THE ANCESTORS OF MAN 27 



the woods. As to the causes to which the erect position may 

 be due, two points come under special consideration : first, the 

 great weight of the body (Ch. Morris) which may well have led 

 to the abandonment of an arboreal existence, and, secondly, the 

 shortness of the legs. According to Morris, i man's half-human 

 progenitors must have had short arms, similar to those of existing 

 man, ill adapted for quadrupedal progression, and consequently 

 the feet must have been already perfected for locomotion. The 

 free use of the arms resulted in a higher development of the 

 brain. No such intermediate form, as described by Morris, has 

 ever been discovered, but, as Branco points out, fossil anthropoid 

 remains of any sort are very rare, the Pithecanthropus being 

 the only specimen pronounced by naturalists to be an "ape- 

 man ". It will be quite clear, therefore, that Branco belongs to 

 those zoologists who derive man from some extinct anthropoid, 

 and not from any still existing species. Haeckel has been most 

 consistent in developing the theories of Darwin, and has drawn 

 up a genealogical table, which, having the Prosimiae (semi-apes), 

 and Lemuridae, at its base, leads us up to the Simiae (apes), viz., 

 the Catarrhines of .the Old World, and the Platyrrhines of the 

 New World, and finally to the anthropoids, viz., the Chimpanzee 

 and Gorilla of Africa, and the Orang and Gibbon of Asia. The 

 group of Tertiary anthropoids gives rise to the " speechless ape- 

 men," and these again to the Homo sapiens. 



E. Dubois's arrangement of the genealogical tree differs 

 slightly from that of Haeckel in that he starts from the Proto- 

 hylobates (primitive Gibbon). As its descendant we have the 

 Palaeopithecus of the Sivalik stratum, next the Pithecanthropus 

 erectus, and finally Man. From a lateral branch of the Proto- 

 hylobates Dubois derives the Pliohylobates and the Gibbon ; 

 and similarly from the Palaeopithecus, the Orang, Chimpanzee 

 and Gorilla. 



Each of the above authors bases man's genealogy on the 

 anthropoids, but a different view is held by Schlosser, who 

 maintains that the New World Platyrrhines are far more closely 

 related to the Old World anthropoids, and to man, than is 

 usually admitted. That the Platyrrhines possess thirty-six 

 teeth Schlosser regards as of secondary importance, but of great 

 significance is the high finely arched skull, especially in the 



