Evolution, Human

Darwin's Influence

After waiting 20 years, the great naturalist Charles Darwin finally published On the Origin of Species (1859). This book argued for the mutability of species over time by means of variation and selection, that is, organic evolution as a result of the survival of the fittest in the struggle for existence. Knowing how controversial his scientific theory of biological evolution would be for science, philosophy, and theology, Darwin deliberately left out of this pivotal work a discussion on the origin and history of the human species. However, any critical reader could easily see that the Darwinian theory can be extended to also include the evolution of the human animal from an apelike form in the remote past to Homo sapiens sapiens of today. In fact, after 1859, both Thomas Huxley in England and Ernst Haeckel in Germany were quick to lecture on and write about human evolution(although early fossil hominid evidence outside of Europe was lacking at that time).

Darwin's writings represent one long argument for organic evolution in terms of both science and reason. Grounded in a mechanistic and materialistic interpretation of nature, his books maintain that natural selection is the basic principle to explain the evolution of all species throughout geological time. The fact that species are mutable challenged traditional science, philosophy and theology; it had been held since antiquity that plant and animal types are eternally fixed within a single hierarchy of static forms from minerals, through plants and animals, to the human being at the apex of this so-called great chain of being or ladder of nature. The Darwinian conceptual revolution of biological evolution in science gave priority to change over permanence; it also supported mechanism and materialism over Aristotelian teleology and essentialism, while discrediting vitalism and challenging spiritualism.

Twelve years after the appearance of his Origin volume, Darwin published The Descent of Man (1871). In this work, he focused on human evolution. Darwin claimed that the human species is closest to two African great apes (chimpanzee and gorilla), with which it shares a common fossil ancestor that would be found in Africa; although at that time, it was generally held by naturalists that Asia was the birthplace of humankind. Unfortunately, during Darwin's own life, no fossil hominid specimens older than the Neandertals of Europe had been found, and the bonobo, the third great ape (or pongid) of Africa, was still unknown to science.

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