lO SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. IIO 



fingers; very broad carpus, metacarpus, and phalanges, especially 

 the extreme phalanges, which give the hand a peculiar, flattened form ; 

 the flatness of certain joints which extend more horizontally giving 

 rise to the conclusion that the Kiik-Koba man was little able to bend 

 his fingers palmward but better able to move them sidewise. The 

 position of the thumb is most peculiar as the joint of the first meta- 

 carpal bone is very slightly developed. Bonch-Osmolovskii believes 

 that the ability of this fossil man to move his thumb toward the palm 

 was greatly restricted. The general impression gained is of a wide, 

 flat, pawlike hand. The Kiik-Koba hand is the first to have been studied 

 in such detail and so systematically, but Bonch-Osmolovskii concludes 

 that many of the above-mentioned features are inherent to some degree 

 in skeletons of the European Neanderthal man. At the same time, 

 Bonch-Osmolovskii proves convincingly that the above-described 

 structural type of hand is not similar to that of anthropoid apes 

 but, on the contrary, has developed away from them in the opposite 

 direction. 



In general, the Kiik-Koba man had a human hand and could make 

 various stone implements. 



Regarding the pawlike hand as the original form in the evolution 

 of man, partially repeated in the individual development of modern 

 man, Bonch-Osmolovskii concludes primitive man's locomotion was 

 not like that of modern anthropoid apes. 



The latter are clearly a side branch. The distant ancestors of man 

 were adapted to a different type of locomotion, were less specifically 

 tree forms, and according to the structure of the hand were closer 

 to the modern group of ground monkeys of the Pavian type. This 

 conclusion is supported by interesting facts concerning the type of 

 locomotion of the various Primates, the development of the grasping 

 ability in a child, and other data. 



Naturally, Bonch-Osmolovskii's conclusions cannot be regarded 

 as proved beyond doubt, especially those giving general character- 

 istics of the hand of fossil man. The necessary data for this are lack- 

 ing. The problem of the relation between various forms of Middle 

 Paleolithic man and the modern type remains unsolved. However, 

 Bonch-Osmolovskii's hypothesis that anthropoid apes and their specific 

 type of grasping hand are the result of a new branch developing in 

 a definite direction within the species is shared by many modern 

 authorities. It is quite possible that the hand structure of Miocene 

 Primates (to which both human and anthropoid branches trace their 

 origin) not only lacked the distinctive features of anthropoid apes 

 but was closer to the modern semiground types of Primates. In 



