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Ape-Men

1910 New Catholic Dictionary

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Apes resembling man and therefore considered by evolutionists as beings midway between ape and man, the link between man and ape. They claim to have found within the last few decades several specimens of real ape-men. There are apes resembling man in anatomical structure and physiological functions; they are known in zoology as anthropoids (Greek: anthropos, man; eidos, like) and include the gorilla, chimpanzee, and ourang-outang. Yet man is essentially different from them all, for he is rational; and no matter how defective, or even deranged, a human being may be, he is never essentially irrational as the animal is. As regards the alleged specimens of real ape-men, it is well to distinguish two classes. The first are the rather extensive finds of races hitherto unsuspected, such as the Neanderthal and the Cro-Magnon race. Judged by their mode of burial, these must be classed as men, though perhaps of a race now extinct. The second are bold reconstructions from a few parts of a skeleton, e.g., the famous Java man, or pithecanthropus erectus (erect ape-man), determined from the top part of a skull, a thigh bone, and two molar teeth (which may not have belonged to the same individual), and the Heidelberg man built up from a jaw. There is no authority, however, for the accuracy of these reconstructions. In spite of resemblances in anatomical structure, man is essentially different from the ape, and to the unprejudiced student it would seem that the wish is father to the thought; that the evolutionists find ape-men because they are necessary to substantiate the evolutionist theory.