Tail on man - never
Media
Part of Panorama
- Title
- Tail on man - never
- Language
- English
- Source
- Volume XII (Issue No.4) April 1960
- Year
- 1960
- Subject
- Brachiation
- Animal locomotion
- Rights
-
- Fulltext
- Tail on Man? Never! Man’s ancestor never had a tail, and the size of his brain was not a measure of his intelligence. These are two statements, con trary ot the popular conception, reported by a panel discussion at the University of Chicago during celebrations of Darwin’s Centen nial. Dr. L. S. B. Leakey, British anthropologist who recently found the fossil skull of Kenya’s Zinjanthropus, who he believes was the first true man, said no evi dence was ever found to show that any of man’s ancestors ever had a tail. “I doubt that they did,” Dr. Leakey said. "We hope one day to find fossils that will satisfy us completely on this point.” He said that the coccyx, some times referred to as "vestigial tail,” shows that the vertebral column in man simply did not develop into a tail as it did in apes and monkeys. Dr. Leakey also emphasized that not the size but the shape of the brain reflects intel ligence. "Size, except when taken in relation to the total body weight of the creature, is not important at all.” he said. ‘"The Neanderthal man had a larger brain than any other man, ana today, Eskimos have the larg est brain and Japanese the small est, which does not reflect their relative intelligence,” he ex plained. ‘There is no reason to believe at all that because, shall we say, Australopithecus of South Africa had a brain only about the same size as a gorilla, that his ability in the use of his brain was of the same order because he could have had a brain of the same size but of a much greater complexity in its cortex.” The panel also discussed whe ther man’s ancestors ever traveled by overhead locomotion, that is, by swinging from branch to branch. This is called brachiation. Dr. F. Clark Howell, Chicago University anthropologist, said the first detailed study of brachia tion was undertaken this year, that the idea of whether or not man went through a brachiating stage "has been terribly obscured” and that the term itself is com plex and covers, so to speak, a multitude of sins.” The study of brachiation, he said, is crucial to the understand ing of evolution. But brachiation, another scientist pointed out, is generally so poorly defined that some will include as brachiators city’s subway strap hangers. April 1960 75
- pages
- 75