Darwin, the descent of man and itsrelations with anthropomorphic apes
Keywords:
História da evolução; Darwin, Charles R.; Haeckel, Ernest.Abstract
In the 1870s, Charles Robert Darwin (1809-1882) included man in his main study plan in the works The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex (1871) and The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals (1872). In these works, he discussed the origin of the habits of expressing emotions in humans and other animals, considering that they had a natural origin and were acquired gradually from forms considered inferior at the time. To corroborate this hypothesis, he sought to present several similarities between the expressions in humans and anthropoid apes, concluding that humans and other anthropomorphic apes of the New and Old Worlds shared a primitive, semi-human ancestor of the genus Homo. This paper aims to discuss Darwin’s main arguments and the evolutionary mechanisms involved in the process. Additionally, it examines the repercussion of these ideas, particularly within the scientific community of the time. This study concluded that some naturalists, such as Ernest Haeckel (1834-1919) and Thomas Henry Huxley (1825-1895), supported Darwin’s ideas on the subject, while others, including Giovanni Giuseppe Bianconi (1809-1878) and St. George J. Mivart (1827-1900), criticized them.
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