Strange Science: Hominids

Darwin In 1619, Italian philosopher Lucilio Vanini was burned alive for suggesting that humans evolved from apes. Over two centuries later, popular society still reserved its sharpest contempt for evolutionists, as illustrated in this caricature of Charles Darwin, published in The Hornet in 1871. Yet a literal interpretation of Genesis started to unravel long before Darwin published On the Origin of Species and The Descent of Man. Europeans were deeply disturbed by the anatomical similarities they saw between themselves and apes, and they struggled to find logical explanations. Some even lumped the Khoi-San peoples (called the "Hottentots") of southern Africa into the same group as apes, classifying them as degenerate children of Adam; citing their lack of "perfect reason" and modesty, 17th-century naturalist Edward Topsell argued that "above all they cannot be Men as they have no religion." Meanwhile, what some Europeans considered evidence of the Old Testament reached new heights of absurdity. Canon Johann Jakob Scheuchzer found a fossil of what he claimed was a relic of "the accursed race that must have been swallowed up by the waters" of the Great Flood. Less than a century later, French naturalist Georges Cuvier demonstrated that the bones had really belonged to a giant salamander.


		Year: 1799 Scientist/artist: Charles White Originally published in: An Account of the Regular Gradation in Man, and in Different Animals and Vegetables Now appears in: The Flamingo's Smile by Stephen Jay Gould and Humankind by Felipe Fernández-Armesto This particularly odious depiction of "lower" and "higher" life forms was once widely accepted as part of the Great Chain of Being. In this depiction, the lowest form of human life is the Negro, and at the top of the ladder is the Greek ideal. The depictions are carefully arranged so that "lower" humans appear in close proximity to "lower" animals. "In whatever respect the African differs from the European," White wrote, "the particularity brings him nearer to the ape." Larger image available

		Year: 1799 Scientist/artist: Charles White Originally published in: An Account of the Regular Gradation in Man, and in Different Animals and Vegetables Now appears in: Humankind by Felipe Fernández-Armesto White described this plate as including "copies of the best authenticated engraving" of apes, as well as profiles of a "native of Botany Bay" and an African.

		Year: 1731 Scientist/artist: Johann Jakob Scheuchzer Originally published in: Sacred Physics Now appears in: Crossing Over by Stephen Jay Gould and Rosamond Wolff Purcell Swiss naturalist Johann Jakob Scheuchzer found the Old Testament a perfectly plausible account of the history of life on earth. But he also tried to reconcile the story with discoveries about the natural world, including the existence of apes. In this image, Scheuchzer compared biblical Esau (Jacob's inordinately hairy, slightly dim-witted older twin) with a "satyr" (the term at the time for chimpanzees). The 18th-century naturalist stopped short of calling the father of the Edomites an ape. "Nonetheless, in making this comparison, I do not with to insinuate that Esau was a Satyr, nor that this race of savage animals has descended from him. I consider Esau as a monstrous man." Larger image available

		Year: 1794 Scientist/artist: Pieter Camper Originally published in: The Works of the Late Professor Camper Now appears in: Science: A Four Thousand Year History by Patricia Fara It's far from obvious, but this image was actually intended to show that differences between races were superficial. Dutch anatomist Camper was an abolitionist. The faces appear along a spectrum that measures the angle at which the face slopes backward — from apes to Apollo. Although the grid lines lend an air of mathematical finality, the scale is really one of aesthetics, with the unlikely pinnacle of a Greek god. Although aimed at minimizing the perceived differences between races, this diagram apparently had the opposite effect.

		Year: 1493 Originally published in: Nuremberg Chronicle Now appears in: Amazing Rare Things by Attenborough, Owens, Clayton and Alexandratos Europeans imagined all sorts of odd "people" lived elsewhere in the world: people with horns, with giant floppy ears, with giant single feet, to name a few. This late 15th-century publication shows a few of the odd humans assumed to live elsewhere. The bottom picture shows a human whose face appears on his or her torso. The middle picture is of a cyclops. The top picture is apparently of a werewolf crossed with a cheesy lounge singer.

		Year: 1475 Scientist/artist: Konrad von Megenberg Originally published in: Book of Nature Now appears in: "Marvels of the East: A Study in the History of Monsters" by Rudolf Wittkower in Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 1942 The notion that faraway lands — India in particular — held monstrous human races arose in Antiquity, when some Greek scholars spread fabulous accounts. The Greeks had their share of skeptics who challenged such stories, but while the skeptics' criticisms were lost to medieval Europeans, the fantastic tales lived on, thanks to the uncritical writings of Pliny and others. For all their belief in monstrous races, Europeans in the Middle Ages adopted a pretty generous stance about them, insisting that even the monstrous races were God's children. Monsters as portents of divine punishment may have been more common during the sectarian tensions of the Reformation.

		Century: 13th Scientist/artist: Zakariya ibn Muhammad ibn Mahmud Abu Yahya al-Qazwini Originally published in: Aja'ib al-Makhluqat Now appears in: Science in Medieval Islam by Howard R. Turner Just as Europeans had outlandish ideas of odd people who might live far away, Muslim scholars entertained equally fanciful notions. Published in what is today Iraq, this encyclopedia of the "Wonders of Creation" covered a range of topics, mixing fact and fiction about geography and biology.

		Year: 1851 Scientist/artist: Robert Knox Originally published in: The Races of Men Now appears in: Making Modern Science by Bowler and Morus If the work of Robert Knox was any indication, not much improved in race relations between the beginning and the middle of the 19th century. To Victorian minds, a sloping forehead implied and tiny brain, and Knox sure wanted his readers to get his point about people of color.

		Year: 1758 Scientist/artist: Carolus Linnaeus Originally published in: Systema Naturae Now appears in: Human Origins: The Search for Our Beginnings by Herbert Thomas It's impossible to overestimate the contribution Linnaeus made to science — he developed the system for classifying all living organisms that is still in use today. Yet his uncertainty about how to classify apes and humans is obvious from some of his depictions. He even developed terms such as "day man" and "night man," and admitted that he couldn't find a characteristic to differentiate humans from apes.

		Year: 1812 Scientist/artist: F. Jacob Originally published in: Histoire Naturelle des Singes Now appears in: Human Origins: The Search for Our Beginnings by Herbert Thomas Jacob showed the fetus of a monkey and a human side by side to illustrate their similarities, maintaining that the only thing the monkey lacked was a soul.

		Year: 1868 Scientist: Ernst Haeckel Originally published in: Natürliche Schöpfungsgeschichte Now appears in: Human Origins: The Search for Our Beginnings by Herbert Thomas Haeckel divided humanity into no less than 12 distinct species, based upon hair type, skull shape, skin color and eye color. Although he believed humanity now comprised 12 species, he maintained that they had all arisen from a single ancestral type that once lived on a continent now submerged beneath the Indian Ocean.

		Year: 1868 Scientist: Ernst Haeckel Artist: Gustav Müller Originally published in: Natürliche Schöpfungsgeschichte (1st edition) Now appears in: "Pictures of Evolution and Charges of Fraud" by Nick Hopwood in Isis June 2006 issue Reminiscent of Charles White's 1799 diagram, this illustration pointed out the affinity between the "lowest humans" and "highest apes." The heads pictured here were supposed to represent — from best to worst, so to speak — Indo-German, Chinese, Fuegian, Australian Negro, African Negro, Tasmanian, gorilla, chimpanzee, orang, gibbon, proboscis monkey, and mandrill. An interesting shift from White's diagram was that the best of the best was no longer Grecian but German. In fairness to Haeckel, he didn't like this illustration much (his publisher apparently did), but an expanded version appeared in the second edition of his book. Haeckel was, to say the least, confident of the superiority of the white race, as were many of his contemporaries. But at least one scientist, Michael Foster described the illustration in Haeckel's second book as "at once absurdly horrible and theatrically grotesque, without any redeeming feature either artistic or scientific." Larger image available

		Year: 1870 Scientist: Ernst Haeckel Originally published in: Natürliche Schöpfungsgeschichte (2nd edition) Now appears in: The Tragic Sense of Life by Robert J. Richards For the second edition of Natürliche Schöpfungsgeschichte, Haeckel drafted new pictures. As in the first version, the pinnacle of humanity was the Greek ideal, but this time, the Greek sported a beard. So, by pure coincidence, did Haeckel. Larger image available

		Year: 1909 Originally published in: Illustrated London News Scientist: Marcellin Boule Artist: Frantisek Kupka Now appears in: Life by Richard Fortey and God — or Gorilla: Images of Evolution in the Jazz Age by Constance Areson Clark (Also discussed in Java Man by Swisher, Curtis and Lewin) As this depiction of a Neanderthal shows, some early 20th-century scientists thought this hominid to be very furry. Earlier hypotheses about the first Neanderthal fossil suggested that the individual suffered from rickets, hence the bowed legs, and that the pain from the condition caused the sufferer to habitually furrow his brow, producing prominent brow ridges. (In fact, extensive use of facial muscles can cause bone buildup where those muscles attach, but they can't make a modern human skull look Neanderthal.)

		Year: 1922 Originally published in: Illustrated London News Scientists: Henry Fairfield Osborn and Grafton Elliot Smith Now appears in: God — or Gorilla: Images of Evolution in the Jazz Age by Constance Areson Clark The year 1922 found the American Museum of Natural History's Henry Fairfield Osborn clashing with ardent anti-evolutionist William Jennings Bryan, the "Scopes Monkey Trial" being just a few years away. When Nebraska paleontologist Harold Cook found a fossil tooth that might belong to a primate, Osborn saw his opportunity. How deliciously ironic that an early human tooth might come from Bryan's own home state! Well, the tooth did come from Nebraska. It also came from a pig. Bryan and generations of creationists delighted in pointing out Osborn's gaffe. Fewer have been anxious to acknowledge that the definitive debunking of Hesperopithecus (Nebraska Man) came from William King Gregory — an evolutionist and Osborn's own former student. Larger image available

		Year: 1836 Scientist: George Combe (based on earlier work by Johann Caspar Spurzheim) Originally published in: Outlines of Phrenology Now appears in: Victorian Sensation by James A. Secord (Also discussed in Postcards from the Brain Museum by Brian Burrell, and Making Modern Science by Bowler and Morus) Although modern science has tied certain functions to various regions of the brain, we realize there's still so much we don't know. Nineteenth-century phrenologists were a lot more confident — and convinced that they could tell a patient's mental abilities from the shape of his or her skull. "Phrenological organs" of the brain named in this work included (among many others) destructiveness, secretiveness, veneration, hope, wonder, wit and individuality. Spurzheim, the popularizer of phrenology, took many of his ideas from Franz Josef Gall. Gall and Spurzheim started out as colleagues but later had a philosophical split. Though he got wrapped up in the silly notion of skull shapes, Gall was onto something regarding localization of certain brain functions.

		Year: 1744 Scientist: William Smith (not the 19th-century geologist) Now appears in: Man's Place in Nature by T.H. Huxley Huxley discredited this image in 1863, and suggested that it really represented a chimpanzee. By the time Huxley wrote, human understanding of the great apes had substantially improved. He quoted from a paper published in 1852 by a new researcher: "opportunities for receiving a knowledge of the [gorilla] have not been wanting; traders having for one hundred years frequented [the Congo region of Africa], and specimens, such as have been brought here within a year, could not have been exhibited without having attracted the attention of the most stupid."

		Year: 1915 Scientist: William Diller Matthew Originally published in: "Climate and Evolution" in Annals N.Y. Acad. Sci. Now appears in: Man Rises to Parnassus by Henry Fairfield Osborn Following up a lecture he delivered in 1911, William Diller Matthew published this map showing his hypothesis about the origin and dispersal of human races. From Asia, "Mongols" headed north and into the Americas, "Caucasians" headed into southern and western Europe, "Malays" went eastward and morphed into Australian Aborigines, and "Negroids" aimed for Africa. "Negritos" probably referred to the Khoi-San of southern Africa. Nobody much liked the idea now commonly accepted today: African ancestry for all modern humans.

		Year: 1927 Scientist: Henry Fairfield Osborn Artist: James Howard McGregor Originally published in: Man Rises to Parnassus by Henry Fairfield Osborn Titled "The Rise of Character in the Human Face," this collection of busts shows Osborn's conception of human ancestry. Although debate continues about the possible contribution of Neanderthal DNA to that of modern humans, Neanderthals are no longer regarded as direct ancestors. Yet Osborn's inclusion of the Neanderthal as a direct ancestor is dwarfed by another gaffe: the inclusion of Piltdown Man.

		Year: c. 1930 Originally appeared in: Traveling exhibit on eugenics Now appears in: Better for All the World by Harry Bruinius If people could breed better pigs, chickens and cows, they could certainly breed better children. Traveling exhibits in the first half of the 20th century showed the simple logic of heritage trumping education and environment. Ironically, some of the main thinkers behind the eugenics movement had troubles of their own. Harry Laughlin, who vigorously campaigned for the sterilization of the unfit, kept secret his own epilepsy. Of course, epilepsy in no way diminishes one's worth as a human being (unless, unfortunately, one is a eugenicist). Another thinker behind the movement, Charles Davenport, confidently predicted that his daughter would — like himself — respect the values of Protestant America, manage expenses responsibly, and prefer nature to art. His daughter turned out to be a bohemian spendthrift. Even worse, she was a bohemian spendthrift who defied her daddy and married a Jew.

		Year: 1911 Scientist: Charles Davenport Originally published in: Heredity in Relation to Eugenics Now appears in: Davenport's Dream edited by Witkowski and Inglis Eugenicist Charles Davenport believed that practically everything came down to inheritance: intelligence, artistic ability, wanderlust and good (or bad) morals. To support his argument, he published an abundance of inheritance diagrams showing the relationships between various defects. His caption for this one reads, "This mating illustrates the principle that migraine (M) and paralysis frequently indicate the presence of defective germ cells, as well as normal. In the central mating the paralytic father has an insane brother, an insane niece and 3 feeble-minded grandnephews, besides a grandniece, who died in convulsions." Besides M for migraine, Davenport employed these abbreviations: N for normal, A for alcoholic, E for epileptic, F for feeble-minded, I for insane, D inf. for died in infancy. Also written next to some boxes are apparently less serious traits: "neurotic" and "peculiar." When he produced these diagrams, Davenport likely didn't know that his trusted colleague, Harry Laughlin, suffered from epilepsy, a condition he tried to hide for many years. Eugenicists frequently found the condition grounds for forced sterilization. Larger image available

		Year: 1896 Scientist: Cesare Lombroso Originally published in: The Man of Genius Italian anthropologist Cesare Lombroso gained fame for, among other things, alleging that genius was a form of retrograde evolution, and that madness was how biology coped with that genius. Lombroso also asserted that some people are born delinquent, and society should save itself from these hopeless cases by any means necessary. (Lombroso tried convincing Leo Tolstoy of this. Nonplussed, Tolstoy wrote Resurrection to refute the notion.) Besides believing in genius-madness links and born criminals, Lombroso was sure mental attributes could be determined from the appearance of the brain and even the skull. Here he showed some skulls of geniuses, including Volta and Foscolo (inordinately tall) and Kant (exceptional cranial capacity). Given the chance to examine the brain of a contemporary, Carlo Giacomini (who had collected evidence contradicting Lombroso's theory), Lombroso declared victory when he found Giacomini's preserved brain sported a rare feature, a double Rolando sulcus.

		Year: 1911 Scientists: Cesare Lombroso and G. Ferrero Originally published in: "Applications de la nouvelle école au Nord de l'Amérique" Now appears in: The Mismeasure of Man by Stephen Jay Gould (Lombroso's work also discussed in "Turin's Criminology Museum" by Alison Abbott in Nature Magazine, January 21, 2010 issue) Lombroso teamed up with colleague Ferrero to illustrate some unprepossessing facial features that identify born criminals. Unfortunately for many accused, the stigmata he described became "evidence" in their criminal trials. While he pushed for capital punishment for the worst "born criminals," Lombroso believed that other deviants had only some or only slightly troubling criminal characteristics — big ears, little heads, protruding brows — and they should simply be placed in asylums. His genetic-throwback explanation of criminality, genius and deviance was known as atavism.

		Year: 1586 Scientist: Giambattista Della Porta Originally published in: De Humana Physiognomia Now appears in: Astrology, Magic, and Alchemy in Art by Matilde Battistini, translated by Rosanna M. Giammanco Frongia Della Porta was a respected naturalist and glittering playwright. Unfortunately, his reputation gave his misguided ideas a long life, including the notion that one's character could be inferred from one's face. He apparently considered this example obstinate.

		Year: 1586 Scientist: Giambattista Della Porta Originally published in: De Humana Physiognomia Now appears at: Historical Anatomies on the Web (http://www.nlm.nih.gov/exhibition/historicalanatomies/porta_home.html) In his De Humana Physiognomia Libri IIII, Della Porta produced plenty of examples of human-animal similarities, some less noble than others. Della Porta also believed in the doctrine of signatures, that plants resembling certain body parts could cure what ailed them. Larger image available

		Century: Early 19th Scientist: W. Johnson Now appears in: Blood and Guts by Roy Porter For centuries, doctors maintained that health and personality were determined by one's balance of four key bodily fluids: blood, phlegm, yellow bile and black bile. (Blech.) If you were sanguine, you were ruddy, lively, energetic and hard working, but maybe impulsive and something less than an intellectual giant. If you were phlegmatic, you were chubby and lazy. If you were choleric (with an excess of yellow bile), you might be thin, jaundiced, mean and stingy. If you were melancholic (with an excess of black bile) you were depressed. Paracelsus scorned this mind set in the 16th century, but it persisted anyway. This engraving showed examples of the different temperaments. Larger image available

		Year: 1945 Scientists: Franz Weidenreich and Roy Chapman Andrews Artist: T.W. Voter Originally published in: Meet Your Ancestors by Roy Chapman Andrews In the mid-1940s, Roy Chapman Andrews wrote a book about paleoanthropology aimed at a popular audience, with "The Family Tree of Man" (only part of which appears here) on the inside cover. The book reflected the views of scientists Andrews truly admired, including Henry Fairfield Osborn and (especially) Franz Weidenreich. (Weidenreich's work led to the multiregional theory of human origins, arguing that modern human races evolved independently from Homo erectus with some gene flow in between.) To his credit, Andrews mentioned Africa's possible role as the cradle of humankind, and he expressed reservations about the Piltdown fossils. New finds in science, however, still couldn't override old feelings about race. Andrews summed up the issue with the example of radishes growing at different rates in different types of soil. So, he stated, "the progress of the different races was unequal." It shouldn't take much effort to guess which race Andrews considered the winner. The "giants" Andrews described belonged to the now-discredited genus of Meganthropus and Gigantopithecus. Gigantopithecus is still considered a valid genus, and modern paleontologists surmise that it may actually have been as much as 10 feet tall, though it's not considered a human ancestor.

		Year: 1926 Originally published in: Evolution and Religion in Education Scientist: Henry Fairfield Osborn Now appears in: God — or Gorilla: Images of Evolution in the Jazz Age by Constance Areson Clark In his biography published in 1940, W.E.B. Du Bois remarked, "I remember once in a museum, coming face to face with a demonstration: a series of skeletons arranged from a little monkey to a tall well-developed white man, with a Negro barely outranking a chimpanzee." Henry Fairfield Osborn of the American Museum of Natural History wielded enormous influence, not just at AMNH, but in other museums and in textbooks, which adapted AMNH material. A self-described opponent of "miscegenation," Osborn didn't think twice about which race was the very best. Notice the "Ascent of Increasing Intelligence."

		Year: 1929 Originally published in: Our Face from Fish to Man Scientist: William King Gregory Now appears in: God — or Gorilla: Images of Evolution in the Jazz Age by Constance Areson Clark William King Gregory criticized his old mentor, Henry Fairfield Osborn, for "pithecophobia" — a fear of apes and monkeys in the human family tree. But Gregory (like many people) shared Osborn's views of race. This dust jacket includes six stylized faces and one real one. The Tasmanian face, apparently not quite human in Gregory's view, is from a 19th-century photograph of a woman who may have been the last remaining member of Tasmania's native population. Her name was Trucanini, and at the time her picture was taken, she was one of just five survivors in what could be termed an internment camp, established by the British. All of her companions were so ill that they would soon die. Trucanini died in 1876.