928 MAN 



structural features determined by these physiological demands became 

 progressively less prominent in man, it was because his genius gradually' 

 devised the means to obviate their need. In fact, it was the potential degree 

 of cerebral growth and psychic development which kept the human cranium 

 so plastic. 



It is cjuestioiiable, therefore, whether any advantage is gained by the 

 continued reference to the pithecoid specializations of jjrimitixe man. II 

 he were ape-like in many aspects of his form and being, the great apes to 

 offset this have been called man-like on similar grounds. This convenient 

 uiterchange in terms does no doubt signity a mutuality in dehnite charac- 

 teristics. On the other hand, it tends to olxscure the common generic factors 

 which imparted to man and ape alike those distinctive characters described 

 in the human as pithecoid. 



The Five Essential Homimd Characters 



That there was a delinite prehuman stock, a stock capable of producing 

 both anthropoid apes and man, cannot Ik- disputed. But at least five critical 

 and closel\ interdependent specializations determine the status ot the 

 human race: the ap])earance (i) of the human brain, (2) of the human loot, 

 (3) of the human hand, (4) of the erect posture with bipedal locomotion, and 

 (5) a terrestrial mode of life. 



Estimated by these hominid characters, the human l\pe was irrevo- 

 cably established despite such pithecoid features as it might still retain. 

 When this status ol man is reached, liowcNcr low and humble it may be, 

 there is little justification lor the term ape-man. By the lact of his entrance 

 into the human lamily, man surpassed the more narrow limitations of simian 

 organization. At the same time he retained within himself a structural plas- 

 ticity for further development w hich the apes had almost entirely sacrificed 

 to their definitive specialization. 



