8 A MILLION YEARS OF CHILDHOOD 



a theory that man's immediate ancestor was a ground- 

 ape, but few are disposed to entertain this view. 

 Professor G. Elliot Smith believes that the most 

 important event was when, a few million years 

 earlier, the common ancestor of man and the apes 

 and monkeys began to live in trees. The change 

 would mean a decay of the sense of smell and a 

 quickening of sight and the use of the fore-limbs ; 

 and this would, as the distribution of the various 

 centres in the brain suggests, promote the develop- 

 ment of what we may call the " intelligence-centre." 

 Professor Smith, a very high authority on such a 

 subject, believes that the rest of the story is merely 

 a very slow and gradual development of this early 

 advantage. One feels, however, that some other 

 event of great importance must have happened to 

 set the apes and men on a line of development which 

 would take them far beyond the monkeys. When 

 we reflect that the apes have partially, and men 

 entirely, ceased to be arboreal, and when we realize 

 how stimulating to the senses and fore-limbs a 

 descent from the trees would be, we conclude that 

 probably the ascent of a branch of the early mammals 

 to the trees began the superior development of the 

 fore-part of the brain, and the descent of man's imme- 

 diate ancestor from the trees was the second decisive 

 circumstance marking out man for separate evolution. 

 Some may feel that these are small matters to 

 offer as explanations of the rise of man. It is quite 

 easy to ask us to reflect on the music of Beethoven, 

 the poetry of Shakespeare, or the sculpture of Michael 

 Angelo, and say whether we think ascending and 

 descending trees has any relation to these superb 

 creations. 



