WHY DID APES BECOME MEN ?

Greymouth Evening Star, 14 November 1930, Page 9

WHY DID APES BECOME MEN ?

A BIG-BRAINED ANIMAL. “Man did very well before he was a man at all, and no one has given any reason why ho ceased to be an ape.” This was an arresting sentence in an address given by Dr 11. S. Harrison before the anthropology section of tbo British Association, of which he is president. , “We* may.” he said, “appeal to nat-n-al selection, to the inheritance of acquired characters, to orthogenesis, and, though our belief in the ascent of man remains unshakeable since the proofs are overwhelming the reasons why an ape-man became an artisan continue to elude us.

••In all our attempts to gain an understanding of the progress of early man,” he said, “wo arc heavily handicapped by the. training and experience which mould our thoughts from our earliest years. As children we. require knowledge and general ideas concerning. materials, methods, and results, which make it impossible for us to picture the real character of the men tai states of primitive man, and of the founders of the early civilisations. We leave our cradles to turn a tap or push a button that effects a miracle, and cur minds are never quite the same, again.

"Wo differ from our forerunners in the fact that our receptivity and enterprise are fostered by the idea of progress and are nourished through an organised system of traps and snares, which provide discoveries and ideas for domestication and consumption.

“This is directional research,” but real discoveries that are outside the range of existing theory are apt to bring about an opoprtunist change of direction by a revelation of new aims and possibilities. That is to say, we may be systematic and fore-thought-ful in our use of existing knowledge, and in our quest for new, but true discoveries reveal us as the opportunists men have always been. “The modern discoverer or inventor appears, but only appears, to be able to look far ahead of the knowledge of his day, and the speed and scope of modern progress give a false impression of human powers in general.”

While the artificial environment had expanded with the progress of civilisation, the human barin had not undergone a like inflation nor, so far as could be seen, had the human mind undergone a change in its essential characters.

"Human thought is compilation—a rehash of the past in the present, with a short-sighted eye on the future — and no satisfactory record has ever been made of the mind of a man whose solo knowledge had been acquired without the tuition of his fel-low-men, savage and civilised. “Man was given the means to earn a livelihood, and, found himself commanding and inventing luxuries.. In producing a new and cunning bigbrained animal with hands, Nature overshot her mark, and we are struggling With the consequences.”