Americus Times Recorder

A professor Jones, formerly of London, tells Australian students that the anthropoid apes are man's descendants, not his ancestors. Taken literally, there is of course no evidence for such a view. But it is doubtless true that the apes' ancestors were more man-like than the present apes. That is, they were less differentiated. The present ape is a highly specialized creature-much more so than man himself. Even the individual life of each ape reflects this development. The young chimpanzee is almost human; the adult is unqualifiedly a brute.

Because of this two extreme specializations- his hand and his brain -man has needed few others. He can inhabit the Arctic without growing fur; overtake the deer or overcome the lion without growing hoofs or claws; sail the sea and the air without growing fins or wings; eat all sorts of food without adapting his stomach to digest them in the raw state; and produce food and shelter where nature provides none. Thus man, by his very non-adaptation, has become the most adaptable of animals, and has occupied and dominated the earth.

The ape, on the contrary, has specialized himself for a single environment, and can survive no other. However far from the monkey he may have started, he has reverted to a monkey-like life, until now a popular view would scarcely distinguish him from the monkey, except for his lack of a tail and his greater intelligence. Even his brain, because it was more than sufficient for his monkey-like needs has not grown, but atrophies in early youth from the fine promise of his infancy. Chimpanzees, orang-utangs and gorillas are a dwindling tribe, confined to a few tropical forests and unable to live long if taken away from them, while less specialized man lives everywhere and thrives under all conditions. Surely the ancestors of those creatures were of a more generalized type, and therefore nearer to our own also less specialized pre-human ancestors.