ABSTRACT
The year 1859 has been hailed as the one in which scientists discovered that man was an animal (Eiseley, 1959, p. 225). This may be accepted as a major accomplishment, though the same scientists had some decidedly ambiguous views concerning which animals to include under the rubric of man. Primitive man, and presumably ancient man, had made this discovery some half-million years or more earlier. In fact, we may consider the likelihood that man was always aware of his affinity with other animals and consequently did not need to “discover” this obvious relationship any more than he discovered his stomach or eyeballs, or than the female of our species discovered that she was bearing the young (Fisher, 1958, p. 189). The early apprehension of a working knowledge of anatomy, human and nonhuman, was indispensable to man’s survival. This was crucial in an animal form that was liquidating various physical abilities and instincts in exchange for the use of tools, who had both to defend himself from predators and to hunt and utilize other animals and who required assistance for the birth of his young (Washburn and Avis, 1958). Moreover, the early apprehension of anatomical form and function served to configure ancient man’s perception of the world. Anatomical form remains a salient organizing system even in cultural categorizations that have little or no apparent connection with anatomy (Kroeber, 1948, p. 300). Many of the kinds of observations recommended in “The Argument from Animals to Men” are habitually made by primitive men and were presumably made by ancient men (Haldane, 1956). I suggest that such observations were essential to survival and constituted a substantial part of the biologically founded culture with which humans conducted their own evolution from the earliest times. Ancient man argued from animals to men and back again with sophistication and success. The evolutionary functions of these arguments and their consequences require at least a prefatory examination.
