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Updated: May 18, 2025
If in addition to this the man-ape began to use missiles with a definite purpose in view, that of striking down animal prey, so that the use of such weapons became habitual instead of occasional, it would soon gain some power of aim and a growing strength and skill in the throwing motion.
The argument we propose to offer is that man as he was at the completion of his first stage, that of the subjugation of the animal world, and before the beginning of the conflict with nature, still exists, the first derivation from the man-ape, living in the location and possessing much of the appearance and many of the habits of this ancestral form.
In truth, the dividing line between man-ape and man was imperceptibly fine. Various points of demarcation might be chosen, each founded on some important step in evolution.
These are not the only answers that can be made to the question propounded. Though the bones of the man-ape have not been found, relics of several stages of developing man exist. Most significant among these, until recently, was the celebrated Neanderthal skull, which in facial aspect departs widely from the ordinary human and approaches the simian type.
It is possible, indeed, that man reached the northern continent from another locality, the habitat of the Negrito race in southeastern Asia and the Malaysian islands. The fossil man-ape of Java, Pithecanthropus, is a strong argument that this was the region, or one of the regions, in which the development of man took place.
We need not pursue this subject further. It will suffice to offer the general conclusion that the negroid race, while, through its change of habits from the hunting to the agricultural status, it has made an advance both mentally and physically beyond the Pygmy aborigines, does not appear to have advanced greatly in either particular, the negro reaching a mental limit at a low level, and being arrested physically while still possessing marked characteristics of the man-ape.
Perhaps some crumbs of comfort may be found by the reactionists in the fact that it is not held by Professor Haeckel, or by any other competent authority, that the link which pithecanthropus supplies welds man directly with any existing man-ape with gorilla, chimpanzee, or orang.
The conclusion to be derived from all this is that the man-ape was in its early days much more truly a biped than are any of the species named. Like them, it had no tendency to revert to the quadruped habit. The shortness of its arms was unsuited to this, while rendering it impossible for the animal to progress in the semi-erect, swinging fashion of the other anthropoid apes.
By the use of weapons of this kind the powers of offence of this animal were enormously increased. As skill was acquired in their use, and more efficient weapons were selected or formed, the man-ape steadily advanced in controlling influence, and the lower animal world became more and more subordinated. No doubt the struggle was a protracted one.
The features of structure in which the negro appears to occupy a position intermediate between the white man and the man-ape lower than the former and approaching the latter are the following: First, his abnormal length of arm, which averages about two inches longer than that of the Caucasian, and, when in the erect position, sometimes reaches the knee-pan, being little shorter proportionately than that of the chimpanzee.
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