THE GENEALOGY OF ANIMALS 95 



The man-like apes are the nearest living rela- 

 tives of the human races. It is not probable that 

 man has been derived directly from any of the exist- 

 ing races of man-like apes. For no one of them in 

 all particulars of its structure stands closer to him 

 than the rest. The orang approaches closest to 

 man in the formation of the brain, the chimpanzee 

 in the shape of the spine and in certain character- 

 istics of the skull, the gorilla in the development 

 of the feet and in size, and the gibbon in the 

 formation of the throat and teeth. The earliest 

 human races probably sprang from man-like races 

 of apes now extinct, who lived in southern Asia 

 or in Africa during the Pliocene Age (possibly as 

 early as the Miocene), and who combined in their 

 structures the various man-like characters pos- 

 sessed by existing anthropoids. 



The earliest races of men were speechless — the 

 ape-like ' Alali ' — beings, living wholly upon the 

 ground and walking upon their hind-limbs, but 

 without more than the mere rudiments of lan- 

 guage. The vertical position led to a much 

 greater development of the posterior parts, espe- 

 cially of the muscles of the back and the calves 

 of the leg. The great toe, which in the ape is 

 opposable, lost its opposability, or all except traces 

 of it, after the abandonment of arboreal life. It 

 must have been a sight fit to stir the soul of the 

 most leathern, these children of the night, with 

 low brows, stooping gait, and ape-like faces, armed 

 with rude clubs, clothed in natural hair, and 

 wandering about in droves without law, fire, oi 



