xiv] HUMANIZATION OF THE ANTHROPOIDS 



bouring forest regions could any anthropoid have attained that 

 kind of perfection which would eventually transform it into Man. 



Indeed, I opine that if anthropoids different from the existing 

 ones have lived in a past and remote epoch in Borneo, they must 

 have got there from regions less covered by trees ; and I hold that 

 instead of modifying themselves towards the assumption of an 

 erect gait, they would have deviated towards adaptation to an 

 arboreal existence, unless, indeed, both Borneo and Sumatra once 

 possessed a drier climate and a lesser extent of forest than they do 

 now, as is the case with some African regions — a supposition hardly 

 admissible when we consider the fossils found in the carboniferous 

 formations of both these great islands, which would indicate ancient 

 conditions of vegetation very similar to those of the present day. 



According to the ideas I uphold, the passage from a quadrupedal 

 locomotion to a bipedal one is anterior to that which may be 

 styled quadrumanous. The orang-utan in its peculiar structural 

 development has, in a certain sense, surpassed that of Man, being the 

 product of a land in which terrestrial is less advantageous than 

 arboreal locomotion. Thus, if during the period of organic 

 malleability anthropoids who could freely use their hind 

 limbs for progression reached Borneo, where terrestrial locomotion 

 was more difficult than an arboreal one, they would practise 

 the latter more than the former, and their limbs would eventually 

 show a corresponding modification. Thus the orang-utans in 

 Borneo would have diverged from the old anthropoid type instead 

 of approximating to it, and in this case the orang would be, not 

 a progenitor, but a collateral of Man. 



To render probable the theory that Man has been derived from 

 an arboreal anthropoid of the type of the orang-utan, it would be 

 necessary to suppose that the feet of the latter, originally adapted 

 to terrestrial progression and converted later into prehensile organs, 

 should once more revert to their primitive terrestrial form. For 

 this reason I have come to the conclusion that neither Borneo nor 

 any portion of the Indo-Malayan forest region can ever have been 

 suitable localities for the " humanization," if I may so term it, of 

 an anthropoid. After this conclusion the reader will naturally 

 ask : " Where, then, do you believe that Man made his first appear- 

 ance ? " If such a query may be met with an hypothesis, the 

 following is my opinion, based in a large measure on the above- 

 mentioned considerations : — It is certain that Man, who before 

 becoming such must once have belonged to the group of the anthro- 

 poids, can only have had his origin in the centre of morphological 

 development of that group. Man must, therefore, have made his 

 first appearance within the tropics, and very probably in a region 

 intermediate between the parts now inhabited by the gorilla, chim- 

 panzee, and orang-utan. 



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