HIS ANTIQUITY AKD CHAEACTERrSTICS. 



15 



great and diverse, especially among our foreign friends. After 

 stating some of these views, Sollas wisely says : The crowd of 

 primitive ancestors which are beginning to inhabit the world of 

 thought are logical abstractions which may never have enjoyed 

 any real existence in the flesh." He also points out that the 

 phenomenon of regression has not been sufficiently considered 

 in forming these hypotheses. Our study of extinct forms of life 

 has taught us, especially among the invertebrates, that some 

 species will reach a certain stage of development, like the Ammon- 

 ites, and then return to the more simple forms of their ancestors 

 and finally disappear. The skull of the Neanderthal man, with 

 its high superciliary ridges and its retreating ape-like forehead, 

 was long regarded as a missing link, and a creature from which we 

 are descended. Now it is universally accepted that Neanderthal 

 man was only one of the lines of divergence from the apes — a line 

 which died out, and is not admitted to have a place in man's 

 genealogical tree. Professor Carveth Read tells us all the promin- 

 ent characters that distinguish man from the anthropoids are the 

 result of his having shown a special likeness for animal food ; 

 and he proceeds to show that this brought about life on the ground 

 beyond the limits of the forest, the erect gait, the lengthening 

 of the legs and specialization of the feet, the shortening of 

 the arms and development of the hands, with other structural 

 changes. 



Another writer. Dr. Robinson, lays great weight on the develop- 

 ment of the chin, not merely for its aesthetic value, but because 

 of its relation to the faculty of articulate speech which differen- 

 tiates man from the anthropoids. Concerning this, Dr. Elliot 

 Smith considers that the development of the lower jaw had no 

 relation to speech, but that this faculty was brought about 

 entirely by the development of the brain, so that when man had 

 anything to say he had the equipment for saying it. 



This development of the brain, Dr. Elliot Smith considers — 

 and there is no higher authority than he — was the determining 

 factor in man's specialization. He does not look upon the Orang, 

 the Chimpanzee and the Gorilla as ancestral forms of man, but 

 as the more unenterprising members of man's family, who were 

 not able to maintain the high level of cerebral development, but 

 saved themselves from extinction by the acquisition of greater 

 strength and a certain degree of specialization of structure. The 

 assumption of the erect attitude and the faculty of speech, of which 

 some make so much, was subordinate to the growth of the brain ; 



