MONKEYS OR FISH?

Taranaki Daily News, 30 December 1929, Page 7

MONKEYS OR FISH?

MAN’S DESCENT AND SCIENCE

THE LATEST CONTENTIONS.

CLOSELY RELATED TO THE SHARK.

Tho vanity of man, indeed, received pretty much of a shock when Darwin informed us that wo wore descended from monkeys. And now, to cap the cilmax, Dr. William A. Gregory, of Columbia University, says that our noble expressive human features can trace their beginnings to a more flsh 1 Though wo have been accustomed to thinking that our eyes aro tlie place where our aouls shine through, a of flat-worm, which was a specialised form of jellyfish and did. not have any joul at all to speak of, already had tho rudiments of eyes in certain lightsensitive colls. Still farther back in tho molecular stages of our genealogy wo can find tho beginnings of the human oyo in tho sensitivity of protoplasm to both the injurious and the beneficial effects of lights. Our eye as it exists to-day has taken on only minor improvement since the days when it was first completely evolved on tho countenance of the shark—one of our direct ancestors. Our faces as a whole, which wo are

go proud of bccaueo they scorn to sot us, flatteringly apart from other loss intelligent anil. attractive forms of life, really have very little value from an aesthetic or spiritual point of view, and aro merely a food detecting and food trapping mask in front of the brain. Our delicately chiselled noses with their noble Roman curves and subtle Greek lines and saucy, impudent tilts were ' originally created to guide the Appetite of our gluttonous shark-like forefathers whenever they felt the need of a-feast, and owe their development and present perfection to the demands of our bodies rather than to the desire of our. intelligences to express their superiority in a physical way. According, to the Columbia professor “oven the most imposing faces aro but xpado over flshtraps, concealed behind a smiling mask, but still sot with sharp tooth inherited from ferocious promammalian forebears." A sad blow, surely to our belief that man was created in the image of God! And a sadder one, perhaps, to beauty parlour owners and cosmetic manufacturers, for what lovely woman can feel so marvellously superior now, oven with the best permanent wave in town, the most expensive kiss-proof lipstick in the world, and with tlie most spiritual look that belladonna can supply, knowing that she has got to bo grateful to fishes for tho more possession of her rosebud mouth and mysterious eyes and lusttous locks and oven for her facial muscles, which hoist-her into now sublimity whenever sho has thorn lifedf Dr. Gregory’s discoveries tnako a true “fish story," to bo sure, but in “Our Face From Fiah to Man," recently published, hiu facts, unlike most fish stories, aro gathered from an oxtenaivo study " of embryology am! fossils and from an accurate investigation of tho most primitive forms-of life. According to this scientist, who is a professor of vertebrate paleontology and a curator of ichthyology and comparative anatomy at the American Museum of Natural History, tho shark is one of our relatively early ancestors; and every one of the 28 skull bones possessed by humans ia inherited from a much tinier creature which was one of tho shark’s own great-great-grand-paronts. Our fliut ancestor known to have a physiognomy of any kind, according to Dr. Gregory, ia the Slipper Animalcule, “whoso fuco consists only of a gash in tho side of its mocassin-like body." A progressive reptile named the Mycterosaurus, which sprang from amphibians and swamp-living flshcfl, ia credited with originating tho temple of the human skull. Later, a still more progressive reptile, which also sprang from the fossilised gilled young of air-breathing fishes,, which, during tho Coal Agea, succeeded in breeding eggs on dry land, originated our ono-pleoo jaw, which before that time had been a more complicated structure. Our hair—oven those divinely lustrous and silken locks which wo call woman’s crowning glory—first grew out of tho scalcfl or thoso ancient fish, which finally developed into mammals when they began living on land. According to Dr. Gregory, "means had to bo found to fnsulate the body in slowly conducting ’ substances, 00 as to defy tho cold; on the other hand, to enable tho body to cool itself when overheated. For this purpooso many ‘basic patents’ had to bo worked out in tho heat-conserving organs, in tho circulation of body fluids, in tho breathing organs. The locomotor machinery was vastly improved, the brain and nervous system had to keep pack with the general advance, and new, much leas wasteful methods of reproduction had to bo perfected. “Chief among tho heat-retaining structures is tho hair, which seems to have arisen from small tactile outgrowths of tho skin. These at first grow out between tho scales and later supplanted them. Wo do not know exactly when tho substitution took place, as the skin of soft-skinned animals is very rarely, if over, fossilised. “Even, as in tho most primitive of living mammals, tho hard, bony mask of tlie face had already begun to sink beneath the surface and a more or less pliable skin had been developed. But the most remarkable fact is that, as the bony inask sank beneath the surface, tho ‘facial muscles,’ ho characteristic of mammals alone among tho vertobratco, came into being." Tho whole story of tho transformation of flsh to man may strike scientists as a most dramatic one. But we have always looked upon tho faces and varying subtleties in tho structure of human features as more or less of 3 sign-post in determining certain spiritual and intellectual qualities in tho different people we meet. And now we learn that it was certainly not the mental struggles of brainless fishes to adapt themselves to life on land that caused them to adopt our treasured eyes and ears and noser? and 'mouths, but simply their endeavours to resist tho changes of temperature, to simplify their quest for food, and to do a lot of other necessary tningr? in tho way of solf-preaorvation, which have nothing to do with the lofty, spiritual struggles which faces arc supposed to express.