92 ARBOREAL MAN 



as summed up in modern anthropology. The more 

 primitive races have larger and better formed teeth, 

 rooted in more roomy palates, than members of more 

 civilized races can boast of. There is but little need to 

 dilate upon so well known a circumstance, but some few 

 facts may be cited. 



The third molars, wisdom teeth, being the last to be 

 erupted in the already diminished jaws, show the maxi- 

 mum effects of the atrophic influences of disuse. In 

 modern civilized Man these teeth are erupted late, fre- 

 quently in a condition of defective development, and 

 usually in such a manner as to restrict, if not entirely to 

 obviate, their functional utility. In civilized Man they 

 are always smaller than the first or second molars, and 

 as a rule all their biting cusps are not fully developed. 

 They may not all be erupted; sometimes they are present 

 in one jaw, and not in the other, and often when present 

 in both jaws they do not meet and bite together. 

 Frequently they altogether fail to be erupted. 



In primitive races they are rarely absent, they are cut 

 earlier, and are but little if any smaller than the other 

 molars, and they bite and grind together in a perfectly 

 even manner. 



In the skulls of the ancient inhabitants of Eg\'pt and 

 Nubia this perfection of the third molars is very striking. 

 Among the modern Egyptians — even those of them lead- 

 ing a town life in Cairo — the wisdom teeth are cut at 

 times well before the eighteenth year — full six years before 

 the}^ make their imperfect appearance in most Europeans. 

 In the more primitive living races the third molars are 

 usually very fine teeth, erupted early, and fully capable 

 of all the typical molar-grinding functions. In the skulls 

 of the earliest human remains in which the dental series 

 is preserved, the molar teeth are large, and the molar 

 series diminishes little, if at all, from the first to the 

 third molar; indeed, in some cases the primitive con- 

 dition of a reversed state of affairs is seen, and the 



