![]() What the Roman poet Ennius presented in the 2nd century BC was a refrain that could be heard repeatedly during the subsequent two millennia whenever Europeans encountered this being that so threatened the line separating human and animal. ![]() Simia quam similis turpissima bestia nobis ("How similar the ape, this ugliest of beasts, is to ourselves"). Battell's narrative, much of which was received second hand and sure to be highly imaginative, was nevertheless one of Western society's earliest introductions to our evolutionary cousins, the great apes. These marauding beasts "goe many together, and kill many (villagers).they are so strong, that ten men cannot hold one of them". The larger of the two creatures Battell described, according to the edited volume later published by travel writer Samuel Purchas, Purchas His Pilgrimes, "is in all proportion like a man", but "more like a giant in stature.and has a man's face, hollow-eyed, with long haire upon his browes". In 1607, after being held captive by the Portuguese in West Africa's Congo Basin for nearly 18 years, the English sailor Andrew Battell returned home with lurid tales of "ape monsters". The following is an article I wrote last year for Times Higher Education entitled "Ariel Casts Out Caliban" that explored the evidence then available that bonobos were a better model than chimpanzees for understanding human origins. In contrast to "killer-apes," the latest evidence suggests our peaceful primate cousins may be a better model for human origins.Īuthor's note: A new study published in the journal Nature has sequenced the genome of bonobos and compared them to chimpanzees as well as humans finding some surprising results.
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