Man and Other Primates 203 



Man and Other Primates 



Modern man differs from ancient man. He differs also 

 from other primates, both hving and extinct. It is interesting 

 to compare the facts about these three groups of Kving forms 

 — modern man, ancient man and manlike beings, and 

 other primates. Such a comparison brings into relief the 

 characteristics that have in the course of time accumulated 

 and combined to produce the human race — or races — that 

 we know today. These characteristics are the erect posture; 

 the liberation of the hands and arms from the needs of loco- 

 motion; the enlarged brain, and especially the forebrain; 

 the liberation of the mouth from the need of holding and 

 rending food; the reduction of hair; increase of sociability 

 and communal living. These characteristics are subject to 

 observation, they represent facts. They do not of them- 

 selves, however, tell us that they were achievefnents in time. 

 For all we know, man has " always " been like that — has 

 always, that is, from a moment in the past when all the pri- 

 mates may have appeared, differed from other forms of life. 

 That the modern human form has descended from different 

 forms we can infer only from the records left by ancient 

 man and ancient sub-human beings. 



The biologist and the anthropologist go farther. In 

 addition to describing certain characteristics that differenti- 

 ate man from other primates, they speak of some of these 

 characters as acquired changes, or as deviations from earlier 

 forms. Some of these changes for which there is a record 

 include the diminished brow ridges, the more erect posture, 

 the shorter arms, the better thumb, the reduced muzzle and 

 teeth, the lessened jaw power, the increased chin prominence, 

 the increased cranial capacity. Throughout the evidence is 

 not merely that man has more of this or less of that, but that 

 there has been an increasing or a diminishing. 



The characteristics of man were probably not all inde- 

 pendent achievements. Some of them are closely related to 

 each other in the workings of the body, and some of them 



