ANCIENT REMAINS OF MAN HRDLICKA. 493 



is not generally regarded as well established. These two classes of 

 specimens can not well be considered in this paper for it would 

 thereby become unduly extended and possibly also involve contro- 

 versy. 



The questions of the antiquity and origin of man are natural sub- 

 jects of the greatest interest both to the scientist and to the layman, 

 for they touch the very foundations of human beliefs, ethics, and 

 organic progi^ess in the future. Their detailed solution, also, is still 

 far from us. But it may now be safely postulated that man did not 

 appear on our planet as an entirely new and distinct being uncon- 

 nected with the rest of terrestrial organic life; for he is anatomically 

 as well as physiologically but a highly specialized manmial that still 

 carries numerous though now more or less useless vestiges or re- 

 minders of various lower stages through which he passed. Neither is 

 there any good reason to regard him as the result of some freak of 

 evolution, for his progress in the organic scale seems thoroughly logi- 

 cal and, judging from what has been already learned on the subject, 

 his ascent, though probably not imiformly accelerated, was on the 

 whole slow. We shall seemingly come nearest the truth if we look 

 upon him as on the ultimate result of gradual modification in the up- 

 ward continuity or differentiation of a highly important group of 

 organic forms. He may be regarded as the topmost and dominating 

 bough on an ancient manmialian tree whose roots intertwine, some- 

 where in the earlier Tertiary, with those of other vertebrate forms. 

 From this tree various branches have doubtless diverged at different 

 levels and become related species, some of these still persisting, while 

 others have been long extinct. The stem began, so far as discernible, 

 with lemurlike forms, from which in the course of time sprang, 

 though scarcely in the order in which they now appear to us, the 

 more simple and then the more highly organized primates. Among 

 the latter then arose, it would appear, slowly or more likely rather 

 suddenly, one or perhaps several forms characterized by more than 

 the average physical instability ; and the descendants of one or more 

 of these strains, under the influence, in all probability, of changing 

 environment, more especially food and climate, with perhaps other 

 agencies, began more or less gradually to develop reduced teeth, 

 larger brain, more erect posture, with increased facility of inter- 

 communication ; and this differentiation apparently progressed until 

 some strain of these changing beings reached that hazy dividing line 

 below which was still the realm of the apes but above which com- 

 menced that of the true predecessors of man. 



The more immediate human precursors may be conceived of as 

 forms which showed various individual advances anatomically, 

 physiologically, and mentally toward man, as well as many morpho- 

 logical and other reminders of and reversions to the ape; but they 



