Early concepts of the anthropomorpha

From man's earliest observations of apes the tendency has been to stress the degree of resemblance between human and anthropoid. Hanno (c. 500 BC) referred to the Gorillas as "savage people." Duarte Lopez (1578) and Tulp (1640) noted the extent to which apes "counterfeit the countenance, the fashions, and the actions of men." Battell (1625) declared that they walked erect, built shelters and buried their dead. Natives of the natural habitat of the apes, Java and Africa, named them respectively "Orang-outang" and "Chimpanzee," each meaning "man of the woods." Bontius (1658) noted that the Javanese thought the Orang-outang capable of speech but silent lest it be compelled to work. Tyson (1699) intimated that his Chimpanzee considered its own relationship closer to man than to other simians. With the importation into Europe and domestication of apes in the seventeenth century, further analogies to man's behavior were noted. Their feeding, and particularly their habits of drinking, received special attention. Attention was also called to their sexual proclivities. The male was declared to be aggressively lascivious, carrying off and ravishing women whenever possible. In contrast the female was timid, shy, and when domesticated and clothed, modestly concealed her body. The legend of the male ape's lustful ways was clearly denied by Savage in his first description of the Gorilla (1847).Differentiation between ape and man was finally drawn on the basis of speech. Although both Battell and Bontius had denied speech to the ape, nevertheless they, as well as Tyson, called attention to its emotional vocalization such as copious weeping, groaning and the like. The eighteenth century primitivists declared that the ape's failure to speak did not imply that it was incapable of speech. Rousseau asserted that lack of speech might be explained by lack of opportunity for development of that faculty. Lord Monboddo suggested that man had developed speech of a necessity not yet affecting the ape. On the other hand, Camper after dissection of an Orang-outang (1779) declared that its massive laryngeal ventricles made speech impossible, while Tyson, three-quarters of a century earlier, had proposed the thesis that the ape was an intermediate link "in this chain of creation."