Age.
The man-like apes are the nearest living relatives of the human
races. It is not probable that man has been derived directly from
any of the existing races of man-like apes. For no one of them in
all particulars of its structure stands closer to him than the rest.
The orang approaches closest to man in the formation of the brain,
the chimpanzee in the shape of the spine and in certain
characteristics of the skull, the gorilla in the development of the
feet and in size, and the gibbon in the formation of the throat and
teeth. The earliest human races probably sprang from man-like races
of apes now extinct, who lived in southern Asia or in Africa during
the Pliocene Age (possibly as early as the Miocene), and who
combined in their structures the various man-like characters
possessed by existing anthropoids.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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