Early man in South America / by Aleš Hrdlička ; in collaboration with W.H. Holmes [and others].

  • Hrdlička, Aleš, 1869-1943.
Date:
1912
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Early man in South America / by Aleš Hrdlička ; in collaboration with W.H. Holmes [and others]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    lost gradually those features that interfered with liis advance or became useless—progress wliich is still unfinished. We know these to be the facts, (1) because all organic form is essentially unstable, plastic, reactive to changing influences, and to this law man’s com- plex and relatively delicate organism can form no exception; (2) because the best-authenticated skeletal remains of early man show without exception a more cr less close approximation to more primi- tive primate forms; (3) because these older human forms show, in general, more theroid features in proportion to their geologic antiq- uity; and (4) because morphologic differences have occurred in numerous historic groups of mankind within relatively recent times, are very apparent to-day in the various “races” of man, and are constantly arising in tribes, in lesser groups, in families, and in individuals. Evolutionary changes have not progressed and do not progress regularly in mankind as a whole, nor even in any of its divisions. Such changes may be thought of as a slowly-augmenting complex of zigzags, with localized forward leaps, temporary baitings, retrogres- sions, and possibly with even occasional complete cessations. Thus it would not be reasonable to expect that at any given date in the past or present all the branches or members of the human or proto- human family would be of absolutely uniform type. At all periods some individuals, and even groups, were doubtless more advanced than others from the ancestral and nearer the present human type. Nevertheless, the morphologic status of man in each geologic period had, unquestionably, its boundaries, and there is no evidence or probability that two human beings, a geologic period or more apart, could be so closely related in form that their crania or skeletons would show strictly one and the same t}q>e. The antiquity, therefore, of any human skeletal remains which do not present marked differences from those of modern man may be regarded, on morphologic grounds, as only insignificant geologically, not reaching in time, in all probability, beyond the modern, still unfinished, geologic formations. Should other claims be made in any case, the burden of definite proof would rest heavily on those advanc- ing them. Other considerations bearing on tliis point have been brought forth hi the writer’s report relating to ancient man in North America,* which should be read in connection with the ]iresent work. The essence of the subject is that the expectation of important form dif- ferences between all human skeletal remains of geologic antiquity and those of the present era is justified; that the diflerences presented by * Bulletin 35 of the Bureau of American Ethnology.