Before the works of Darwin were published, and people started putting together that we seemed to be related to (other) apes, what did people think about our similarities to apes and primates in general?
The word might not have existed, but were bonobos generally perceived as somewhat “humanoid?” Or were they seen as just as unrelated as cows, alligators and chickens (for example?)
The reason I wonder is because they look similar enough to humans that I totally accept that we are a type of ape, and different enough that I was once a denier and plenty of people still are.
Wikipedia mentions that apes were known in antiquity and notes that early Portuguese explorers noticed their human-like characteristics. The article’s very light on detail, though; I’d be really interested in knowing if anyone’s done deeper research.
Under the heading “Darwin’s Failed Predictions, Slide 10”, your article talks about differences in DNA between chimpanzees and humans. I don’t think Darwin made any predictions about DNA differences, because he didn’t know about DNA. In any case, what percentage difference there is between chimps and us has no relevance to question of our common ancestor existing: it just affects what the common ancestor was, and how long ago it lived.
Multiple authors and scientists had already recognized that apes and humans were related. John Ray, George Leclerc, and Erasmus Darwin are all examples of writers who had pointed out the anatomical similarity. Thomas Huxley, IIRC, argued that humans and apes should be categorized together as primates, but he did not actually accept the idea of a common descent until after Darwin’s writing changed his mind.
Part of the problem was that they were afraid of censure by a public that wasn’t quite ready to hear what they had to say. So when they did point out that apes and humans might be related, they did so rather quietly. The other half of the problem is that even having recognized this, they did not fully understand how species evolved.
Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, for example, thought that species changed by physical deformation. For example: A giraffe stretched his neck by reaching for leaves, and then his progeny would be born with longer necks. This is incorrect for the same reason that a person who pierces their ears does not give birth to a baby with pierced ears. They weren’t quite ready to make the cognitive leap towards natural selection. Even Erasmus Darwin (Charle’s grandfather) recognized the process of evolution but couldn’t explain how it happened.
You’re talking about a society that barely considered black people to be human. I wouldn’t think a society that saw nothing wrong with keeping a human being caged up in the zoo (only 100 years ago) would readily notice any relationship or similarities with apes. If other human beings were only considered humanoid, apes and monkeys must have been much further down the ladder.
Scientists perceived that humans and apes were related long before Darwin, even if they did not believe we were descended from them. Linnaeus created the category “Anthropomorpha” (“in the form of man”) in 1735 to include humans, monkeys and apes, and sloths. He later referred the orangutan to the genus Homo along with humans, although this seems to have been based on a mythical hybrid between humans and apes rather than actual orangs.
Early humans were depicted as being apelike even before Darwin. In 1731 Johan Scheuchzer compared Jacob’s hairy brother Esau to an ape. In 1838 Pierre Boitard depicted “fossil man” as being very apelike. This is well before the first fossil humans were actually discovered. Here’s another image by Boitard in 1861, ten years before Darwin published The Descent of Man.
It is interesting, although off-topic, to note that in several common west European languages that I have inquired about (German, French, Italian, Spanish) there is no separate word for ape and monkey. My English to French dictionary under “ape” says “grande singe sans queue” or “big tailless monkey”.
The relationship was noted in other societies, too. For instance, Aztec creation myths have the monkey as being a sort of beta version of humans, created before the gods figured out how to do it right (by adding their own blood to the recipe).
The book **Apes and Ape Lore in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, ** H.W. Janson, Published by The Warburg Institute, University of London, London (1952) is beautiful and fascinating, was enormously influential in its day, although of course later studies must abound.
The distinction between monkeys and apes is a relatively recent one in English. The older term is “ape,” which was first used before the 12th Century (Old English apa) and is related to the German Affe and Dutch aap. This was used to refer indiscriminately to any monkey or ape (although the Great Apes were essentially unknown at the time). The best-known “ape” in Europe would have been the Barbary Ape, a species of monkey. “Monkey” is first used around 1530, and is apparently related to the Spanish mono.
I’m not sure when “ape” was hijacked by scientists to apply only to gibbons, chimps, orangs, and gorillas, but it was probably sometime in the 19th Century or even later. For a long time pedants have insisted that apes not be called monkeys, or monkeys apes, but really in terms of popular usage the two are essentially synonymous. Ironically, genetic evidence shows that apes are actually just monkeys after all, since the apes are more closely related to Old World Monkeys than either is to the New World Monkeys.
Before Darwin, there was no reason to be worried about the resemblance, I assume. After all, “God re-used the same rough template” (from the point of view of the religious of the day). There was no thought that Lions and Tigers and Pussycats had a common ancestor, they were just created the same. So what if some animals were created more shaped like humans than others? Fish had no limbs at all, monkeys had four arms, dogs and horses had four legs, etc.
The real insult, as I understand it, was to tie all these resemblances together with the theory of evolution, which basically said that we are “descended from apes” and even more distantly, “descended from fish and frogs”. Before that became a major topic of science, who cared about resemblances? They were coincidence not hereditary.
I suppose this was just a continuation of the “earth-centric vs. sun-centric” debate. The religious types believe there is something inherently special about humans, “created in the image of God”. As science suggested more and more that we are a coincidence of natural evolution on one of millions of planets around one of millions of suns (billions…) it flies in the face of the concepts built into that faith.
As numerous other posts have already pointed out, this isn’t at all correct. People were classifying animals according to their relationships 100 years before Darwin, and classifying apes with people. For thousands of years before that, people had been seeing the resemblance between humans and apes and calling them brothers.
People cared a great deal about these resemblances. They lacked a mechanism to explain it without resorting to magic, but they saw the resemblance and sought to explain it.
Of course they saw the resemblance. It took the age of Darwin/Wallace to make the next step, that species were not fixed, that the “transmutation of species” and natural selection implied that all animals - and humans - were from the same distant source. That implication, that some distant ancestors were mere animals, rankled the religious types.
If Darwin hadn’t said it, then Wallace would, or some other observant naturalist shortly after. The key was that species change and evolve; therefore we are are just animals that were once non-sentient.
The religious concept of souls is challenged by the question - at what point under this theory would a man have a soul? Did a soulless mother give birth to a man with a soul? Would Christ have died to “redeem” this person but not his mother?
It’s pretty easy to see why this sort of question must have driven the religious people to anger and denial over the theory, just as abortion seems to in our day.
Aside from the fact that most religions quite happily accepted that people had once been animals and that all animals - and humans - were from the same distant source, so the central tenet of your post is utterly incorrect.
What the hell does *any *of of that have to do with the topic of this thread? The question was whether people pre-Darwin acknowledged the close relationship between apes and humans. As has been shown in multiple posts, they certainly did. That is completely contradictory to your claim that people didn’t care about the resemblances.
Your last post just seems to just be an an attempt to witness in GQ. I can’t see how it has any bearing at all on the question.
I was unaware of any difference between “ape” and “monkey”, until I saw one of the “Planet of the Apes” movies, and there was a scene where one ape called another a “monkey”, and the latter made it clear how insulted he was. I had to do some research to understand why he was insulted, and that they are not the same thing.
Bonobs were not recognized as distinct from common chimpanzees until the 20th century, well after Darwin publish his works.
Also, Darwin was not the first person to introduce the idea of evolution into scientific circles. His genius was figuring out the mechanism. Evolution by means of natural selection.
