Author: Robert Munro

Publisher: Rarebooksclub.com

Published: 2013-09

Total Pages: 98

ISBN-13: 9781230179391

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1897 edition. Excerpt: ...dans les conditions indiquees plus haut a du etre des plus actives; les deux sexes ont du contribuer activement a la progression et les jeunes ont du imiter leurs parents avec une facilite toujours croissante. En ce qui concerne les consequences morphologiques directes de l'attitude bipede, on peut presumer que ces consequences mecaniques se sont produits avec une grande rapidite, si l'on en juge d'apres les multiples variations squelettiques determinees chez l'homme sous l'influence de variations fonctionnelles minimes relativement a celles que nous envisageons ici.1 In this same article the eminent Parisian anthropologist suggests that the destruction of the Java forests by some volcanic catastrophe--a phenomenon which the geologic records prove to have been of frequent occurrence in the island in Tertiary times--might have been the means of compelling a large-sized species of gibbon to resort to the erect attitude, and thus to accommodate himself in the best way possible to the circumstances arising from this unforeseen calamity. This hypothesis, with equal probability, might be extended so as to include the supposition that in such, or analogous, conditions there were two species of manlike apes, both of which assumed the erect attitude as a result of frequent and mortal combats for supremacy. 1 Revue Scientifique, vol. v., 4th series, 1896, p. 297. f It is not inconceivable that a powerful leader among one or other of the combatants might have distinguished himself by rushing on his enemies in a rampant attitude, wielding a piece of wood which he could even then well grasp, and thus by a combination of strategy and physical strength put them to...