St. Tammany farmer., 1901-08-17
MEN WERE FIRST ON EARTH:

Il
German Scientist Says Human Beings
Had an Existence Before Their
Alleged Progenitors.
| Sensitive persons who object to be.
ing confronted with their poor re-
lations may find comfort in the the
ory advanced by Prof. Klaatsch, OF
Heidelberg university, and summar-
lied by our Berlin correspondent,
says the London Standard. We are
no longer hound to believe that man
| is descended from apes. The mys-
terry of evolution has been cleared up,
the search for the missing link is
rendered futile by the learned doc
tors discovery of the proper signifi-
canoe of muscle in the upper part
of the thigh. The short strand, as
one part OF this is called, is attached
to the fbtlla, and is fitted with Q
special nerve. After years of inves'
himself that this "short strand" is
a rudimentary form OF muscle COM
mon to considerable number OF
mammals, such as marsupials, carniv-
ores and many rodents. In fact, 1t
is very frequently present, but only
anthropoid apes and prehensile-
tailed American monkeys possess it
in the same modified condition as
man. Some climbing creatures in
deed have, entirely lost it, such as
the lemurs of the old world. Ihat
indicates that the muscle cannot be
serviceable for life on trees, its modl'
| fication being the result of dlsuso
when the progressive creature began
to walk upright. Thus it is an IN.
heritance,: common indeed to man
and apes, but derived from some re-
mote mammalian ancestor. So far
from proving the ape to be the IA
ther of the man, it suggests the con-
trary view. Both can claim a COM
mon ancestry in some long extinct
mammalian form, but that is all.
Though the sayants may be right in
inferring. from the fragmental re-
| mains of the Javan pithecanthropus,
that it was either the most manlike of
apes or the most apelike OF men, the
creature does not supply the missing
link in b pedigree beginning in
simian and ending in homo sapiens.
| The professor also tells us that the
existing apes are for the most part
degenerate forms. Are we, then, to
reverse the line of pedigree and de-
clare that an old-time self-indulgent
race of men have degenerated into
apes, as little Tom was taught, ac-
cording TO the "Water Babies?" But
to check any human conceit which
he may seem to have encouraged,
Her Klaatsch informs us that it is
quite wrong to consider man, as a
mammal, the most perfectly devel-
oped in every way. That is not true
of his teeth and limbs; only in the
matter of brain is he facile princeps.
Well, it. is relief to get this adj
mitted, and as for the other organs.
we coneede much to animals which
have to get their living by cracking
nuts or gnawing bones; we do not
profess to leap like tigers, run like
deer or climb like gibbons. In all
these we grant the advantage to the
savage and are aware that an eden
talous or nearly toothless being is
to be the ultimate result of civiliza-
ton. But, we suggest, is not the pro-
fessor building up very large super
structure on rather small base?
His argument, though it comes to a
different conclusion, reminds us of
1 the famous controversy in which
Huxley and Owen once figured as to
whether the ape did or did not pos
sess small structure called a hippo
campus in it's brain, for on that de-
pended whether or not the ape was
| the ''long-lost brother of man. It
| is doubtful, indeed, whether the pro-
fessor has proved more than the
most thorough-going evolutionist is
ready to grant. The latter does not
assert, so far as we know, that man
is descended from gorilla, or a
chimpanzee, or an orang-outang. He
holds, rather, that, as sometimes
happens in the social scale, one
branch of a family has greatly risen,
while all the others have remained
children of Gibeon. Charles Darwin
stated this quite clearly in "The
Descent of Man." and it is still gen.
orally accepted. As an evolutionist
he admitted kinship between all
mampals, since their pedigrees had a
common origin. Sometimes the part
ing had been very remote, sometimes
more recent. The platyrhine and
catarhine monkeys are cousin-ger-
man. In fact, to an evolutionist it
would seem strange for ancestors to
be fourishing side by side with their
offspring, for nature works very
slowly and will not be hurried over
the origin of a species.
Nice Alternatives.
Notwithstanding it's traditional
antipathy to any kind of compulsory
military service, the British nation
will before long realize that one of