CHAPTER XV 



THE EECESSION OF THE JAWS AND REDUCTION 



OF THE TOOTH SEEIES 



With the business of hand-feeding, Man has gone a great 

 deal farther than any other member of the Primates, 

 and that comparatively modern development — civilized 

 Man — has gone still farther. The highest Primates select 

 their food with their hands, they even do more than this, 

 for, to a certain extent, they prepare it for eating with 

 their hands. But this preparation, though an enormous 

 stride, does not go to very great lengths beyond peeling 

 a banana or husking a thin-shelled nut with the fingers; 

 for anything much more exacting the teeth are re- 

 quisitioned. We have seen the amount of work that the 

 hands have already saved the teeth in the evolution of 

 an arboreal stock, and there is obviously a tendency in 

 the highest apes for the hands to assume further duties. 

 Man has applied his brain and his mobile hands more fully 

 to this jDroblem, and he has saved his teeth to the utmost 

 limits, but has made a sorry bargain. The general 

 bearing of these factors did not escape the notice of 

 Darwin, but, strangely enough, he confined his argument 

 practically to the fact that the hands of the human 

 ancestors, armed with primitive weapons, tended to take 

 the place of the fighting canine teeth. " As they gradu- 

 ally acc[uired the habit of using stones, clubs, and other 

 weapons, for fighting with their enemies, they would have 

 used their jaws and teeth less and less. In this case, the 

 jaws, together with the teeth, would have become reduced 

 in size, as we may feel sure from innumerable analogous 



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