By this intellectual sleight of hand, Huxley dismissed the Neanderthal find as a mere savage Homo sapiens, essentially robbing the slender human fossil record then known of any potential human precursor.
"I think working with the grizzlies is just going to push us to savage more human flesh than ever before.
And maybe it is an equally facile and worthless statement of the bleeding obvious to say that of course, short of a child's death, there can be no more savage a human tragedy than separation from a child who has come to hate you with all the passion and ferocity with which you love him.
"Both the savage, smelly humans and the snooty ape intellectuals are a reflection of humanity's inhumanity," adds Handley.
It is the end of civilization as we know it - except that a few "savage" real humans have somehow survived.
And, in a final expert move, as we made the last dash for our lives, sprinting for the light at the end of the tunnel, jumping and leaping to avoid the savage half-humans swiping at us from all sides, we flew through a door sweating and terrified and looked up to find we were in the bar area, everyone looking at us, perplexed at our over-the-top actions, while we perspired and caught our breath.
Terhune paints him as a "noble savage" who is "human-like, but better than human" and who worships, and is worshiped by, his humans.
You see, then, why I find myself thinking in terms of strange and savage cults, demanding human sacrifices to appease unseen forces.
When the Soviet authorities banished Sakharov to internal exile in 1980, Mr. Green called the punishment a "savage disregard for human dignity and the rule of law".
Only when we are prepared to acknowledge that, and to act upon our knowledge, will lives cease to be forfeited to its savage hunger for human sacrifice.
