![]() In this view, humans didn’t share a common ancestry with apes they were directly descended from them. This happened not through Darwinian selection but through an inner vital force driving simple organisms to become more complex, working in combination with the influence of the environment. Worms evolved into fish, fish into mammals, and mammals into men. Then, in 1809, Darwin’s intellectual forebear, Lamarck (Jean-Baptiste Pierre Antoine de Monet, Chevalier de Lamarck, 1744-1829) proposed a model of evolution that saw all organisms as descended from a single point of spontaneous creation. In Camper’s view, monkeys, the apes and orangutans, were all degenerated versions of original man. As this original human moved from his point of creation around the world, he too degenerated under the influence of climate. For Camper, the original man was ancient Greek. In 1770, the Dutch scientist Petrus Camper (1722-1789) took Buffon’s model and applied it to man. As cats migrated away from their point of spontaneous generation, they degenerated into separate species under the influence of climate.ĭutchman Petrus Camper applied Buffon ideas to man and concluded that monkeys, the apes and orangutans, were all degenerated versions of original man. In the mid-1700s, the great French naturalist, mathematician and cosmologist Comte de Buffon (Georges-Louis Leclerc, 1707-1788) put forward the idea that all species of animal were descended from a small number of spontaneously-generated types.įeline species, for example, were supposedly descended from a single ancestral cat. But, in so doing, they gave more power to the ape insult. Many 18th-century scientists tried to undermine the creationist model. In this schema, white Europeans were described as closest to the angels, while black Africans and Aborigines were closest to the apes. Many believed in the unity of the human species, but some thought that God had created separate human species. Previously the vast majority of Europeans believed that God had created species (including man), and these species were immutable. In the 18th century, a new way of thinking about species emerged. But the European association of apes with Africans has a much longer cultural and scientific pedigree. Wikimedia CommonsĬlearly, evolutionary thinking has had something to do with the longevity of the ape insult. In the mid-1700s, Comte de Buffon suggested that all species of animals were descended from a small number of spontaneously-generated types. This left scientific racism in the hands of far-right groups who were only too willing to ignore the findings of post-war evolutionary biology in favour of its pre-war variants. Adolf Hitler’s genocide, willingly supported by German scientists and doctors, showed where the misapplication of science might end up. The horrors of Nazism put paid to mainstream science’s dalliance with biological racism. It emphasised the deep similarities between different races, and that differences in behaviour were the product of culture not biology. It suggested that the races had become separate species, and that Africans, in particular, were far closer in evolutionary terms to the great apes than were, say, Europeans.Īnd yet, during the same period, there was always a stream of evolutionary science that rejected this model. ![]() In the early 20th century, the increasing popularity of Mendelian genetics (named after Gregor Johann Mendel, 1822-1884) did nothing to depose this way of thinking. Wikimedia Commonsīoth these latter groups were often portrayed as being evolutionarily the closest to the original humans and therefore to apes. Gregor Mendel demonstrated that the inheritance of certain traits in pea plants follows particular patterns and was posthumously recognised as the founder of the new science of genetics. What’s more, while most evolutionists believed that all human races descended from the same stock, they also noted that migration, and natural and sexual selection had created human varieties that – in their eyes – appeared superior to Africans or Aborigines. Darwin, himself, was often depicted as half-man, half-monkey. And the idea that homo sapiens were descended from monkeys rapidly became part of theatre of evolution. Darwin’s theory of natural selection (1859) showed that the closest ancestors of human beings were the great apes. When I was an undergraduate at university, I learnt about racism and colonialism, particularly the influence of Charles Darwin (1809-1882), whose ideas seemed to make racism nastier. To understand the power and scope of the ape insult, we need a dose of history. Most us know that calling someone an ape is racist, but few of us understand why apes are associated in the European imagination with indigenous people and, indeed, people of African descent.
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