[net.origins] A Retraction

dubois@uwmacc.UUCP (Paul DuBois) (12/24/84)

I wish to make a retraction.  Ethan Vishniac made the following
statement a short time ago.

>> [Ethan Vishniac]
>> Thus human beings might be older than the earliest human skeletons, but
>> there is no getting around the hypothesis that we are descended from
>> the great explosive radiation of the great apes without abandoning
>> evolution.

To which I replied:

> From the number of times I've read about creationists being derided
> for talking about man as though he were descended from apes, I'm
> surprised to see you make the statement.  Standard doctrine is that
> we have a *common* ancestor.

Upon looking into the question further, I see that I was premature
in making such a statement.  Creationists are indeed derided for
saying "evolution says that men came from apes"; however, there
seems to be no "standard doctrine" on this matter.  It is not clear
whether it is thought that we came from monkeys, apes, neither, or
both.  My apologies to Ethan.

---

G. G. Simpson:

"In _The Origin of Species_ Darwin deliberately avoided the issue,
saying only in closing, 'Light will be thrown on the origin of man
and his history.'  Yet his adherents made no secret of the matter
and at once embroiled Darwin, with themselves, in arguments about
man's origin from monkeys.  Twelve years later (in 1871) Darwin
published _The Descent of Man_, which makes it clear that he was
indeed of that opinion [...] On this subject, by the way, there has
been too much pussyfooting.  Apologists emphasize that man cannot be
a descendant of any living ape - a statement that is obvious to the
verge of imbicility - and go on to state or imply that man is not
really descended from an ape or monkey at all, but from an earlier
common ancestor.  In fact, that earlier ancestor would certainly be
called an ape or monkey in popular speech by anyone who saw it.
Since the terms _ape_ and _monkey_ are defined by popular usage,
man's ancestors _were_ apes or monkeys (or successively both).  It
is pusillanimous if not dishonest for an informed investigator to
say otherwise."

"The World into which Darwin Led us."  Science, 131(3405), 966-974,
1 April 1960.  (Page 969.)

---

H. J. Muller:

"It is fashionable in some circles to refer slurringly to the
inference that apes were ancestral to men, and to insinuate that
Darwin's theory to this effect has been discredited and that it is
more proper to say that men and apes, perhaps even men, apes, and
monkeys, diverged long ago from a stem form that was more primitive
than any of these.  This is mere wishful thinking on the part of
those who resent too vivid a visualization of their lowly origin and
their present-day poor relations.  For recent years have brought
ever more concrete illustrations of the kinds of stages through
which man has passed in his epic journey upward from the apes of
Miocene times.  Of course no present-day species of ape is ancestral
to us, but if one Miocene ancestor of, say, 20 million years ago
could be obtained alive today he would certainly be classified as an
ape."

"Man's Place in Living Nature", Scientific Monthly, 84(3), 245-254,
May 1957 (page 250).

---

M. F. Ashley Montagu:

"It was from the Old World monkey stock that the early anthropoids
arose, and from these, in turn, that the line which led to man came
into being."

The Science of Man.  Odessy Press, 1964 (page 4).

---

Wm. L. Straus Jr.:

"[P]erhaps the majority of anthropologists and comparative
anatomists ... believe that man has evolved from a true anthropoid
ape at a relatively late geological date."

"The Riddle of Man's Ancestry", Quarterly Review of Biology, 24(3),
200, Sept 1949 (page 203).

---

On the flip side:

E. Adamson Hoebel:

"Man is not, as the common misconception has it, 'descended from the
monkeys.'  Such a popular idea is a vulgar corruption of the
evolutionary concept of the descent of man; it was never advocated
by Darwin nor by any of his scientific followers in biology or
anthropology [...] man is not descended from the apes."

Man in the Primitive World, McGraw-Hill, 1949 (page 21).

---

Theodosius Dobzhansky, speaking of "religious and other
conservatives":

"[T]o make Darwin's theory as shocking as possible the proposition
'man and apes have descended from common ancestors' was garbled into
'man has descended from the apes.'  This, of course, is obvious
nonsense, since man's remote ancestors could not have descended from
animals which are our contemporaries."

Mankind Evolving, Yale University Press, 1962 (page 5).

Thus *anti-evolutionists* are said to have started this idea.  It
would seem that Dobzhansky is tarring Simpson, Muller, Montagu and
Strauss with a brush they would not appreciate.

---

William Howells:

"Darwin is supposed by those who have not read him, to be the man
who thought of evolution and who said that men were descended from
monkeys.  Neither notion is even half true."

Mankind So Far, Doubleday and Co, 1945 (page 6).

The first notion may not be true (Darwin did not, in fact, think of
evolution) but he *did* say (in _Descent of Man_) that our ancestry
is to be found among either apes or monkeys.

---

I find the comment made by Simpson, Dobzhansky and Muller that
obviously we could not have descended from *contemporary* apes
somewhat puzzling.  This would seem to imply that no living species
can be descended from any other living species.  In particular it
seems to imply that a subpopulation could not split off and evolve
while the main population remained exhibited stasis.  Perhaps this
assumption is grounded in the gradualistic view which prevailed
during the era from which these quotes are taken.
-- 
Paul DuBois		{allegra,ihnp4,seismo}!uwvax!uwmacc!dubois

"The other kids tease be.  They call be dubby.  I'd dot a dubby, ab I?"