Has anyone read the Naked Ape by Desmond Morris? I’m reading it now for my Personality Theory class, and I find it really fascinating. I’m about half way through it. It really makes me think, and puts the human race into perspective. Great book!
Definitely an entertaining book, but you have to take it with a grain of salt, given its age. An update would be very cool.
I definitely agree, I 'd love to see an update. I don’t necessairly agree with it all, but it makes me think about where we came from and how we got here. Lots of interesting theories throughout.
Nothing to add other than thinking about similar things is what got me into archaeology.
I think there are issues that arise from this book that have not been adequately answered. Why are we naked? Why are humans the only animals to wear clothes?
One assumes that we once had fur since all the other monkeys and apes have fur and we came from the same place as them. But then, at some point, we lost the fur. Morris suggests we lost the fur when we moved out of the forests and onto the plains and suddenly had to compete with the ultra-fast big cats. Humans aren’t fast like cats but they are good at endurance running - running long distances. It’s possible that humans ran down prey simply by running after them, they didn’t have to run fast they just had to run for a long time. And fur became a disadvantage in this hot long distance chase across the African savannah.
One paragraph in the book stands out. This is when he is talking about just how odd the human is compared to the other great apes:
Personally, I think that all the world’s religions and mythologies come from this - the leaving of the forest. Originally, humans were just like the other apes subsisting in the forest living on leaves and small jungle creatures. Then humans began to adventure beyond the forest. Leaving the forest was a major thing and a BIG risk. In the jungle humans were safe but, out on the hot plain, all kinds of dangers awaited. Big cats, heat exhaustion etc.
We left the jungle though and took our chances. Gradually, over the millenia, we have lost our fur but we recognise (in our collective memory as a species) that we took a big risk in leaving the forest and we feel guilty about it. That is why we took to wearing clothes - we’re trying to regain our fur.
All our religions and mythologies involve some aspects of this - the wearing of clothes to “preserve sanctity”, original sin (the leaving of the forest), the garden of eden (the forest), guilt (deserting our fellow apes and heading for the plains). There’s loads of stuff - I’ve got whole theories about this.
Nobody ever believes my theories but that’s never put me off before.
Morris wrote other books afterwards – The Human Zoo, Manwatching, Gestures, Catwatching, Dogwatching. My greatest complaint is that he gives absolutely no references in most of his books. This forced at least one author to muisattribute (to Morris) a notion that another fellow came up with, and that author later apologized profusely. In his book Dogwatching Morris asserts something that flatly contradicts what naturalist Niko Tinbergen had stated in an earlier work. I would’ve loved to have known what evidence was given for the contradiction, but Morris didn’t give it, or the source. Annoying as heck. Morris , before publishing TNA, edited at least one book on primate behavior, so you can see where he got his inspiration.
Not all of Morris’ ideas are his, but some of them certainly are. He seems to be the one who first proposed the idea that human female breasts are buttock-mimics (something anthropologist Marvin Harris gives him credit for, at least, and I haven’t found any earlier publications on it). A lot of his assertions/suggestions seem reasonable, but others seem to be pushing the concepts too far. So, yes, take it with a shot of skepticism.
By the way, Playboy Films sponsored a film version of The Naked Ape, which I’ve never seen, and haven;t seen on VHS or DVD.
I read this in my freshman year of college for my “Animal Behavior and Human Nature” course. It’s an intriguing read but only vaguely scholarly. Don’t they have a lot of stuff by Morris on PBS or similar channels?