Coulee City dispatch. [volume] (Coulee City, Wash.) 19??-19??, 1929-12-13
WHY We BEHAVE
like HUMAN BEINGS
Smiling a Human Trait
By GEORGE DORSEY. Phi. D., IL. D.

tut, a noted French anatomist, re-
quired 900 pages to describe them.
One-fourth Of all our muscles are in
our neck and face. The human face
can light up or cloud over because its
muscles are attuned for complex ac-
tion-keyed to the human pitch.
Facial muscles in mammals below
man are more simple. We look for
intelligence in the eyes Of horse, not
in the expression of it's face. When 1t
needs to flick fly from its face or
shoulder, it moves a muscle buried In
the skin. Such muscle covers many
animals like a blanket.
We all have bits Of this skin mus
cle-some of us more, some less, even
on the chest and back. Usually we cam
not witch it; we send hand after
the fly. We have traces Of 1t In our
scalp; a few have enough to move
the whole scalp. Most Of us can wrin-
kle our forehead-and do, when per-
picked. Apes use this muscle both In
pleasure and to frighten enemies. We
all have vestiges of the muscles dogs
use to pull, push, and lift their ears;
some can even wrlggle them.
So, while the skin muscle OF our
face and shoulders tends to disappear,
the deeper facial muscles show pro-
gressive variation. They are among
our most recent acquisitions. We re-
tain the muscle by which the dog
shows it's canine tooth; we can all
snarl. But the muscle by which we
smile is not SO regularly present; the
man of gloom may have no risorius.
Variations In muscles about the
nose and mouth, necessary for speech,
are usually forward-looking; they give
the speaking likeness" to man. Oft
en- they reveal what the mind Is trying
to hide. Only as we grow in expert
ence can we make our face mask to
belle our emotions. This is because
the face is primarily under the control
Of the autonomic nerves; they act Of
their own sweet will and are by ma
ture honest. But by and by our brain
learns to get control Of them; we
force our face to wear a smile when
our heart would bid our eyes to weep.
Our arms are free; they have not
forgotten that they were once legs. OF
SO bodies examined, 292 variations were
found In the arm muscles; 110 in the
leg. Our immediate ancestors were
four-handed, we are two-footed. But
when baby gets on the floor, 1t pulls
with its fore and pushes with its hind
limbs; just as we once crawled up
out of water on to dry land.
Palmists rarely read the pad at the
outer edge Of our palm-or know that
we have one like it on the sole Of our
foot; both protect deep-lying muscles
from injury in walking. The palm
pad has its own palmar muscle in one
man out of every ten. It helped to
work the pads which protected the
muscles and tendons beneath. Today,
it is as atavistic as the pad itself; we
gave up walking on our hands about
100000 years ago. AS for Zines" of
fate and marriage, and the "girdle of
Venus" they can all be "read" In the
hands and feet Of monkeys, and to
certain extent In baby's foot, or In
the fetal hands and feet. Palmistry
is as dead as phrenology. Anyone who
can read character" or mental ca
pacity' from head bumps or palm
lines is wizard.
What does 1t all mean, this astound-
ing range Of variation, on which
have barely touched? There they are,
by the thousands, by unnumbered
thousands. Shall we say that they lie,
that our levator coccygis never lifted
q tail, that our curvator coccygis new
er curved one, and that our attollens
auriculam never lifted an ear? Or
shall we say that we are walking mu
seums of comparative anatomy and
try to find out whence we came and
whittier we are going? This is GER
tain: there is no fixed, standardized,
perfect, or biologically ideal human
body-there are no two human bodies
quite alike. Each one Of us reeks
with evidence that our ancestors were
not the two-handed, two-footed crea-
lures we are now; that they had no
talking muscles; that they could not
back up their talk with a speaking
countenance; and that they could not
balance their heads on their spines.
Some variations are atavistic or
vestigial. Like the buttons on our coat
cuffs, they no longer function; like
parlor boarders, they often make trou-
BILE. They are hangovers from a re-
mote past. They are prone to dis
ease; we should be better off without
them. Some are retrogressive, weak
sisters Of our body, functioning in a
half-hearted way; we could do with
out them-many of us do. Some are
progressive, little bit more than hui
man; they point to further change in
mans physical structure.
Taken together, they bridge every
gap and make complete story. They
prove that, while our eyes look for
ward, our body has not forgotten it's
humble origin-and carries some dead
wood we were well rid of, such as APP
pendix, tail, snarling muscle. Our
proneness to hernia and prolapse Of
the uterus is only one of the many
proofs that our body Is not yet per-
| foct1v adantpd t0 an uprIpht pait