_Dryopithecus_, Lartet, C. R., xliii., p. 221 (1856); id., Mem. Soc.
Geol., Palæon., i., p. 1, pl. 1 (1890); Gaudrey, C. R. Cx., p. 373
(1890); Zittel, Handb. Palæont., iv., p. 709 (1893).
This genus is based on remains from the Mid-Miocene of St. Gaudens (Haute
Garonne), which indicate the former existence of an Ape more Man-like than
any other. In size it approached the dimensions of the Chimpanzee; the
incisors are smaller--an elevated character--and shorter than those in the
Gorilla or the Chimpanzee. The canines are, as in the Gorilla, thick, sharp
behind, and taller than the cheek-teeth; the anterior pre-molar is large,
as in the Gorilla, has one root, and a strong cingulum on the inner side;
the posterior pre-molar is longer than broad, is two-cusped, and has a
flattened talon. The molar teeth have two pairs of opposite cusps, and a
fifth on the hind border, which develops, on the hindmost tooth, into a
two-cusped talon. The line of union of the lower jaw is high, {217}projects
obliquely forward, and is longer and narrower than in Man. The late
appearance of the last molar in the upper jaw was supposed to be a
character which was alone common to _Dryopithecus_ and Man; but Dr. Forsyth
Major has observed that in _Macacus_ the same late in-coming of the "wisdom
tooth" occurs. The type species, DRYOPITHECUS FONTANI, Lartet, which lived
in the Mid-Miocene forests of St. Gaudens, though the most Man-like of all
the Tertiary Apes, was nevertheless further distant from Man than the
Chimpanzees (_Anthropopithecus_). The form of the symphysis of its lower
jaw indicates that its snout was considerably lengthened. Certain molar
teeth found in the Bohnerz strata from Melchingen and Salmendingen, in
Würtemberg, and at one time considered to be human, have now been ascribed
to _D. fontani_.
GENUS SIMIA (_suprà_, p. 170).
To this genus has been referred a molar tooth found in the Pliocene Strata
of the Sivalik hills in India. It is considered to belong to an Orang-Utan,
SIMIA SATYRUS.
GENUS ANTHROPOPITHECUS (_suprà_, p. 188).
A fragmentary jaw, also from the Pliocene beds in the Sivalik hills, has
been described as ANTHROPOPITHECUS SIVALENSIS by Lydekker, who at first
placed it in a new genus, _Palæopithecus_, but has more recently determined
it to belong really to this now exclusively African genus. The relative
smallness of the premolars distinguish it from the Orang. Should this
determination be confirmed, the presence of a true Chimpanzee in Asia will
be a fact of the highest interest in the geographical distribution of the
_Simiidæ_.
{218}FAMILY HOMINIDÆ (_suprà_, p. 203).
GENUS HOMO (_suprà_, _p. 203_).
Although, as has been stated above, the _Primates_, represented by lowly
Lemuroids evincing relationship with the ancestors of the hoofed animals
(_Ungulata_), first appeared in Eocene times, it would be a hopeless quest,
as Professor Boyd-Dawkins points out, to seek for a highly specialised Man
in a fauna where no living genus of Mammals was present.
The earliest appearance of Man on the globe has been considered by Dr. Hamy
and M. de Mortillet to be in France in the middle of the Miocene age. They
base their belief on flint fragments supposed to be artificially made, and
on a cut upon the bone of an extinct Manatee considered to be of human
handiwork. The evidence is, however, doubtful and unsatisfactory. In this
age appeared such Anthropoids as _Pliopithecus_ and the highly-developed
_Dryopithecus_ (p. 216), when the climate was tropical in mid-Europe, and
warm and genial even within 8° 15[prime] of the North Pole. Professor
Boyd-Dawkins believes that notwithstanding the favourable climate and the
existence of so highly-developed an Ape as _Dryopithecus_, "were any
Man-like animal living in the Miocene age, he might reasonably be expected
to be not Man, but intermediate between Man and something else."
The Pliocene, _i.e._, that portion of the Tertiary period in which the
_genera_ of mammals are mostly the same as those now living--only one
_species_ is known to be identical,--is the next horizon in which human
remains have been asserted to have been found. The evidence is based on a
skull found in a railway cutting in France after a landslip, and on a
supposed artificially incised bone; but both these data require
confirmation. Senhor Ribeiro has, however, obtained in Portugal implements
{219}said to be of undoubted human manufacture in strata of this age, 1,200
feet below the surface; and it has been claimed by Professor Whitney that,
in California, a skull, as well as a mortar and pestle, have been recovered
from Pliocene beds. The latter evidence has also been called in question.
The discovery at Crayford and in Kent's Hole in England, and in the Grotte
d'Église in France, of flint implements of human manufacture, demonstrates
without doubt that Man was living in Europe in the Pleistocene age--at
which time most of the species of Mammals were identical with those now
living--before the climate (which had been cooling since the Miocene) had
become so cold as to cause the Arctic Mammals to swarm down in front of the
approaching glaciation of the Northern Hemisphere. At that epoch the
River-drift Men, as they are called, would have had to contend with Wolves,
Bears, and Lions; while Elephants and Rhinoceroses, Horses, Oxen, and Bison
roamed wild around them. The implements of this "long-headed" race were
stones, conveniently picked up and rough-hewn into rude choppers and
scrapers, pointed borers, and cutting chips. There is evidence that their
makers ranged across a more extended Europe than now, into Africa and
continental India. After the River-drift Men, who disappeared with the Ice
age, there came on the scene a race known as the Palæolithic "Cave Men."
Associated with their bones there have been found, in numerous caverns,
remains of the Reindeer (_Cervus tarandus_), the Woolly Rhinoceros (_R.
tichorhinus_), and the Mammoth (_Elephas primigenius_). They were an
artistic people, who have left drawings of extraordinary fidelity of the
animals with which they were familiar, scratched on bones and horns of the
animals themselves. Their implements were better chipped and shaped than
were those of the {220}River-drift Men. They appear to have been ignorant
of the potter's art; but they clothed themselves in skins, wore
teeth-ornaments, and hunted the Reindeer and other animals--they were men,
as Sir A. Geikie remarks, who must have had much similarity with the
Esquimo--an identification, however, which has lately been strongly
contested. Many fragments of their skeletons have been found in caverns in
various parts of Europe: a lower jaw and an _ulna_ at Naulette, a skull at
Cro-Magnon, a lower jaw in the Grotte des Fées at Arcy-sur-Cure (Yonne),
another from the rock shelter of La Madelaine in the Dordogne; portions of
skulls from Neanderthal, Cannstatt, and Gibraltar, and as far north as
Derbyshire, in England. The remains are, unfortunately, all very
fragmentary, and afford little more information as to the physical
characters of the Palæolithic races, than that they were "long-headed." In
1886, however, in the Grotto of Spy, in the Belgian Province of Namur, were
discovered two nearly complete skeletons, which showed that the Neanderthal
skull, the lower jaw from Naulette, and the skulls from Cannstatt and
Gibraltar all belonged to the same race. This race, which was widely spread
over Europe in the Palæolithic age, presents more Simian characters than
any yet unearthed. MM. Lohest and Fraipont, of Liege, who discovered and
described the remains from Spy, have given in detail the following Simian
characteristics which they present: The superciliary crests are far
greater, and the forehead more retreating, than in any other known
race--characters which closely resemble those in female and young male
Orangs and Chimpanzees; and the occipital region of the skull shows a
transverse crest as in some African tribes and in the above-named
Anthropoid Apes. The lower jaw presents little or none of that markedly
{221}human character--the chin; and the slope of the interior (or
posterior) surface of its symphysis is intermediate between that of Man and
the higher Apes. The bones of the fore-arm (the _ulna_ and _radius_) are
curved so as to produce a space between them, wider than in any human
subject, and resembling what is seen in Apes. The thigh-bone (_femur_) is
so shaped and articulated to the leg-bone (_tibia_) "that in order to
maintain equilibrium the head and body must have been thrown forward." This
relation of the _femur_ and _tibia_ is found in the Apes, and it is highly
probable that the Man of Spy presented a somewhat similar figure when
walking; that is to say, the knees were bent and the body thrown forward.
The crowns of the molar teeth of this race have, as in the lowest races of
Man, four cusps, but with distinct and divergent roots, as among the
Chimpanzees, but they increase in size from in front to behind, as they do
in Apes. "The other and much more numerous characters of this long-headed
skull, of the trunk and of the limbs, seem to be all human." (_Fraipont._)
"Under whatever aspect we view this [the Neanderthal] cranium ... whether
we regard its vertical depression, the enormous thickness of its
supra-ciliary ridges, its sloping occiput, or its long and straight
squamosal suture--we meet with Ape-like characters, stamping it as the most
pithecoid of human crania yet discovered." The cranial capacity being,
however, about seventy-five cubic inches, "so large a mass of brain as this
would alone suggest that the pithecoid tendencies indicated by the skull
did not extend deep into the organisation.... In no sense, then, can the
Neanderthal bones be regarded as the remains of a human being intermediate
between Man and Apes." (_Huxley_, 1867.) "The distance which separates the
Man of Spy from the {222}modern Anthropoid Ape is undoubtedly enormous;
between the Man of Spy and the _Dryopithecus_ it is a little less. But we
must be permitted to point out that if the Man of the later Quaternary age
is the stock whence existing races have sprung, he has travelled a great
way. From the data now obtained, it is permissible to believe that we shall
be able to pursue the ancestral type of Man and the Anthropoid Apes still
further, perhaps as far as the Eocene, and even beyond." (_Fraipont._) As
these fossil human remains are now admitted to be of the Palæolithic age of
the Pleistocene period, they give some idea of "the rate of evolution of
the human species, and indicate that it has not taken place at a much
faster or slower pace than that of other Mammalia. And if that is so, we
are warranted in the supposition that the genus _Homo_, if not the species
which the courtesy or the irony of naturalists has dubbed _sapiens_, was
represented in Pliocene or even Miocene times.... There is no reason to
suppose that the genus _Homo_ was confined to Europe in the Pleistocene
age; it is much more probable that this, like other Mammalian genera of
that period, was spread over a large extent of the surface of the globe. At
that time, in fact, the climate of regions nearer the equator must have
been far more favourable to the human species, and it is possible that
under such conditions it may have attained a higher development than in the
north." (_Huxley._) Professor Huxley points out also, in the interesting
article "The Aryan Question," in _The Contemporary Review_ for November,
1890, from which we have taken the above extracts, that the Irish river-bed
skulls, belonging to a dark-haired, long-headed race, and those of the
Frisians, the blond, long-headed race, now living on the North German
coast, unmistakably approach the Neanderthal and Spy type in many of their
distinctive {223}characters, "a sure indication" of the physiological
continuity with the Pleistocene Neanderthaloid Men. The skulls of some of
the Australian aboriginals and of the broad-headed people of Borreby, in
Denmark, also present a remarkable similarity to the Neanderthal
skull--perhaps an indication that those are characters of a stage in the
pedigree of the human species before it differentiated into any of the
existing races. (_Huxley._)
The next palæontological evidence of Man is found in the Neolithic cavern
deposits, alluvial accumulations, peat mosses, lake bottoms, pile
dwellings, and shell-mounds in various parts of Europe. Between the time
that Palæolithic Man left the caves he occupied, and the date when the
earlier Neolithic people began to deposit fragments of the records of their
history in the kitchen-midden, which they piled in front of their shelters,
a long period appears to have elapsed in many districts. The objects found
in these refuse-heaps are not associated with the remains of the Mammoth,
the Woolly Rhinoceros, or the Elephant, but with those of animals still
living, or such as have lived down to within historical times. The remains
of his skeleton indicate that Neolithic Man varied very much in stature.
Some were tall, some short; some had long and others broad skulls. The
long-skulled people had the same tall stature and cranial peculiarities as
the blue-eyed, light haired, and long-headed _Xanthochroi_ living at the
present day in Eastern Prussia, North Belgium, Northern France, and
Britain, though their bony fabric "bears marks of somewhat greater
ruggedness and savagery." The broad-skulled Men were short, and agreed in
physical characters with the majority of the people now inhabiting the
Mediterranean sea-board--the _Melanochroi_--with black hair and black eyes.
Many Neolithic graves have {224}given up also the remains of a tall,
broad-skulled, and a short, long-skulled race.
Such are the only recovered links in the pedigree of our race, and
extremely unsatisfactory they are; indeed, beyond these few spots in
Western Europe, in California, and the Mississippi valley in North America,
Palæontology is silent as to the history of Man, and sheds no light upon
his origin, or his last pithecoid parents; for, in Professor Huxley's
impressive words, "so far as that light is bright it shows him
substantially as he is now, and when it grows dim it permits us to see no
sign that he was other than he is now."
{225}III.--THE GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION OF THE PRIMATES.
By means of the accompanying tables and maps I have attempted to present in
a concise and clear manner the distribution of the _Lemuroidea_ and the
_Anthropoidea_ in time and in space.
For the distribution of existing forms I have followed the divisions of the
Globe proposed by Dr. Bowdler Sharpe in his essay on the Zoo-Geographical
Areas of the World, published in "Natural Science" (Vol. III., pp.
100-108).
I. Table showing the genera of PRIMATES peculiar to, and common to, the Old
and New Worlds.
_A._ LEMUROIDEA.
OLD WORLD. NEW WORLD.
(Palæogæa.) (Neogæa.)
Living. Extinct. Living. Extinct.
Fam. CHIROMYIDÆ.
Chiromys [+] -- -- --
Fam. TARSIIDÆ.
Tarsius [+] -- -- --
Fam. MEGALADAPIDÆ. {226}
Megaladapis -- [+] -- --
Fam. LEMURIDÆ.
Perodicticus [+] -- -- --
Loris [+] -- -- --
Nycticebus [+] -- -- --
Galago [+] -- -- --
Chirogale [+] -- -- --
Microcebus [+] -- -- --
Opolemur [+] -- -- --
Lemur [+] [+] -- --
Mixocebus [+] -- -- --
Hapalemur [+] -- -- --
Lepidolemur [+] -- -- --
Avahis [+] -- -- --
Propithecus [+] -- -- --
Indris [+] -- -- --
Fam. ANAPTOMORPHIDÆ.
Microchærus -- [+] -- --
Mixodectes -- -- -- [+]
Cynodontomys -- -- -- [+]
Omomys -- -- -- [+]
Anaptomorpha -- -- -- [+]
Plesiadapis -- [+] -- --
Protoadapis -- [+] -- --
Fam. ADAPIDÆ. {227}
Adapis -- [+] -- [+]
Tomitherium -- -- -- [+]
Laopithecus -- -- -- [+]
Pelycodus -- [+] -- [+]
Microsyops -- -- -- [+]
Hyopsodus -- [+] -- [+]
Indrodon -- -- -- [+]
Opisthotomus -- -- -- [+]
Apheliscus -- -- -- [+]
Sarcolemur -- -- -- [+]
Hipposyus -- -- -- [+]
Bathrodon -- -- -- [+]
Mesacodon -- -- -- [+]
Stenacodon -- -- -- [+]
_B._ ANTHROPOIDEA.
Fam. HAPALIDÆ.
Hapale -- -- [+] [+]
Midas -- -- [+] --
Fam. CEBIDÆ.
Chrysothrix -- -- [+] --
Protopithecus -- -- -- [+]
Callithrix -- -- [+] [+]
Nyctipithecus -- -- [+] -- {228}
Brachyurus -- -- [+] --
Pithecia -- -- [+] --
Alouatta -- -- [+] [+]
Cebus -- -- [+] [+]
Homunculus -- -- -- [+]
Anthropops -- -- -- [+]
Lagothrix -- -- [+] --
Brachyteles -- -- [+] --
Ateles -- -- [+] --
Fam. CERCOPITHECIDÆ.
Papio [+] [+] -- --
Theropithecus [+] -- -- --
Cynopithecus [+] -- -- --
Oreopithecus -- [+] -- --
Macacus [+] [+] -- --
Cercocebus [+] -- -- --
Cercopithecus [+] -- -- --
Dolichopithecus -- [+] -- --
Mesopithecus -- [+] -- --
Colobus [+] [+] -- --
Semnopithecus [+] [+] -- --
Nasalis [+] -- -- --
Fam. SIMIIDÆ. {229}
Pliopithecus -- [+] -- --
Hylobates [+] [+] -- --
Dryopithecus -- [+] -- --
Simia [+] [+] -- --
Gorilla [+] -- -- --
Anthropopithecus [+] [+] -- --
It will be apparent from the above tables that, while the living
_Lemuroidea_ are confined to the Eastern Hemisphere, in past times some
genera were not only common to both Hemispheres, but the Order was equally
well, if not indeed better, represented in the New, than in the Old, World.
Among the _Anthropoidea_, on the other hand, then, as now, none of the
genera were common to both Hemispheres; and a large number of the genera,
which then existed, were identical with genera now living, to a greater
extent than among the _Lemuroidea_.
II. Tables to illustrate the distribution of the genera of Primates in
time, in the different Zoo-Geographical Regions into which the World has
been divided.
{230}_A._ PALÆARCTIC REGION.