372 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 194 5 



races in some hierarchical order. What meaning have these compari- 

 sons when the races have nearly all their ancestry in common? 



Unless it could be proved that the living races differed greatly in 

 their relations to ancient man, it is pure waste of time to compare 

 them individually to the apes to determine which is the most primitive. 

 It is sound biological practice to compare closely related animals 

 first. In order to determine the relation of a Shetland pony to a Shire 

 horse, no one would compare each to Eohippus. It is reasonable to 

 compare living men to apes to determine how great is the anatomical 

 divergence between mankind as a whole and apes. Similarly, a 

 modern horse might be compared to Eohippus to see how great a 

 change there had been in horses since Eocene times. 



Different characters are appropriate when discussing different 

 stages in man's evolution. Since racial differences are small and 

 recent, they are of no use in discussing remote phases of human 

 evolution. Misunderstanding of this point has caused so much con- 

 fusion that it is worth giving two illustrations. Long-headedness is 

 often spoken of as being a primitive character. Since some gorillas, 

 particularly from the Cameroons (Randall, 1943), are round-headed, 

 it has been argued that long-headedness is not primitive. Now early 

 modern man was long-headed, and the round-heads, which appear 

 later in the fossil record, seem to have been derived from the early 

 long-heads. A character which changes so rapidly is of no use for 

 comparisons with gorillas. Note that the word "primitive" changes 

 its meaning constantly. One speaks of primitive characters meaning 

 those of (1) early modern man, (2) ancient man, or (3) apes, and in 

 each case the characters are different. How vitally a little knowledge 

 on this point is needed is well illustrated by a pamphlet which was 

 published recently. The authors wished to prove the unity of the 

 human race. One of the two illustrations which they picked was the 

 number of teeth. The human dental formula is the same as that of 

 the apes and Old World monkeys. The other illustration (the num- 

 ber of bones and muscles of the foot) is equally irrelevant. The unity 

 of the living races is proved by the anatomy of modern man, not by 

 characters which are shared with hundreds of nonhuman primates 

 and had their origin at least as far back as the basal Oligocene. 



If the fossil record showed that the groups which are now recog- 

 nized as races had been separate as early as the Oligocene period, then 

 the dental formula would be a relevant consideration. The interpre- 

 tation of the fossil record is the crux of all thinking concerning the 

 antiquity of race. 



In summary, the most direct and important evidence there is on 

 the antiquity and relations of races comes from the fossil record. 

 This evidence is being augmented constantly by new finds. Therefore 



