How to Tell Your Friends from the Apes. Will Cuppy
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PILTDOWN MAN was called the Dawn Man or Barmy Ned because he was found in Great Britain. He was a great help because he left crude flint implements. These were small rough pebbles chipped by the Piltdown Man just as all the small rough pebbles of today were chipped by us. Crude flint implements were used for making still cruder flint implements.1 The Piltdown Man had little to do. His skull was twice as thick as an ordinary Englishman. It is in small pieces which can be fitted together in various ways after choosing sides. This is called Badminton. He could collect stamps. The Piltdown Man had aspidistras, delphiniums, and sinus trouble. Already he was aiming at the stars and missing them. The manubrium indicates self control but very little to control. The Piltdown Man had no chin and was rather toothy. It seems incredible that he had a private life but those are just the ones who do. The young took after their parents. Anthropologists say that the Piltdown Man was stupider than any person of today. Anthropologists are people who are in museums. They lead sheltered lives. The Early Irish left few skulls. The Early Scotch left no skulls.
1 Some say the Piltdown Man also used them to scrape furs, if he had furs, for clothing if he had clothing. It is not improbable that the better sort of Piltdown men employed some form of covering, if only a minimum.
THE HEIDELBERG MAN
THE HEIDELBERG MAN was known as the Heidelberg Jaw. He had more jaw than any other male fossil. Professor Schoetensack had been saying for twenty years that he would find just such a jaw and you can bet that he did. The Heidelberg Man developed his jaw by agglutinative language and umlauts. He did this once too often and became extinct. The Heidelberg Man lived on plain simple food and good fresh air. He had toothache, indigestion, and dizzy spells. He had brains in all the wrong places. If you asked him a question he would answer some other question. He had a vestigial tail and so have some other people I might mention. The Heidelberg Man was a Nudist and he was fond of companionship. He chose his companions by trial and error. He did not keep track of them all because he had no adding machine. He believed that practice makes perfect.1 His wit and humor ran to practical jokes such as pushing other Heidelberg Men off the Alps and hitting them in the eye with large rocks or Paleoliths.2 He was almost always angry and ferocious, causing an increased flow of adrenalin from the suprarenal capsules into the bloodstream. This could not go on forever. There were good ones and bad ones.3
1 In this species the male was the boss.
2 There has been some doubt whether the Heidelberg Man talked. Of course he talked. You couldn’t stop him.
3 The Heidelberg Man was the first fossil who could be called Man in Latin, so he was called Homo heidelbergensis. The Java, Peking, and Piltdown Men could only be called Men in English.
THE NEANDERTHAL MAN
THE NEANDERTHAL MAN lived in fear of the Woolly Mammoth, the Woolly Rhinoceros, the Woolly Hyena,1 and the Neanderthal Woman, who would drag him to her cave and roll great stones against the door and marry him. The Neanderthal Woman had no charm but she had a club. The Neanderthal Man was so difficult to rouse that one wonders if it was worth it. There were no icemen because it was the Great Ice Age. Neanderthal Men had very short fibulas. They walked with a shuffling gait like Edgar Wallace characters. They were slow on the uptake. The Neanderthals lived in groups under an Old Man who would drive out all the likely youths as soon as they were likely. Then the more intelligent girls would stroll off in the same direction to pick wild flowers. They would have clubs. The Neanderthal Man had plenty of brains but somehow they did him no good. During the Great Ice Age the glaciers kept advancing and retreating much more than they do now. They kept the Neanderthals on the run. The glaciers were in a wild state and only the fleetest Neanderthals could escape from them.2 This was the survival of the fleetest. The Neanderthal Man had fires, caves, marrow bones,3 mosquitoes, love, and arthritis. What more can you ask?
1 The Neanderthal Man was rather woolly himself.
2 Cf. Pursued by a Glacier.
3 Neanderthal Men also ate Snails, Frogs, Lemmings, and other varmints. Some say they ate fried Neanderthal.
THE CRO-MAGNON MAN
THE CRO-MAGNONS were an old man, two young men, a woman, and a child. The woman’s brain was larger than the average man’s. She had been killed with a blunt implement. The Cro-Magnons were very tall and had perfectly enormous fibulas like those in Chicago and Minneapolis, caused by chromosomes, genes, hormones, and blastomeres. They were so wonderful that they were called Homo sapiens after us. They had Adam’s apples. The Cro-Magnons were Upper Pleistocene and respectable. They invented Santa Claus, foreign missions, eggplant, punctuation, tatting, and new methods of killing Neanderthals. They made rules preventing each other from doing what they did. We should love the Cro-Magnons because they were so smug.1 The Cro-Magnons were interested in art because of their unhappy home life which in turn was caused by their art. They would paint a Woolly Rhinoceros or a Paleolithic Bison in a cave when there was no one to stop them. Their favorite painting was called “A Yard of Paleolithic Bison.” Their art was Independent and was finally arrested. It was Late Aurignacian because it was found in Early Solutrean deposits. The Cro-Magnons died out because they neglected sex.
1 Perhaps we of today are inclined to overestimate the intellectual powers of the Cro-Magnons, who lived 25,000 years ago. As some of my readers may recall, even so recently as twenty or thirty years ago people knew hardly anything. For earlier data one has but to glance at the Family Album.
THE MODERN MAN
THE MODERN MAN or Nervous Wreck is the highest of all mammals because anyone can see that he is. There are about 2,000,000,000 Modern Men or too many. The Modern Man’s highly developed brain has made him what he is and you know what he is.1 The development of his brain is caused by his upright or bipedal position, as in the Penguin, the Dinosaur, and other extinct reptiles. Modern Man has been called the Talking Animal because he talks more than any three other animals chosen at random. He has also been called the Reasoning Animal but there may be a catch in this. The fissure of Sylvius and the fissure of Rolando enable him to argue in circles. His main pursuits in the order named are murder, robbery, kidnapping, body-snatching, barratry, nepotism, arson, and mayhem. This is known as the Good, the True, and the Beautiful. Modern Men are viviparous. They mature slowly but make up for it later, generally from July first to June thirtieth inclusive. The females carry nickels and pins in their mouths. They are fond of glittering objects, bits of ribbon and olives.2 All Modern Men are descended from a Wormlike creature but it shows more on some people. Modern Man will never become extinct if the Democrats can help it.3
1 It is because of his brain that he has risen above the animals. Guess which animals he has risen above.
2 Each male has from 2 to 790 females with whom he discusses current events. Of these he marries from 3 to 17.
3 To be perfectly fair, Modern Man was invented on October 25, 4004 B.C., at 9 o’clock in the morning, according to the statement of Dr. John Lightfoot (1602–1675) of Stoke-upon-Trent, Vice-chancellor of the University of Cambridge. Dr. Lightfoot’s Whole Works comes in thirteen volumes.
HOW TO TELL YOUR FRIENDS FROM THE APES, OR A MONKEY A DAY
