

The Ascent of Man 165 



baboons. Ages passed and the main stems gave off (in the 

 Oligocene period) the branch now represented by the small 

 anthropoid apes the gibbon and the siamang. Distinctly later 

 there diverged the branch of the large anthropoid apes the 

 gorilla, the chimpanzee, and the orang. That left a generalised 

 humanoid stock separated off from all monkeys and apes, and 

 including the immediate precursors of man. When this sifting 

 out of a generalised humanoid stock took place remains very 

 uncertain, some authorities referring it to the Miocene, others 

 to the early Pliocene. Some would estimate its date at half a 

 million years ago, others at two millions ! The fact is that ques- 

 tions of chronology do not as yet admit of scientific state- 

 ment. 



We are on firmer, though still uncertain, ground when we 

 state the probability that it was in Asia that the precursors of 

 man were separated off from monkeys and apes, and began to be 

 terrestrial rather than arboreal. Professor Lull points out that 

 Asia is nearest to the oldest known human remains (in Java), 

 and that Asia was the seat of the most ancient civilisations and the 

 original home of many domesticated animals and cultivated 

 plants. The probability is that the cradle of the human race was 

 in Asia. 



Man's Arboreal Apprenticeship 



At this point it will be useful to consider man's arboreal 

 apprenticeship and how he became a terrestrial journeyman. 

 Professor Wood Jones has worked out very convincingly the 

 thesis that man had no direct four-footed ancestry, but that the 

 Primate stock to which he belongs was from its first divergence 

 arboreal. He maintains that the leading peculiarities of the im- 

 mediate precursors of man were wrought out during a long arbo- 

 real apprenticeship. The first great gain of arboreal life on 

 bipedal erect lines (not after the quadrupedal fashion of tree- 

 sloths, for instance) was the emancipation of the hand. The foot 



