MikeBGene Quoted:
>"At some future time, not very distant as measured by centuries, the
>civilised races of man will almost certainly exterminate and replace
>throughout the world the savage races. At the same time the
>anthropomorphous apes... will not doubt be exterminated. The break will
>then be rendered wider, for it will intervene between man in a more
>civilised state, as we may hope, than the Caucasian, and some ape as low as
>the baboon, instead of as at present between the negro or Australian and the
>gorilla. Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man, p. 201 (Princeton University
>Press 1981).
>
>Just studying plants and animals, eh?
this is in the paragraph above the one Mike quoted:
". . . It is therefore probable that Africa was
formerly inhabited by extinct apes closely allied to the gorilla and
chimpanzee; and as these two species are now man's nearest allies,
it is somewhat more probable that our early progenitors lived on the
African continent than elsewhere. But it is useless to speculate on
this subject; for two or three anthropomorphous apes, one the
Dryopithecus* of Lartet, nearly as large as a man, and closely
allied to Hylobates, existed in Europe during the Miocene age; and
since so remote a period the earth has certainly undergone many
great revolutions, and there has been ample time for migration on
the largest scale."
He would be happy to know that the many fossil finds in this century fill
the "break" between our "lower" ancestors and ourselves. Darwin, like
nearly all his contemporaries thought the darker races were "lower" than
Europeans. He was not at all unique in that respect. However, unlike a lot
of his contemporaries, he saw that the "darker" races were indeed
human--even if somewhat "less"--and thought that slavery was immoral. He
also angered a lot of his contemporaries because he believed that not only
did we evolve from apes (and, indeed, *are* apes) but that all humans are
the same "race" or species. (Remember "race" and "species" were virtually
interchangeable terms in the 19th century.)
Mike makes the mistake of assuming that Darwin was "hoping" that the
"savage" races would be wiped out. He wasn't. In Darwin's time it was quite
commonplace for Europeans to attempt to exterminate indigineous peoples.
There are fewer Native Americans alive now than there were in Darwin's
time. The Americans did such a good job wiping them out that there were
fewer than a million (as I recall) at the turn of the 20th century. The
Austrialians were much more successful exterminating the indigenous
Tasmanians. None are known to survive today. If the racism rampant in
Darwin's time had continued, he would have been correct. In fact, he *is*
correct about the other great apes. We are wiping them out at a good clip
and they will probably be gone in our own lifetimes.
Susan
----------
For if there is a sin against life, it consists not so much in despairing
of life as in hoping for another and in eluding the implacable grandeur of
this one.
--Albert Camus
http://www.telepath.com/susanb/
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