Morning journal and courier., 1882-10-19
The MfOcene Ancestor.
Ldrant Allen in Fortnightly Review

In the lower miocene times ths lemuroids again must have split up into two main branches, that of the monkeys and of the lemurs. We find no trace of the monkeys in the remains of the lower miocene age but, they were highly developed in the sue ceeding mid-miocene period, they must have begun to be distinctly separated at least as early as this point of time. To the monkey belonged By the epoch of the mid mio- deposits the monkey tribe had once more presumably subdivided itself into two or three minor groups, one of which was that of the anthropoid apes, while another that of the supposed man like animal who manufactured the earliest known split fints. The anthropoid apes remained true to the old semi arboreal hatits of the race and retained their four hands The man. like animal apparently took to the low-lying and open plains, perhaps hid in caves and, though probably still in part frugivorous,
 eked out his livelihood by hunting. We may not unjustifably picture hina to ourselves as a tall and hairy creature, more or less erect,
 but with a slouching gait, black faced and
 whiskered, with prominent prognathous mug
 gle and large pointed canine teeth, those of
 each jaw fitting into an interspace in the op-
 posite row. These teeth, MT. Darwin
 suggests, were used in the combats of the
 males. His forehead was no doubt low and
 retreating with bony bosses underlying the shaggy eyebrows, which gave him fierce expression, something like that of the goril- la. But already, in all likelihood, he had learned to walk habitually erect and had be- gun to develop human pelvis, as we'll as to carry bis head more straight upon his shoul- ders. That some such an animal must then have existed seems to me an inevitable corol- lary from the general principles of evolution, and natural inference from the analogy of other living genera. Moreover, we actually find rude works of art which occupy a posi- tion just midway between the undressed ofo n1ya,. nf oh ! weapons of paleolithic times. This crea- turs, then, if he existed at all, was the real primitive man, and to apply that term to the cave men the drift men is almost as ab- \ surd as to apply 1t to the civilized neolithic herdsmen. The supposed miocene ancestor of humanity must have been acquainted with l the use of fire, and have been suficie ntly i'm 1 telligent to split rude flakes of flint. But | his brain was no doubt about half way be. l tween that of the anthropoid apes and that l of the Neandsrthal skull. Such an interme. diate stage must have been passed through at l some time other, and the mid miocene Is | just about the time when one would naturally | expect it to have existed. The fact that no | bones of this man-like creature have yet l been found initiates very little against the | argument, for in all cases thS mammalian re-
 mains, which we actually possess from any particular stratum, are mere tithe of the | species which we know must have been Hv- l ing during the period when it was deposited. 1 And after all, the works of man Cor of a l man like animal) are just good evidence of
 his existence as his bones would be; for, as | Sir John Lubbock right observes, the ques- l ton is whether men then existed, not wheth- | or they had bones or not. During the plo-
 cene period the scent does not lie we'll | and we seem to lose sight for a while of mans ancestry. Such gaps are common in
 the geological history and need surprise no one, considering he necessarily fragmentary
 nature of the record, based as 1t Is supon a
 few stray bones or bits of flint which may | happen to escape destruction and be after
 ward brought to light. Some cut bones,
 however, have actually been detected in Tus-
 can plioeenes, and may possibly bear investi- gation. Professor Dawkins, it is true, ob- iects that the presence of a piece of rude i pottery together with the bones casts much 1 doubt upon their authenticity. But Profes-
 sor Capellini, their discoverer, now writes
 that MT. Dawkins is mistaken in this particu-
 lar, and that the pottery belongs to quite a
 different stratum from the bones. Other
 marked remains have been discovered ip p1io-
 cene strata elsewhere, and worked flints have
 been detected in the gravels of St. Prest,
 which, however, are of doubtfully pl1ocene
 age. Nevertheless, the ancestors of man
 must have gone on acquiring all the distinc
 tive human features during this period, and
 especially gaining increased volume of brain.
 If we could find entire skeletons of our
 miocene and pliocene progenitors, analogy
 leads to suppose that naturalists would ar
 range them as at least two, if not more, sep
 arate species of the genus Homo. Whether
 we should call them men not is 8 mere
 matter of nomenclature; but that such links
 in the chain of evolution must then have ex
 isted seems to me indisputabe. In the pie istocene period we come at last upon un doubted traces of the existing specific man The early pleistocene strata show us no very certain evidence, but in the mid pleistocene
 we find the earliest indubitable flint flake
 split by chipping, and very different in typs ] from the workmanship of the supposed mid miocene man-like creature In the later pie istocene get the well-known drift imple ments. Without fully accepting Professor Dawkins' argument that the drift men wer, human beings of quite a modern type, on : may at least admit that the remains prov 8 them to have been really men of the actua l species now iving-men not much furthe
 removed from us than the Andamanese o the Digger Indians.