Chapter II: The Ape-Men

It is not correct to say that man is descended from any form of monkey or ape now alive upon the globe. Both the anthropoid or man-like apes, and men, are descended from a common ancestry, now extinct. There are four of these man-like apes upon the earth today: the gibbon and the orang-outang, in Asia, and the chimpanzee and the gorilla, in Africa. But near the beginning of the Cenozoic or Recent Life Period, in that stage known as the Oligocene, we find skeletal remains of a forerunner of the great apes, resembling the gibbons, in the deserts of northern Egypt. In the Miocene Stage which followed, true tree-living gibbons found their way into Europe and continued throughout the Pliocene, the stage preceding the Ice Age; these ranged as far north as Germany. Another ape, quite man-like, called the _Dryopithecus_, inhabited France in the Miocene; it was closely related to the ancestral stock of the chimpanzee, gorilla, and orang, with a jaw remotely like the dawn man, or Piltdown Man, found in Sussex, England. The Pliocene saw a third great ape dwelling in Germany, and the Old Ape, or _Paleopithecus_, inhabiting the Siwalik hills of Asia. This creature was a generalized form apparently related to chimpanzee, gibbon and baboon, with upper teeth resembling man’s.

The four existing man-like apes are all tree-dwellers, with long arms especially adapted to arboreal life. In all these apes there is a grasping power in the big toe, which is a kind of thumb; in man this is a function of the hand alone. The opposable thumb, which may be brought against each of the fingers, is the one characteristic lacking in every one of the man-like apes, and which was early developed among the ancestors of man. They had projecting faces, retreating foreheads, and small brain-cases, compared to men; in his slow development man’s face has become vertical, his nose prominent, his forehead high, his brain-case large. In brain evolution, the tree life of man’s early ancestors or cousins stimulated the development of the hind and side portions of the brain, which control the muscular movements needed for arboreal existence. All the man-apes have some power of walking more or less erect on the hind limbs, thus releasing the arms. There were four chief lines of development:

(1) the erect attitude;
(2) the opposable thumb;
(3) the growth of the front of the brain; and
(4) the acquisition of the power of speech.

In late Pliocene times the ancestor of man, in all probability a ground ape, a running creature rather than a climbing creature, had achieved the first three of these, and had a rudimentary power of speech. Then came the first Glacial approach, and after thousands of years the first Interglacial period. Scientists disagree as to whether the first recognizable stone implements, the eoliths, came before or after the first Glacial approach; but about this time came these first evidences of man’s immediate ancestors upon the earth.

Among the early popularizers of the eoliths was a man named Benjamin Harrison, a grocer, of Ightham, in Kent, England. In a great gravel bed five to seven feet deep he found, among unmistakable paleoliths, or chipped stones, hundreds of stones only slightly worked, with a similarity of appearance which could hardly be accidental. In Belgium and elsewhere many other eoliths have been found; I have picked up in the field below my house in Hastings-on-Hudson stones of exactly the same type. Whether these Kent or Belgium examples are the work of man or of nature is not the most important thing; the thing to remember is that the paleoliths or chipped stones were not originated all at once; there must have been thousands of years of experiment before these forms could be reached. These may not be recognizable to the satisfaction of science; but they undoubtedly existed. Eoliths have been found near the Sussex home of the early Piltdown man, and in France. These are of the borer form, the hollow-scraper form, and the crescent-shaped-scraper form. They are usually rolled and water-worn. Nature has dulled their once keen edge, as she has dulled human recollection of their ancient users.

Who were the man-like forms that fashioned and used these earliest recognizable tools? Remember what was said about the infrequency of relics of these early men. We must travel far away to find the pre-human type which must have used similar tools.

The island of Java is separated from Asia by Sumatra and Borneo, and by water. Geology has established that it was once a part of the Asiatic mainland. In 1891, on the Bengawan River in central Java, a Dutch army surgeon, Eugen Dubois, while excavating for pre-human remains, discovered near Trinil a deposit of numerous mammal bones, a single upper molar tooth, and, a short distance away, the top of a skull. Further digging revealed a second molar tooth and a left thigh bone, all imbedded and fossilized in similar fashion. In 1894 Dubois described these scattered parts as the remains of the type of _Pithecanthropos erectus_, the erect ape-man. The _erectus_ was determined by the thigh-bone, which demonstrated that the creature had the same upright posture as man, and walked on two legs. The creature was clearly not simian, or monkey; it was closer to man than to the highest man-like ape. And yet it was not man. It was the transitional form between man and the man-like apes, which the laws of evolution had taught us must have once existed. It was the ancestor of man. It was one of the missing links.

The geologists at once became busy. At first they were inclined to place the creature in the late Mesozoic (Middle Life), also called Tertiary (Third Stage), in the period Pliocene; but later researches indicate that the true age is more probably Pleistocene, or the beginning of the Ice Age, in the Cenozoic (Recent Life), also called Quarternary (Fourth Stage). The mammal bones included a primate or monkey called macaque; two species of the rhinoceros; and three late Pliocene elephants,—the same elephants found in the Siwalik hills of India, in earlier Pliocene deposits. The discovery of a race similar to _Pithecanthropos_, the Ape-man, in India, may be anticipated. The Trinil race may therefore be set down as late Pliocene or early Pleistocene, as just before or during the opening of the Ice Age.

Judging from the length of the thigh bone, the Trinils were a tall race, reaching a height of 5 feet 7 inches, a few inches higher than the later Neanderthal race. The forehead is undeveloped, the frontal area of the brain is small; thus the Trinil Ape-men had only a limited faculty of profiting by experience and accumulated tradition. The industry of the Trinil race was very elementary. The tools required were simple, and natural flakes and fragments of flint were plentiful. Hammer and knife were the original tools; both were picked up ready-made, or were rudely chipped. When the edge of the flake become dulled by use, the piece was thrown away, or the edge was retouched for further use. If hammer or flake could not be held comfortably in the hand, the troublesome points or edges were removed or reduced by chipping. The stock of tools increased slowly, with the growing needs. Artificial flakes were produced at last, to supplement the diminishing stock of natural ones. Definite types of implements were at length evolved, which led readily into the simplest forms of the paleoliths, or chipped stones. It is fairly definite that the Trinil race were in the Eolithic culture, using several weapons of wood and stone.

Periods of glaciation are periods of subsidence of the land; the second glacial period, which came next, was by far the greatest of all four. The glacier withdrew after many thousands of years, the land was elevated again, and a new race appeared upon the scene. In 1907, Schoetensack discovered in the Mauer sands near Heidelberg, Germany, a single jaw, which has been named as belonging to the Heidelberg man. Along with this pre-human jaw were discovered remains of the ancient elephant, a rhinoceros, a wild horse, a primitive ox or aurochs, and many other mammalian forms. The presence of the elephant indicates a comparatively moist and well-forested country. The solitary jaw indicates the human occupancy.

This Heidelberg jaw is one of the most important finds in the whole history of anthropology. It contains features never before found in fossil or recent man. There is no evidence of chin at all. The teeth establish that it was not the jaw of an ape, but of a human form. The teeth are not large, in proportion to the jaw; but the jaw is the most powerful jaw ever known, even greater than the largest Eskimo jaw. It indicates a skull of very massive and primitive character. The space left for the tongue is not large; this may have interfered seriously with the free use of the tongue for articulate speech.

The Heidelberg man is apparently a low form of the Neanderthal race, that is, a Neanderthal in the making. The Heidelberg teeth are arranged in a perfect arch, or horseshoe arrangement; in all the apes, the grinding teeth are almost parallel with each other. This establishes it as another of the missing links. We know little of the habits of this ape-man. Future excavations may tell more of his story. All that we are sure of is that, during the second interglacial period, this race of subhumans roamed Europe.

Then came the third glaciation. After thousands of years, the ice retreated, and a new race appeared upon the human stage.