The ascent of man: deductions based on a multivariate analysis of the brain

This paper attempts to investigate taxonomic and phylogenetic relationships through an analysis of the distribution of mass within the brain. A multivariate analysis was performed on encephalization ratios for various divisions of the brain, employing volume measurements reported for 63 species by Stephan et al. [1970]. The ratios for each brain region were considered to lie along one of the dimensions of eight dimensional 'brain space', and distances between all species were calculated and employed in the determination of 'family trees'. It was assumed that modern species have, in many cases, brains representative of different stages of an evolutionary progression towards higher encephalization, and it was assumed that no 'backwards evolution' occurred. The family trees based on these data and assumptions were rigidly determined and do not represent mere opinion but, rather, inescapable conclusions if one accepts the premises. Most of the findings were in very good agreement with traditional or popular ideas, and this includes conclusions that tree shrews were ancestral to prosimians and that simians are derived from a tarsioid ancestor. Other findings, however, were just as strikingly deviant from current popular and expert thought. Present methods demanded, for example, that man must have a platyrrhine ancestry. While one may reject this particular conclusion it remains true that by present measures the human brain is much more like that of an American wooley or spider monkey than like that of either the chimpanzee or the gorilla.