The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1896-04-07
THE FIRST MAN.
No Evidence That He Was the High
est Type of Mammals.


AT the hall of the Art club Prof. Ed
ward Morse, of Salem, Mass. made
an interesting address before the mem.
bers of the Contemporary club on the
subject When Did Man First Apnear
on Earth?'
Prof. Morse at the outset stated that
1t was impossible to say within 100 600
years how long man had existed 11pon
! the earth. He based this opinion on his
acceptance of the genuineness of re-
mains. said to be of human origin
found in the tertiary geological period
Mans handiwork is found in deposits
at an earlier period than his bones.
while the bones of animals presumably
existing at the same period are found
in great numbers. In explanation of
this it has been shown that the ances-
tors of man left their remains on the
forest floor. where they soon decayed.
while the creatures like the mann
moths, which got mired in the clay and
mud, had their bones preserved.
1t was natural that man should be-
lieve himself to be the last and highest
created being. Is man. after all, the
highest mammal? 1t has been shown
that in all the physical characteristics
man is a very primitive animal. There
were marked differences in races OF
mankind 10000 years ago, but we must
believe that all have had a common
origin. There must have been a time
when there was a common type The
greatest difference between man and
the chimpanzee, gorilla and gibbon is
in the cubic contents of the brain.
which in man is about 1,500 cubic cent?
meters and in the animals mentioned
about 900 cubic centimeters. There is
more evidence of a caudal appendage
on man than on those animals Man
has been produced by the convergence
of several lines of development. the
same as in the case of all other animals.
Whatever age biologists ascribe to the
tertiaries the speaker was willing to as
cribe as the date of the appearance of
man.
At the conclusion of Prof. Morse's ad-
dress Dr. Brinton stated that few geol-
ogists now thought the four instances
of human remains found in the tertiares
to be genuine. 1t had come to be
believed that mans origin was at a
much later date, following the glacial
period
While man himself is connected with
the great chain of organic life, direct
ancestry has not been proven. He did
not find an absolutely final argument
He had no doubt that man began at one
place. mat ne achieved that position
perhaps not by some long, slow method,
but that he burst into the world in one
time, with his faculties and powers far
greater than any of his parents were
capable of possessing. There are in
stances of this in our daily lives. We
find great man being born in a nation
one in ten millions, like a Goethe or
Shakespeare. Darwin, himself the great
apostle of evolution, acknowledges alb
solutely that what was called spontan-
eous variation was far beyond all his
means of investigation. There is some
change which takes place in the pre-
natal life of the individual that devel-
ops him into the first genius or poet of
a century, as a man was developed
from a lower animal.
Prof. Morse said that to answer Dr.
Brinton would require a discussion of
the question as to whether acquired
traits were transmitted. He asked
where the tribes of Shakespeare could
be found.
Prof. Heilprin, referring to the discov-
cries of human remains in the tertiar-
les, said that he had diligently searched
the Trenton gravel deposits, but found
no evidence of human remains such as
had been reported.-Philadelph Led
COR