XXIII 



THAT ANIMAL, MAN (ANTHROPOLOGY) 



Preview. The process of becoming human ■ Our primate cousins • The 

 downward ascent of man • The consequences of an upright hfe • The great- 

 est wonder in the world • FHnt and metal history • Getting the upper hand 

 of things • Gaining ideas and passing them on • Skeletons in the Pleistocene 

 ice chest: Java man; Heidelberg jaw; Charles Darwin's neighbor; the 

 first lady of China ; the Neanderthalers ; wild horse hunters ; reindeer 

 hunters • Races • Passing muster • The biological Garden of Eden • Sug- 

 gested readings. 



PREVIEW 



"My favorite, and I might say my only study, is man." 



— George Borrow. 



If a board sidewalk belted the earth at the equator, and the entire 

 present human population, estimated at 1,700,000,000, should fall 

 into a lockstep procession on it, the line would girdle the globe some 

 seventy times. The sidewalk would need to be at least one hundred 

 and fifty feet wide in order to allow the procession to move, and even 

 then there would be considerable shoving and crowding, and countless 

 toes would be stepped on. 



In spite of the fact that mankind forms one of the most recent 

 species to be evolved, no other animal is so widespread over the earth, 

 and adapted to occupy successfully so many diverse habitats all the 

 way from "Greenland's icy mountains to India's coral strand." 



That man is an animal, subject to the same biological laws as 

 other animals, was recognized in 1755 by Linnaeus (1707-1778) when 

 he included Homo sapiens in his classification of animals, although 

 without the idea of relationship, which culminated later with Darwin. 

 Although there are countless detailed evidences of animal relationship, 

 man is in many ways quite unique and stands head and shoulders 

 above other animals. Man is the only animal that can make such 

 a claim and put it in writing. No other animal can communicate 

 abstract ideas. No other animal can measure the distance between 

 the stars, or build a steamboat, or speak a sentence, or compose a 

 symphony, or commit a sin and be sorry for it, or levy taxes, or take 

 thought for the morrow, but mankind as a whole can do them all, 

 and much besides. 



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