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

The Peking Man

"We do not know whether he was religious or promiscuous or both. He did not have love as we understand it because he had no gin."

by Ken

After the preface to How to Tell Your Friends from the Apes on Sunday, last night we began the book's first part, "Memoirs of the Jukes Family, or Where We Came in," with "The Java Man." Next up we have --

The Peking Man

THE PEKING MAN shows that people were living in Asia long long ago as most of us knew already. He was discovered near Peking or Peiping and was named Sinanthropus pekinensis to keep certain persons from calling him Peiping Tom. Sin means China although the Chinese are no worse than other foreigners. The glabella was prominent so he was probably a young male.¹ The brain shows that the calvarium or brain-case was good. The skull was in perfect condition because the Peking Man took better care of his skull than some of us. He had begun to think or whatever the Chinese do. The prefrontal region resembles that found in some parts of the Middle West. The right horizontal ramus shows a tendency to do everything backwards. The Peking Man is lovable because he left no culture. He knew nothing about the Ming Dynasty and the Ch'ing Dynasty and the Sung Dynasty and he wrote no short poems stating that he got drunk and went out in a canoe and fell in. He had no imports and exports but he had fauna and flora.² The Peking Man was fond of overpopulation. We do not know whether he was religious or promiscuous or both. He did not have love as we understand it because he had no gin.

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¹Or a young female.
²He had the Catalpa, the Soy Bean, the Mongolian Mammoth, the Chinese Ostrich, the Yak and the Carp. He may have had Bats.

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TOMORROW IN WILL CUPPY TONIGHT: The Piltdown 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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