Page:Evolution of Life (Henry Cadwalader Chapman, 1873).djvu/235

Rh his address on the primitive form of the skull, translated in the Anthropological Review, we find "it follows further that we must place the primitive man lower in the scale than the rudest savage. The Neanderthal skull and the La Naulette jaw present characters of a low organization such as we do not find in any living race."

Want of space prevents us from dwelling further on this subject. Suffice it to say that what is known of the remains of primitive man confirms the view of his animal descent. From the transitory stages through which man passes in his development being more or less permanently retained in the lower animals, from his organization exhibiting in a rudimentary condition structures which are fully developed in the lower animals, from abnormal characters such as certain muscles appearing in man which are usually only present in monkeys, we concluded in our chapter on Embryology that man had descended from some animal form. That this animal form, or the remote ancestor of man, was an ape, we have tried to show in this chapter by comparing the higher apes with the barbarous and the civilized races of men, the result of this comparison being that the barbarous races are more nearly allied to the higher apes than to the civilized man.

While accepting the theory that man has descended from an ape, it is impossible, however, to designate any particular ape as his remote ancestor. The apes that most resemble man are the Gorilla, Chimpanzee, Orang, and Gibbon, hence called Anthropoid Apes. Their features are very like those of the lower human races. (See plates of faces of men and monkeys.) No evolutionist, however, so far as we are aware, supposes man to have descended from one of these apes. For while each of these apes has something in common with man, each differs from him very considerably. Thus, the Gibbon resembles man in the thorax; the Orang, in the brain; the Chimpanzee, in the