The Evolution of Man, vol 2, Ernst Haeckel [online e reader txt] 📗

speech and the higher intelligence that goes with it, and so had a less developed brain. The phylogenetic hypothesis of the organisation of this “ape-man” which I then advanced was brilliantly confirmed twenty-four years afterwards by the famous discovery of the fossil Pithecanthropus erectus by Eugen Dubois (then military surgeon in Java, afterwards professor at Amsterdam). In 1892 he found at Trinil, in the residency of Madiun in Java, in Pliocene deposits, certain remains of a large and very man-like ape (roof of the skull, femur, and teeth), which he described as “an erect ape-man” and a survivor of a “stem-form of man” (Figure 2.283). Naturally, the Pithecanthropus excited the liveliest interest, as the long-sought transitional form between man and the ape: we seemed to have found “the missing link.” There were very interesting scientific discussions of it at the last three International Congresses of Zoology (Leyden, 1895, Cambridge, 1898, and Berlin, 1901). I took an active part in the discussion at Cambridge, and may refer the reader to the paper I read there on “The Present Position of Our Knowledge of the Origin of Man” (translated by Dr. Gadow with the title of The Last Link).

An extensive and valuable literature has grown up in the last ten years on the Pithecanthropus and the pithecoid theory connected with it. A number of distinguished anthropologists, anatomists, paleontologists, and phylogenists have taken part in the controversy, and made use of the important data furnished by the new science of pre-historic research. Hermann Klaatsch has given a good summary of them, with many fine illustrations, in the above-mentioned work. I refer the reader to it as a valuable supplement to the present work, especially as I cannot go any further here into these anthropological and pre-historic questions. I will only repeat that I think he is wrong in the attitude of hostility that he affects to take up with regard to my own views on the descent of man from the apes.

The most powerful opponent of the pithecoid theory—and the theory of evolution in general—during the last thirty years (until his death in September, 1902) was the famous Berlin anatomist, Rudolf Virchow. In the speeches which he delivered every year at various congresses and meetings on this question, he was never tired of attacking the hated “ape theory.” His constant categorical position was: “It is quite certain that man does not descend from the ape or any other animal.” This has been repeated incessantly by opponents of the theory, especially theologians and philosophers. In the inaugural speech that he delivered in 1894 at the Anthropological Congress at Vienna, he said that “man might just as well have descended from a sheep or an elephant as from an ape.” Absurd expressions like this only show that the famous pathological anatomist, who did so much for medicine in the establishment of cellular pathology, had not the requisite attainments in comparative anatomy and ontogeny, systematic zoology and paleontology, for sound judgment in the province of anthropology. The Strassburg anatomist, Gustav Schwalbe, deserved great praise for having the moral courage to oppose this dogmatic and ungrounded teaching of Virchow, and showing its untenability. The recent admirable works of Schwalbe on the Pithecanthropus, the earliest races of men, and the Neanderthal skull (1897 to 1901) will supply any candid and judicious reader with the empirical material with which he can convince himself of the baselessness of the erroneous dogmas of Virchow and his clerical friends (J. Ranke, J. Bumuller, etc.).

As the Pithecanthropus walked erect, and his brain (judging from the capacity of his skull, Figure 2.283) was midway between the lowest men and the anthropoid apes, we must assume that the next great step in the advance from the Pithecanthropus to man was the further development of human speech and reason.

Comparative philology has recently shown that human speech is polyphyletic in origin; that we must distinguish several (probably many) different primitive tongues that were developed independently. The evolution of language also teaches us (both from its ontogeny in the child and its phylogeny in the race) that human speech proper was only gradually developed after the rest of the body had attained its characteristic form. It is probable that language was not evolved until after the dispersal of the various species and races of men, and this probably took place at the commencement of the Quaternary or Diluvial period. The speechless ape-men or Alali certainly existed towards the end of the Tertiary period, during the Pliocene, possibly even the Miocene, period.

The third, and last, stage of our animal ancestry is the true or speaking man (Homo), who was gradually evolved from the preceding stage by the advance of animal language into articulate human speech. As to the time and place of this real “creation of man” we can only express tentative opinions. It was probably during the Diluvial period in the hotter zone of the Old World, either on the mainland in tropical Africa or Asia or on an earlier continent (Lemuria—now sunk below the waves of the Indian Ocean), which stretched from East Africa (Madagascar, Abyssinia) to East Asia (Sunda Islands, Further India). I have given fully in my History of Creation, (chapter 28) the weighty reasons for claiming this descent of man from the anthropoid eastern apes, and shown how we may conceive the spread of the various races from this “Paradise” over the whole earth. I have also dealt fully with the relations of the various races and species of men to each other.

SYNOPSIS OF THE CHIEF SECTIONS OF OUR STEM-HISTORY.

FIRST STAGE: THE PROTISTS.

Man’s ancestors are unicellular protozoa, originally unnucleated Monera like the Chromacea, structureless green particles of plasm; afterwards real nucleated cells (first plasmodomous Protophyta, like the Palmella; then plasmophagous Protozoa, like the Amoeba).

SECOND STAGE: THE BLASTAEADS.

Man’s ancestors are round coenobia or colonies of Protozoa; they consist of a close association of many homogeneous cells, and thus are individuals of the second order. They resemble the round cell-communities of the Magospherae and Volvocina, equivalent to the ontogenetic blastula: hollow globules, the wall of which consists of a single layer of ciliated cells (blastoderm).

THIRD STAGE: THE GASTRAEADS.

Man’s ancestors are Gastraeads, like the simplest of the actual Metazoa (Prophysema, Olynthus, Hydra, Pemmatodiscus). Their body consists merely of a primitive gut, the wall of which is made up of the two primary germinal layers.

FOURTH STAGE: THE PLATODES.

Man’s ancestors have substantially the organisation of simple Platodes (at first like the cryptocoelic Platodaria, later like the rhabdocoelic Turbellaria). The leaf-shaped bilateral-symmetrical body has only one gut-opening, and develops the first trace of a nervous centre from the ectoderm in the middle line of the back (Figures 2.239 and 2.240).

FIFTH STAGE: THE VERMALIA.

Man’s ancestors have substantially the organisation of unarticulated Vermalia, at first Gastrotricha (Ichthydina), afterwards Frontonia (Nemertina, Enteropneusta). Four secondary germinal layers develop, two middle layers arising between the limiting layers (coeloma). The dorsal ectoderm forms the vertical plate, acroganglion (Figure 2.243).

SIXTH STAGE: THE PROCHORDONIA.

Man’s ancestors have substantially the organisation of a simple unarticulated Chordonium (Copelata and Ascidia-larvae). The unsegmented chorda develops between the dorsal medullary tube and the ventral gut-tube. The simple coelom-pouches divide by a frontal septum into two on each side; the dorsal pouch (episomite) forms a muscle-plate; the ventral pouch (hyposomite) forms a gonad. Head-gut with gill-clefts.

SEVENTH STAGE: THE ACRANIA.

Man’s ancestors are skull-less Vertebrates, like the Amphioxus. The body is a series of metamera, as several of the primitive segments are developed. The head contains in the ventral half the branchial gut, the trunk the hepatic gut. The medullary tube is still simple. No skull, jaws, or limbs.

EIGHTH STAGE: THE CYCLOSTOMA.

Man’s ancestors are jaw-less Craniotes (like the Myxinoida and Petromyzonta). The number of metamera increases. The fore-end of the medullary tube expands into a vesicle and forms the brain, which soon divides into five cerebral vesicles. In the sides of it appear the three higher sense-organs: nose, eyes, and auditory vesicles. No jaws, limbs, or floating bladder.

NINTH STAGE: THE ICHTHYODA.

Man’s ancestors are fish-like Craniotes: (1) Primitive fishes (Selachii); (2) plated fishes (Ganoida); (3) amphibian fishes (Dipneusta); (4) mailed amphibia (Stegocephala). The ancestors of this series develop two pairs of limbs: a pair of fore (breast-fins) and of hind (belly-fins) legs. The gill-arches are formed between the gill-clefts: the first pair form the maxillary arches (the upper and lower jaws). The floating bladder (lung) and pancreas grow out of the gut.

TENTH STAGE: THE AMNIOTES.

Man’s ancestors are Amniotes or gill-less Vertebrates: (1) Primitive Amniotes (Proreptilia); (2) Sauromammals; (3) Primitive Mammals (Monotremes); (4) Marsupials; (5) Lemurs (Prosimiae); (6) Western apes (Platyrrhinae); (7) Eastern apes (Catarrhinae): at first tailed Cynopitheca; then tailless anthropoids; later speechless ape-men (Alali); finally speaking man. The ancestors of these Amniotes develop an amnion and allantois, and gradually assume the mammal, and finally the specifically human, form.

 

CHAPTER 2.24. EVOLUTION OF THE NERVOUS SYSTEM.

The previous chapters have taught us how the human body as a whole develops from the first simple rudiment, a single layer of cells. The whole human race owes its origin, like the individual man, to a simple cell. The unicellular stem-form of the race is reproduced daily in the unicellular embryonic stage of the individual. We have now to consider in detail the evolution of the various parts that make up the human frame. I must, naturally, confine myself to the most general and principal outlines; to make a special study of the evolution of each organ and tissue is both beyond the scope of this work, and probably beyond the anatomic capacity of most of my readers to appreciate. In tracing the evolution of the various organs we shall follow the method that has hitherto guided us, except that we shall now have to consider the ontogeny and phylogeny of the organs together. We have seen, in studying the evolution of the body as a whole, that phylogeny casts a light over the darker paths of ontogeny, and that we should be almost unable to find our way in it without the aid of the former. We shall have the same experience in the study of the organs in detail, and I shall be compelled to give simultaneously their ontogenetic and phylogenetic origin. The more we go into the details of organic development, and the more closely we follow the rise of the various parts, the more we see the inseparable connection of embryology and stem-history. The ontogeny of the organs can only be understood in the light of their phylogeny, just as we found of the embryology of the whole body. Each embryonic form is determined by a corresponding stem-form. This is true of details as well as of the whole.

We will consider first the animal and then the vegetal systems of organs of the body. The first group consists of the psychic and the motor apparatus. To the former belong the skin, the nervous system, and the sense-organs. The motor apparatus is composed of the passive and the active organs of movement (the skeleton and the muscles). The second or vegetal group consists of the nutritive and the reproductive apparatus. To the nutritive apparatus belong the alimentary canal with all its appendages, the vascular system, and the renal (kidney) system. The reproductive apparatus comprises the different organs of sex (embryonic glands, sexual ducts, and copulative organs).

As we know from previous chapters (1.11 to 1.13), the animal systems of organs (the organs of sensation and presentation) develop for the most part out of the OUTER primary germ-layer, or the cutaneous (skin) layer. On the other hand, the vegetal systems of organs arise for the most part from the INNER primary germ-layer, the visceral layer. It is true that this antithesis of the animal and vegetal spheres of the body in man and all the higher animals is by no means rigid; several parts of the animal apparatus (for instance,