January, 1928 



EVOLUTION 



Pace Seven 



Man: A Walking Museum of Antiquities 



By Bernhard J. Stern 



CHARLES DARWIN once aptly remarked that man 

 can scarcely sneer at the theory of evolution with- 

 out showing under his upturned lip the canine teeth 

 that proclaim his anthropoid relationship. The long 

 canine is considerably abbreviated in man as compared 

 to the gorilla but it is there none the less, indicating his 

 descent. One can acquire wisdom concerning evolu- 

 tion also from man's "wisdom teeth," which are largest 

 among the molars in the gorilla, but which in man 

 offer little or no assistance in mastication. They are 

 "vestiges." relics of man's previous biological form, 

 museum specimens which persist in appearing in mod- 

 ern man. 



There are about a hundred of such "vestiges" in the 

 human body, which prove man's affinity with the lower 

 animals; we shall consider only the most obvious of 

 them. Do you remember when you were young, your 

 envy of the boy who could excel in wiggling his ears 

 and how you were spurred to attain some success in 

 such an achievement yourself? You were only mak- 

 ing use of the muscles of the external ear, which quadru- 

 peds needed to enable them to move their ears to catch 

 sounds. Man can revolve his head in the direction of 

 the sounds but the muscles of the ear remain in a 

 dwindled condition. Similarly, some of us have seen in 

 circus side shows men who can voluntarily move any 

 part of their skin, and all of us can raise our eyebrows 

 and wrinkle our foreheads. Among our animal ances- 

 tors this twitching of the skin was instrumental in rid- 

 ding them of pestiferous insects. 



Gorilla. 



TAIL BONES * 



But where is man's tail, asks the anti-evolutionist? 

 The tail is lacking in man as it is among the anthropoids, 

 but rudimentary tail bones remain as part of man's 

 vertebral column, and very often the tail muscles per- 

 sist in a dwindled condition. Therein lies another tale 

 of man's ancestry. And where is the hairy coat of the 



'Illustrations for this article taken from Newman'i 

 iu Evolution, after Romanes. 



I!. ;l,[l II _ - 



ape? It is represented by 

 the short hairs over the 

 body surface of man, at 

 whose roots are func- 

 tionless muscles similar 

 to those which elevate the 

 hairs of the ape. The 

 conformation of the hair 

 on man's arms is exactly 

 like that on the arms of 

 the ape, where it serves 

 to protect the animal 

 P' from rain as it sleeps with 

 j) its hands folded over its 

 head. The collateral re- 

 lationship of the ape 

 and man is thus strikingly 

 brought out. 



That extremely com- 

 plicated mechanism, the 

 human eye, cannot be explained except in terms of its 

 evolutionary development. One of the most interest- 

 ing "vestiges" in the human body is the crescent-shaped 



fold in the inner cor- 

 ner of the eye, which 

 now serves no purpose. 

 ^^ Among the sharks and 

 other of our fish an- 

 c e s t o r s, this semi- 

 transparent membrane 

 functioned as a third 

 inner eye-lid by sweep- 

 ing rapidly over the 

 external surface of the eye, perhaps in order to keep 

 the surface clean. 



No matter what shape the ears of some men may be 

 they do not approximate the elongated ears of the lower 

 apes, which end in a point. But though the shape and 

 size of man's ears have changed, the tip of the ape'6 

 ear is very often represented in the inner fold of the 

 margin of the human ear by what is known as "Dar- 

 win's point." He characterized it 

 as "a surviving symbol of the 

 stirring times and dangerous days 

 of man's animal youth." 



These vestigial organs in the 

 human body, which make man a 

 walking museum of antiquities, 

 have been compared to the un- 

 sounded and therefore function- 

 less letters in words, such as the 

 o in "leopard," the b in "doubt" 

 and the g in "reign." These letters 

 are now of no use, but we learn from them the history 

 of the words. So too, do the vestigial structures reveal 

 man's biological evolutionary history. 



/<i/>/r' 



Darn-ins, Point 



