Full Description
Non-human primates (hereafter just primates) play a special role in human societies, especially in regions where modern humans and primates co-exist. Primates feature in myths and legends and in traditional indigenous knowledge. Explorers observed them in the wild and brought them, at great cost, to Europe. There they were valued as pets and for display, their images featured in art and architecture, and where they were literally teased apart by scientists. The international team of contributors to this book draws these different perspectives together to show how primates helped humans better understand their own place in nature. The book will be of interest to undergraduate and graduate students as well scholars in disciplines ranging from anthropology to art history.
Key features:
Includes contributions from an international team of historians and natural scientists
Integrates various perspectives and perceptions of non-human primates across time and place
Summarizes the place of non-human primates in science, art and culture
Includes rare early illustrations
Contents
Introduction
SECTION I - Lore and mythology of non-human primates since antiquity
1. South, Southeast, and East Asia
Philip Lutgendorf
2. Continental Africa
2.1 Ancient Egypt
Cybelle Greenlaw
2.2. North Africa and Sub-Saharan Africa.
Cecilia Veracini
3. Madagascar
Alessio Anania & Giuseppe Donati
4. The Americas
Cecilia Veracini & Ana Lucia Camphora
5. A non-monkey land. Non-human primates in the ancient Near East, from protohistory to the first Islamic caliphate
Marco Masseti
6. Europe from the Bronze Age (mid-3rd millennium BCE) to Greco-Roman times
Marco Masseti & Cecilia Veracini
SECTION II. The Middle Ages and the Age of Discovery in Europe and in the Arab world
7. Nonhuman primates in Medieval Europe
Cecilia Veracini
8. Perception and description of non-human primates in the Arab world
Cecilia Veracini & Malak Alghamdi
9. Non-human primates in the Age of Discovery (15th and 16th centuries)
Cecilia Veracini
SECTION III. Modern period (until Darwin)
10. Natural history of nonhuman primates in the 17th century: naturalists, missionaries, scientific expeditions and trade
Cecilia Veracini
11. Natural history of Primates in the 18th-19th centuries, before Darwin
Cecilia Veracini
12. Natural History of Great Apes from Gesner to Huxley
Giulio Barsanti
Section IV. Our Place in Nature
13. The contribution of morphology to Darwin's understanding of the genealogy of modern humans
Bernard Wood, Ryan McRae, & Rowan M. Sherwood
14. How old and new lines of evidence have contributed to our understanding of the relationships among modern humans and the great apes: 1900-2021
Bernard Wood & Rowan M. Sherwood
Glossary
