ANTHROPOGENESIS-- Thaumaturgy, Mythical Birds, Acquired Characters--ALES HRDLICKA 1929

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St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 05 May 1929, Sun · Page 2B

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 Our Growing Knowledge of Man, Ales Hrdlicka

     AN ENDEAVOR to account for man's origin has been universal. Study of the myths and beliefs of different peoples shows that there was no tribe, no ethnic group, no religious unit, that did not have some theory, however crude, as to how man came into existence. And before science came in, once an idea became set in any group, it constituted a dogma which effectively stopped or greatly retarded further thought in that direction. Religious dogmas, being directly associated with the deities (revelations), became particularly powerful. Had it not been for the Biblical account, especially, current thoughts about men's origin and his knowledge of himself as well as that of the rest of the living nature, would have developed much earlier. 

     An analysis of the conceptions reached on the subject before the advent of the scientific period, shows that the numerous is forms group themselves into three main classes. They are: (1) wholly thaumaturgic, or (2) partly supernatural and partly natural. or (3) essentially natural. The first class of theories regard man's origin as due to purely supernatural agencies and means. without speculating as to the details. Many of the anthropogenesis of primitive tribes of today, together with those of some of the earlier Greeks, earlier Romans, and one of the versions of the Genesis. are or were of this nature. 

     The second class of views is subdivisible into two series. In the first, common to the Egyptians. all the Semitic peoples of Asia Minor. some of the Greeks the Hephaestus myths) and to the second version of the Genesis, man's body is made of earthly materials (clay, bone. blood. etc.), with the life and soul added supernaturally. In the second subclass of these beliefs, common to some of the American Indians and others, man originates supernaturally from subterranean or recently emerged mythical birds or other animal forms. 

     The third, naturalistic, or scientific category of theories may again be separated into two subclasses. The first, held by some of the early Greek and other philosophers, such as Aristotle. and and surviving largely to this day, teach a natural, evolutionary origin of the body, but believe in a distinct and higher origin of the "soul;" while the others claim an evolutionary origin of all man's attributes, physical and intellectual. The great difficulty in both these lines is the lack of a definition of the concept of "soul." Man has never known clearly and does not know yet just what is his "soul."

     From the earliest time this third-class of views as to man's origin differed from both preceding ones in being based on actual observation. In the beginnings, in the time of Anaximander and his followers, the observations were limited, imperfect and empirical: but men were gradually recognizing the close analogies between man and the rest of the organisms which surrounded him in the world. 

True scientific observations by learned men, however, and deductions on the problem of human origin began during the latter part of the Eighteenth Century, and hence long before Charles Darwin.

     Buffon, Erasmus Darwin, Goethe, Treviranus, Gall, Geoffrey St, Hilaire, and a good number of others headed eventually by Lamarck, and later Wallace, precede Charles Darwin; but it is the latter who, in 1871, in his "Descent of Man," gives the first comprehensive treatise on the subject. Buffon, Erasmus Darwin (grandfather of Charles) and above all Lamarck, explained evolution by gradual inheritance of "acquired characters" or structural adaptations, brought forth by environmental conditions. For Charles Darwin and his close followers, the essential factor in evolution, human or animal, was "natural selection" or, as Herbert Spencer termed it, the "survival of the fittest," working with the normal variation of every organism and of every part. Organisms vary, they also increase in numbers; the numerical increase leads to competition and struggle for existence: and in this struggle the most "fit" and best adapted to their environment survive and advance the group in that direction.

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