EARLIEST MAN' 



A Speculation, Based on Achievements of Lower Animals as to How the Human 



Race May Have Made its Start — Importance of the Reproductive 



Instinct as a Source of all Progress — Fire Probably a 



Late Acquisition. 



Review of a Book by F. W. H. Migeod 



WHAT were the habits of the 

 eariiest of our ancestors who 

 can be called human? The 

 question has often been an- 

 swered by guesswork, but F. W. H. 

 Migeod thinks it is possible to come a 

 little closer to the facts, by considering 

 what the lower animals do in a given 

 situation, and then assuming that man's 

 ancestors probably did somewhat the 

 same. Mr. Migeod's little book is 

 speculation, but it is interesting specu- 

 lation; and much of it plausible. 



The first step which set off from the 

 bulk of the apes that line which after- 

 ward became man, Mr. Migeod ascribes 

 to hybridization. This he believes 

 would provide the new group with 

 physical features which differed con- 

 siderably from those of its parents, and 

 also give it the chance to have more 

 acquired intelligence than any other 

 single species, since it would, to some 

 extent, learn the acquired habits of both 

 parental species. 



Such a hypothetical form the author 

 calls Pre-pithecanthropus. He supposes 

 that by some cataclysm a part of this 

 group was forced to leave its ancestral 

 home and live under entirely novel 

 conditions which afforded stimulus for 

 mental development, as far as the brain 

 of pre-pithecanthropus had any innate 

 possibilities of development. "In the 

 unfamiliarity of his surroundings fear 

 strikes him everywhere, and all his wits 

 are exercised in seeking safety from 

 the real or imaginary dangers which 

 beset him. 



"Let us visualize this. 



"Pre-pithecanthropus, unable to take 

 refuge in trees (he is imagined to have 

 been forced out of the forest by some 

 geological change), hides in a cleft in 

 the rocks. His mate and offspring 

 crouch inside as far as they can crawl. 

 In his terror at an attack by some 

 carnivorous beast, he flings around his 

 arms, clawing at everything within 

 reach. A stone detaches itself in his 

 grasp, and flies away from his swinging 

 arms. An accidental hit, and his car- 

 nivorous pursuer turns and flees. The 

 whole family are saved. Pre-pithecan- 

 thropus has done something he had 

 never done before, and never thought 

 of. It does not impress itself upon his 

 brain, however, till he is hunted again, 

 and then he learns to seek better hiding 

 places, and that loose stones have a 

 use. 2 



"It is in the defense of his offspring, 

 therefore, that this creature, new in the 

 world, began to develop his mental 

 faculties. His cares in this respect were 

 constant and prolonged, for with him his 

 young were not cast off in a few weeks, 

 or even months, to look after them- 

 selves. It was a case of years, or prac- 

 tically a lifetime, for the female would 

 bear again before the previous progeny 

 had reached maturity, and there would 

 be not one but several offspring re- 

 quiring the parental care. There was, 

 therefore, a steady and uniform strain 

 on the minds of both parents, but per- 

 haps on the father more than the 

 mother, as the latter would soon again 

 be exercising all her maternal care on 

 the succeeding progeny. 



1 Earliest Man, by Frederick William Hugh Migeod, F.R.A.I., etc., pp. 133. London, 

 Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co., Ltd., 1916. " The book was written in the Gold Coast Colony, 

 mostly while the author was Hving in a Bush station or travehng." 



''In this connection it may be noted that both the gorilla and the orang-outang can wield 

 sticks, and that baboons can throw stones very straight and roll rocks down a hillside. 



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