SOUTH AFRICAN MAN-APES- — DART 321 



these northern and far-eastern discoveries indicate that, even at the 

 earliest or aiistralopithecine stage, protohumanity, like Cain, was a 

 willful wanderer over the face of the earth. 



Thus the apparent gap 43et ween living apes and living sapient men 

 has been completely bridged by overlapping australopithecine, pitlie- 

 canthropine, and neanderthaline phases of human development. 

 Nothing illustrates this overlap better than brain volume. Although 

 living men generally have fairly large brains, they vary in volume 

 from 790 cc. to 2,350 cc. In other words, a person can still be called a 

 sapient man even when his brain is only one-third the size of his fel- 

 lows. The living apes' brains, however, vary in volume to a relatively 

 far greater degree : from 87 cc. to 685 cc. So the gibbon can still be 

 called an anthropoid ape even when his brain is only one-eighth the 

 size of a gorilla's. Indeed, the gap in brain volume between the small- 

 est brained gibbons and the largest brained gorillas is nearly 600 cc, 

 while the gap between the biggest gorilla's brain and the smallest 

 known sapient man's brain is only 105 cc. The gorilla should there- 

 fore be more insulted to have his brain compared with that of a gibbon 

 than we should be to have the human brain compared with that of a 

 gorilla. The australopithecine skull capacity varies, according to 

 Broom and Robinson, from 400 cc. to 1,000 cc. ; the pithecanthropine- 

 sinanthropine skull capacity, according to Weidenreich and Keith, 

 varies from 750 cc. to 1,250 cc. ; and the neanderthaline skull capacity, 

 according to various authors, from 1,250 cc. to 1,600 cc. Therefore, 

 the range of skull capacity in living man overlaps not only that of the 

 extinct neanderthaline and pithecanthropine races of man but even 

 that of some members of the australopithecine race. 



We know that Pithecanthropus was a primitive man, although his 

 brain volume in some cases w^as 750 cc, i. e., only 65 cc bigger than a 

 gorilla's; also that a living man can still be a normal Homo sapiens 

 when his brain is only 105 cc. larger than a gorilla's. We know, of 

 course, that there are today and always have been some people in every 

 human race, whether European, Mongolian, or Negro, who are Domo 

 sapiens even though their skulls fail to exceed 500 cc in volume. Now- 

 adays we hide such individuals in asylums and call them abnormal or 

 microcephalic idiots; but that does not change their sapient human 

 ancestry ; nor does it prevent them from living and speaking or act- 

 ing like the sapient human beings they are; or learning to do anything 

 that a very primitive man with a similar brain content, like Australo- 

 pithecus, is likely to have been able to do. 



On the anatomical side, therefore, nothing of importance remains 

 for the anatomist to do in the way of finding further physical links to 

 bridge the gap that was apparent between ape and man in Darwin's 

 day. Such a gap no longer exists, even in brain size. We have at last 



