Evolution of the Mammalian Brain

Abstract

It was apparent from the earliest sightings ofapes that a remarkable degree of resemblance exists between human and anthropoid forms (Fig. 2.1, right). Natives sharing the apes’ natural habitat in Java and Africa had named them “orang-utang” and “chimpanzee,” respectively, both meaning “man of the woods.” In an early seventeenth century account, an English privateer, Andrew Battell, after being held captive in Africa by the Portuguese, reported that apes walked erect, built shelters, and buried their dead (Ravenstein, 1901). In a more focused, scientific contribution, an English physician and anatomist, Edward Tyson (1650–1708), published in 1699 his complete dissection of a young chimpanzee (Fig. 2.1, left), which he erroneously thought to be an orang-utang:

I have made a Comparative Survey of this Animal, with a Monkey, an Ape, and a Man. By viewing the same Parts of all these together, we may the better observe Nature ‘s Gradation in the formation ofAnimal Bodies; and the Transitions made from one to another; than which nothing can more conduce to the Attainment of the true Knowledge, both of the Fabrick, and the Uses of the Parts. By following Nature ‘s Clew in this wonderful Labyrinth of the Creation, we may be more easily admitted into her Secret Recesses, which Thread if we miss, we must needs err and be bewilder’d (Tyson, 1699, Preface).

The head, with its structures so obviously intended to serve as an avenue of expression for the mind.

(Herrick, 1891a, p. 101)