1. F. Weidenreich, in his book Ages, Giants and Man, Chicago, 1946, discusses the relationship between man and his simian ancestors. There he enumerates the main peculiarities which, compared to the condition of the apes, characterize man in his upright posture. The human leg, which he mentions among other things, “is stretched in hip and knee joints to its maximum extent and adduced toward the midline, so that the knees touch each other, while in anthropoids, even if the latter succeed in standing and walking upright, the legs remain bent in hip and knee joints and are held in abduction, so that anthropoids always stand stooped, with their knees crooked and turned outward.” In the so-called normal attitude of man, therefore, the lines connecting the centers of hip-, knee-, and ankle-joints are all located in the same frontal plane. The plumb line passes through this plane. Furthermore, the center of the hip joint is, for each leg, vertically above the center of the knee and ankle joints. 2 The comparison of man and other primates is a time-honored topic, widely discussed among pre-Darwinistic zoologists. Most of the characteristic differences enumerated by Weidenreich were known to the anatomists of the eighteenth century, who also considered the possibility of a common origin. Daubenton published, in 1764, a paper about the different positions of the foramen magnum in man and animals (Mémoires de l’Academie de Paris, 1764, quoted after Herder). Even the sentence passed on upright posture because of its inherent evils is old enough. Moskati, in 1771, comparing the essential differences of man and animals, came to the conclusion that upright posture disposed heart, circulation and intestines to many defects and diseases (Vom Koerperlichen Wesentlichen Unterschiede der Thiere und Menschen, Goettingen, 1771).
2. von Uexküll, J., Theoretical Biology, New York, 1926.
3. The early Darwinists were on the search for the “missing link” connecting modern man with the living anthropoids. Today, the opinion prevails that the human branch parted from the modern anthropoids “much earlier than we ever dreamed.” Weidenreich believes that this separation occurred in the Miocene period, or not very long afterward. Portman places it in the late Cretaceous period. From there on, a fragmentary line of hominids, documented by fossils in Europe, Asia, and Africa, leads toward modern man. There is also another line, still more hypothetical, leading to the living anthropoids: chimpanzee, orangutan.
4. Gregory, W. K., The Humerus from Fish to Man, American Museum Novitates, January 31, 1949.
5. It is the hunter who understands and interprets the dog’s aiming as pointing. The “point” is the natural outgrowth of the dog’s pausing previous to springing the game.