File:Man's place in nature, and other anthropological essays (1890) (14778003454).jpg

Identifier: mansplaceinnatur02huxl (find matches)
Title: Man's place in nature, and other anthropological essays
Year: 1890 (1890s)
Authors: Huxley, Thomas Henry, 1825-1895
Subjects: Human beings Apes Ethnology Indo-Aryans
Publisher: New York, Hurst and company
Contributing Library: The Library of Congress
Digitizing Sponsor: The Library of Congress

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or bony girdle of the hips, of Man is astrikingly human part of his organisation; the ex-panded haunch bones affording support for his visceraduring his habitually erect posture, and giving spacefor the attachment of the great muscles which enablehim to assume and to preserve that attitude. In theserespects the pelvis of the Gorilla differs very consider-ably from his (Fig. 16). But go no lower than theGibbon, and see how vastly more he differs from theGorilla than the latter does from Man, even in thisstructure. Look at the flat, narrow haunch bones—thelong and narrow passage—the coarse, outwardly curved,ischiatic prominences on which the Gibbon habituallyrests, and which are coated by the so-called callosities,^dense patches of skin, wholly absent in the Gorilla, inthe Chimpanzee, and in the Orang, as in Man!In the lower Monkeys and in the Lemurs the difference MAN AND THE LOWER ANIMALS. 9a becomes more striking still, the pelvis acquiring an al=together qiiadriipedal character.
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Giobon. Fig. 16.—Front and side views of the bony pelvis of Man,the Gorilla and Gibbon: reduced from drawings made fromnature, of the same absolute length, by Mr. Waterhouse Haw-kins. But now let us turn to a nobler and more character-istic organ—that by which the human frame seems to be, 94 MANS PLACE IN NATURK. and indeed is, so strongly distinguished from all others,—I mean the skull. The differences between a Gorillasskull and a Mans are truly immense (Fig. 17). In theformer, the face, formed largely by the massive jaw-bones, predominates over the brain-case, or craniumproper: in the latter, the proportions of the two arereversed. In the Man, the occipital foramen, throughwhich passes the great nervous cord connecting the brainwith the nerves of the body, is placed just behind thecentre of the base of the skull, which thus becomes evenlybalanced in the erect posture; in the Gorilla, it lies inthe posterior third of that base. In the Man, the sur-face of the skull is comparat

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