THE EVOLUTION OF MAN 



of monkeys must have resembled the original an- 

 cestor in the structure of teeth and hands and 

 must have been a straight continuation of its 

 evolution in the best sense of the word. This ex- 

 plains why man and monkey, who to this day 

 possess the simple normal teeth and the primi- 

 tive hand, give the impression, now that the an- 

 cient group of ancestors has long become extinct, 

 that carnivore, ruminants, etc., are nothing but 

 very extreme caricatures of the archetype. 



Furthermore, the claim that the monkeys were 

 really a side line of that very primitive ancestor, 

 and the most direct side line at that, is substan- 

 tiated by a study of those ancient bones of Cer- 

 nays and New Mexico. Just as we still observe 

 in those bones certain variations in the direction 

 of carnivora, of rodents, of ruminants, so we 

 also find a little group of animals which gradu- 

 ally, but very decidedly, move in the direction of 

 our monkeys. 



True, they are not yet genuine monkeys, but 

 they certainly show an unmistakable resemblance 

 to a certain group of mammals which have al- 

 ways followed in the system directly after the 

 monkeys, and which were often considered as 

 some peculiar retinue of genuine monkeys, the 

 so-called prosimiae. ' 



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