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Haeckel, and he has a romantic fantasy, and even so far to rebuild the "missing link", and the apes, he did not name pithecanthropus. This search for the missing link was a complete success soon, when a Dutch military doctor and amateur anthropologist, sports Dibuwa found skull pithecanthropus (now included in the same), Homo erectus in Java in 1891. The number of newly discovered fossils man has steadily increased since then, no one of them, but more importantly Taung child (MERCOSUR LATE NEOGENE HOMINIDS FROM africanus) described dart from South Africa in 1924. Many of the australopithecines was later found by the broom, leakeys, and the other has approved a renewal of this remarkable creature.           Homo Sapiens – Species Extraordinaire     No other thought was as distasteful to the Victorian imagination than that man could have descended from the apes. Even if evolution could be demonstrated for all other organisms, surely man with all of his unique human characteristics must have been specially created…  Within a few years after the publication of the Origin, Haeckel in Germany (1866; 1868) and T.H. Huxley in England (1863) published volumes in which man was postulated to have descended from the apes... [A]nd Darwin in 1871 published a major work, The Descent of Man, in which the problems of human evolution were discussed in considerable detail.   In the meantime (actually already before the publication of the Origin) the first fossil hominds were found, in particular Neanderthal man (1856). Haeckel, with his usual romantic imagination, went even so far as to reconstruct the "missing link" between man and apes, naming him Pithecanthropus. The search for this missing link was unexpectedly soon crowned with success, when a Dutch Army doctor and amateur anthropologist, E. Dubois, found the skull of Pithecanthropus (now included in Homo) erectus in Java in 1891. The number of new finds of fossil man has increased steadily since that time, none of them more important than the Taung child (Australopithecus africanus) described by Dart from South Africa in 1924. Numerous subsequent finds of australopithecines by Broom, the Leakeys, and others have permitted a reconstruction of this remarkable creature. In its pelvis and posterior extremity it hardly differs from modern man; in its dentition and face it is somewhat intermediate between apes and man; and in its brain (about 450 cc as compared to 1500 cc in modern man), it is still essentially on the ape level.   Additional finds in southeast Asia, Ethiopia, Kenya and Tanzania now permit reconstructing an almost unbroken chain from the oldest Australopithecus (afarensis) through A. africanus, Homo habilis, H. erectus, to Homo sapiens. Chronological as well as morphological considerations suggest that A. africanus was a polytypic species, isolated populations of which gave rise both to the robust Australopithecus robustus (a side line) and to Homo habilis. It is most unlikely that we will ever recover enough fossils to determine where the isolates were located in which these species evolved nor what caused their divergence from A. africanus. Australopithecus robustus, which coexisted with Homo habilis, became extinct more than one million years ago. Although Australopithecus can now be traced back to about four million years ago, it is still controversial how many million years earlier this hominid line had branched off the line that leads to the African apes, the chimpanzees and gorillas.   … What is far more important than the uncertainties of chronology is our growing understanding of the steps that led from the anthropoid to the human condition. The assumption of upright posture when our ancestors descended from the trees was apparently the first and perhaps the most decisive step. It freed the anterior extremity for the function of manipulation, which permitted the carrying of objects and far more extensive tool use and eventually tool manufacturing than found in any ape. The hunting of big game and the development of a true language were apparently other major steps in the evolution of man. To characterize man by such criteria as consciousness, or by the possession of mind and of intelligence, is not very helpful, because there is good evidence that man differs from the apes and many other animals (even the dog!) in these characteristics only quantitatively. It is language more than anything else that permits the transmission of information from generation to generation and thus the development of nonmaterial culture. Speech, thus is the most characteristic human feature. It is often said that culture is man's most unique characteristic. Actually, this is very much a matter of definition. If one defines culture as that which is transmitted (by example and learning) from older to younger individuals, then culture is very widespread among animals. Thus even in the evolution of culture there is not a sharp break between animal and man. Though culture is more important in man, perhaps by several orders of magnitude, the capacity for culture is not unique with him but a product of gradual evolution.   One of the most surprising discoveries of anthropological research has been the rapidity with which Homo evolved. Even allowing for the concomitant increase in body size, the growth of the hominid brain from 450 to 1600 cc was remarkably fast. Perhaps equally remarkable is that once the Homo sapiens stage had been reached (more than 100,000 years ago), no further noticeable increase in brain size occurred. Why primitive man should have been selected for a brain of such perfection that 100,000 year later it permitted the achievement of a Descartes, Darwin or Kant, or the invention of the computer and the visits to the moon, or the literary accomplishment of a Shakespeare or Goethe, is hard to understand. But then of course, man will always be a puzzle to man.       — Ernst Mayr, The Growth of Biological Thought: Diversity, Evolution, and Inheritance, Chapter 13 – Post Synthesis Developments                       Indexes/17