Excerpts from Chapter VII “SUB-MEN AND MEN”
By H. G. Wells
[from The Outline of History (vol. I, 4th ed., 1924)]
The origin of man is still very obscure. It is commonly asserted that he is “descended” from some man-like ape such as the chimpanzee, the orang-utang, or the gorilla, but that of course is as reasonable as saying that I am “descended” from some Hottentot or Esquimaux as young or younger than myself. Others, alive to this objection, say that man is descended from the common ancestor of the chimpanzee, the orang-utang, and the gorilla. Some “anthropologists” have even indulged in a speculation whether mankind may not have a double or treble origin . . . These are very fanciful ideas, to be mentioned only to be dismissed. It was formerly assumed that the human ancestor was “probably arboreal,” [i.e., tree dwelling] but the current idea among those who are qualified to form an opinion seems to be that he was a“ground ape,” and that the existing apes have developed in the arboreal direction.
We give the prevailing opinion. It is well to bear in mind that the animal ancestry of man is still passionately denied by many able and learned people. And it is only fair to them to admit that none of the sub-human species we shall proceed to describe is believed by scientific men to be the direct ancestor of man. At nearest these sub-men are cousins and collaterals.
Of course if one puts the skeleton of a man and the skeleton of a gorilla side by side their general resemblance is so great that it is easy to jump to the conclusion that the former is derived from such a type as the latter by a process of brain growth and general refinement. But if one examines closely into one or two differences, the gap widens . . .
The great apes are forest dwellers; their walking even now is incidental; they are at their happiest among trees . . . But man walks so well and runs so swiftly as to suggest a very long ancestry upon the ground. Also, he does not climb well now; he climbs with caution and hesitation . . . [61-65]
Among the earliest evidences of some creatures, more man-like than any living ape upon earth, are a number of flints and stonesvery roughly chipped and shaped so as to be held in the hand. These were probably used as hand-axes. These early implements (“Eoliths”) are often so crude and simple that there was for a long time a controversy whether they were to be regarded as natural or artificial productions. The date of the earliest of them is put by geologists as Pliocene—that is to say, before the First Glacial Age. They occur also throughout the First Interglacial period . . .
But at Trinil, in Java, in strata which are said to correspond either to the later Pliocene or to the American and European First Ice Age, there have been found some scattered bones of a creature, such as the makers of these early implements may have been. The top of a skull, some teeth, and a thighbone have been found. The skull shows a brain-case about half-way in size between that of the chimpanzee and man, but the thigh-bone is that of a creature as well adapted to standing and running as a man, and as free, therefore, to use its hands. The creature was not a man, nor was it an arboreal ape like the chimpanzee. It was a walking ape. It has been named by naturalists Pithecanthropus erectus (the walking ape-man) [today called
Homo erectus] . . .
After Pithecanthropus, that first glimpse of something at least sub-human in the record of geology, there is not another fragment of human or man-like bone yet known from that record for an interval of hundreds of thousands of years. There is nothing human or sub-human to be found except an increasing abundance of stone implements. But these improve in quality. It is not until we reach deposits which are stated to be the Second Interglacial period, . . . 200,000 or 250,000 years ago, that another little scrap of bone comes to hand. Then we find a jaw-bone.
This jaw-bone was found in a sandpit near Heidelberg at a depth of eighty feet from the surface, and it is not the jaw-bone of a man as we understand man, but it is man-like in every respect, except that it has absolutely no trace of a chin . . . It is not an ape’s jaw-bone; the teeth are human . . . He lived in a world not remotely unlike the world of the still earlier sub-man of the first implements; the deposits in which it is found show that there were elephants, horses, rhinoceroses, bison, a moose, and so forth with it in the world . . . The implements of this period . . . are a very considerable advance upon those of the Pliocene Age . . .
We must turn over the Record for, it may be, another 100,000 years for the next remains of anything human or sub-human. Then in a deposit ascribed to the Third Interglacial period, which may have begun 100,000 years ago and lasted 50,000 years, the smashed pieces of a whole skull turn up. The deposit is a gravel which may have been derived from the washing out of still earlier gravel strata, and this skull fragment may be in reality as old as the First Glacial Period. The bony remains discovered at Piltdown in Sussex display a creature still ascending only very gradually from the subhuman.
The first scraps of this skull were found in an excavation for road gravel in Sussex. Bit by bit other fragments of this skull were hunted out from the quarry heaps until most of it could be pieced together. It is a thick skull, thicker than that of any living race of men, and it has a brain capacity intermediate between that of Pithecanthropus and man. This creature has been named Eoanthropus, the dawn man . . . [or Piltdown man]
There was moreover a jaw-bone among these scattered remains, which was at first assumed naturally enough to belong to Eoanthropus, but which it was afterwards suggested was probably that of a chimpanzee . . . but Dr. [Arthur] Keith, one of the greatest authorities in these questions, assigns it, after an exhaustive analysis in his Antiquity of Man (1915), to the skull with which it is found . . .
Dr. Keith, swayed by the jaw-bone, does not think that Eoanthropus, in spite of its name, is a creature in the direct ancestry of man. Much less it is an intermediate form between the Heidelberg man and the Neanderthal man we shall presently describe. It was only related, he thinks, to the true ancestor of man as the orang is related to the chimpanzee. It was one of a number of sub-human running apes of more than ape-like intelligence, and if it was not on the line royal, it was at any rate a very close collateral. [67-70]
Excerpts from “The Evolution of the Vertebrates”
By Alfred S. Romer
[from The Nature of the World and of Man (1927) edited by H. H. Newman]
Human-anthropoid differences.—We have seen the development, through the primate series, of many of man’s structures. We have arrived, in the manlike apes, at forms which in almost every characteristic are very close to man. There are still differences, and our attention from here on will be focused upon these, but in doing so the many fundamental resemblances of man and the apes must not be forgotten.
Man is the only one of the higher primates which has really succeeded in the attempt to become a ground dweller [i.e., terrestriality]. The differences which we may list between modern man and the higher apes are differences which are almost entirely related to the erect gait [i.e., bipedalism] of man upon the ground and the mental development [i.e., encephalization] which seems to have arisen nearly simultaneously.
Modern man stands erect: except for the tiny gibbon, the great apes walk in a stooped position. The arms in man are short as compared with those of any anthropoid ape; they are no longer used in walking or swinging among the boughs. With the release of the arms, the hands come into their own. The thumb, which tends to be small in the manlike apes, is enlarged; the hand is a versatile grasping organ . . .
Even in the highest of the apes there is something of a “muzzle” to accommodate the powerful teeth. In man the tooth row has been shortened, partly, it would seem, in relation to his diet. As the teeth have retreated, the face has become more nearly vertical, and the end of the jaw is left as the “chin.” In the higher manlike apes heavy ridges are found above the eyes in front of the low forehead. In man, as the brain grows and the vault of the skull increases, these ridges tend to disappear.
But it is in the brain that the greatest contrast between the apes and man is to be found . . . The cerebrum, and with it the higher functions of which it is the seat, has increased enormously. The endocranial capacity of the average reader is about two and half times that of the highest of living apes . . .
We must remember . . . that these differences [between modern man and apes] are, except brain growth, of a comparatively insignificant nature, as contrasted with the differences between many other types of animals. And it must be borne in mind that these differences did not arise in one swift change. They were slow in their development; andour fossil remains of manlike creatures [i.e., hominids], poor as those records are, show us some of the stages in this evolutionary process.
The “southern ape.”—Very recently [in 1924] there has been discovered in South Africa [by Raymond Dart (1893-1988)]part of the skull and an impression of the cranial capacity of an ape to which the name Australopithecus, or “southern ape,” has been given. The remains are those of an ape “child,” corresponding in age to a human child of six or seven
. . . it is claimed that we have here the remains of a very advanced ape, one which was in brain development and other respects close to, although not quite reaching, the lowest human level. A full description of the specimen has not yet been published; but it seems probable that we have here a very close relative, at least, of the anthropoid type from which man has come . . .
The Java “ape-man.”—In the nineties there were discovered [by Eugene Dubois (1858-1940)] near the village of Trinil, in Java, fragments of the skeleton of a manlike creature. The deposit dates from a time just before or just at the beginning of the Pleistocene. The remains consist of the top of the skull, three teeth, and a thigh bone. What do they tell us?
The size of the thigh bone indicates that the creature was of human size. Its shape indicates that it walked erect. The teeth resemble most nearly those of man. The top of the skull indicates that the brain was larger than that of any known ape, although much below high human standards. The forehead is exceedingly low for a man, and the ridges above the eyes are massive as compared with those of any known
man . . .
Where does this creature rank? Is it a true “missing link,” as its discoverer at first thought, and hence deserving the name, Pithecanthropus erectus, “the erect ape-man”? Or is it merely a large ape? Or is it a man of an exceedingly early and primitive type?
Recently published work shows the last surmise to be the most probable one . . . Combined with the presence of other human characteristics in Pithecanthropus, the probable possession of speech leads us to conclude that we already have in this creature abeing that is man, of a sort, rather than an ape.
Had the use of tools already begun at this stage? We cannot surely say. The hands of Pithecanthropus are unknown. Since they were freed from locomotor necessities, it seems probable that they were at least approaching human form . . . No traces of human handiwork have been found associated with Pithecanthropus . . .
The Pleistocene glaciation [i.e., “Ice Age”] in Europe.—From this time on, the scene of our discussion shifts for the most part to Western Europe . . . Man, it seems, was an old-world product. And in the old world the only portion which has been at all carefully explored is civilized Western Europe.
This is unfortunate . . . The history of these last stages in the evolution of man must be based on evidence gathered in a region far from that in which the main events of the story were occurring. Man quite certainly did not evolve in Europe; the extinct races which we find there are migrants from a center of evolution which lay elsewhere, be this central Asia, as is commonly supposed, or possibly Africa . . .
The “dawn man” of Piltdown.—Near the manor of Piltdown, in Sussex, England, are to be found river gravels, which are often used as road-making material. The remains of animals contained in these gravels do not enable us to say certainly when they were deposited there . . . Less than a score [i.e., twenty] of years ago the remains of a manlike being were discovered in them, but it was badly broken and scattered by the workmen’s picks. Pieces composing the greater part of the skull and jaw were collected; careful search has since revealed a few other fragments. The skull, as fitted together and restored, tells us that we are dealing with a manlike rather than an apelike type; and the creature has been named Eoanthropus, the dawn man. The cranial capacity was about 1,300 cc.; that is, far greater than that of Pithecanthropus, up to the average of existing races, but still short of that normally found in Europeans today . . .
The jaw is of another nature . . . This is exceedingly apelike, chinless, and with many features suggesting such an animal as the chimpanzee. It has been suggested that the skull and jaw do not belong together; that the skull is truly that of a primitive manlike creature, but the jaw that of a chimpanzee. On the other hand, no chimpanzees are known in Europe during the Ice Age, and this renders the theory somewhat improbable. An apparently clinching piece of evidence was the later discovery, about two miles away, in the same gravels, of a fragment of a second skull, and associated with it a tooth of the type of that found in the original jaw . . . The development of human mentality in all probability was under way before the evolution of the human type of jaw and face.
The Heidelberg jaw.—Near the university town of Heidelberg, in Germany, some twenty years ago, in sands laid down during the first or second interglacial period, was found another human fragment, in this case a jaw. The teeth are distinctly human in type rather than apelike. The jaw itself, however, is very powerful and has many primitive features . . . Perhaps this Heidelberg “man” was an ancestor of the next form to be considered, but this is uncertain.
The last of the lower types—Neanderthal man.—In the third interglacial stage, implements tell us unquestionably of the presence of man in Western Europe. Then, as the last of the four glaciations commenced, we find in caves and rock shelters comparatively numerous remains of an ancient type of manlike creature below our own level of which we can speak accurately respecting the structure of all parts of the skeleton.
The cranial capacity is well up to modern standards . . . But in proportion of the parts of the brain we find a great difference from that of our own species of man. The frontal area, for example, is small, in contrast to other areas. The forehead is still low; great brow ridges are to be found above the eyes. The face is projecting, the “chin” retreating.
The creature walked erect, but not perfectly, for there was still a slight apelike stoop to the body; the knees were habitually somewhat bent; the large hands still lacked the perfected opposability of our thumbs. We have here a member of our own genus, Homo neandertalensis (Neanderthal man). He is a man, in a broad sense, but a man with the mark of the ape still upon
him . . . [340-347]
1)What types of evidence do the authors provide regarding the evolution of humanity?
2)From reading Wells (1924) & Romer (1927)what appear to be the most important differences between modern humans and pre-humans? Between modern humans and modern apes (e.g., chimpanzees, orangutans, gorillas)?