Will Cuppy Tonight: "The Heidelberg Man" from "How to Tell Your Friends from the Apes"

"The Heidelberg Man 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."

by Ken

As we proceed through the first part, "Memoirs of the Jukes Family, or Where We Come In," of How to Tell Your Friends from the Apes, we're getting closer to "where we come in." Tonight, after Java Man, Peking Man, and Piltdown Man, we meet --

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

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¹In this species the male was the boss.
²There has been some doubt whether the Heidelberg Man talked. Of course he talked. You couldn't stop him.
³The 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.

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TOMORROW AND SATURDAY NIGHT'S SUNDAY CLASSICS PREVIEW: Giordano's Andrea Chénier


SUNDAY IN WILL CUPPY TONIGHT: The Neanderthal Man


THURBER TONIGHT (including BENCHLEY, WILL CUPPY, WOLCOTT GIBBS, RING LARDNER, BOB AND RAY, E. B. WHITE, JEAN SHEPHERD, and PERELMAN TONIGHT): Check out the series to date

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