“THE BIG-BRAINED APE”

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XXIV, Issue 97, 7 April 1934, Page 7

“THE BIG-BRAINED APE”

Lecturer’s Comment on a “Warning” Professor G. Elliot Smith, lecturing on human biology at the Royal Institution, last month, stated that he had been warned by an unknown correspondent not to use the phrase "man, the big-brained ape.” "There is no structure in the human brain which is not also present in the ape’s brain,” he said. "Areas in the ape’s brain become greatly expanded in the human brain, and this is the only distinction which can be discovered. , "Only ten years ago it was supposed that a certain muscle was strietly restricted to man, but since then anatomists working in the American Museum, Now York, have found thia muscle in the gorilla and chimpanzee. "In view of these discoveries, and the fact that the human body is structurally identical with that of the ape, it has become quite common tn term man as 'the big-brained ape.’ Ap parently this term has given offence tn some people, tor T had a letter recently from an unknown correspondent warning me of the dangerous course I was embarking upon bv using this phrase in my lecture.”