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Primates play a special role in human societies, especially in regions where modern humans and non-human primates co-exist. Non-human 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 draws these different perspectives together to show how non-human primates helped humans better understand their own place in nature. Primates in History, Myth, Art, and Science will be of interest to undergraduate and graduate students as well scholars in disciplines ranging from anthropology to art history.
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
Cecilia Veracini is researcher at the CAPP/ISCSP of the University of Lisbon in Portugal. She graduated in Biological Science at the University of Pisa (Italy) and obtained a MSc in Anthropology from the University of Florence and University of Barcelona studying non-human primate vocal communication. She received a Ph.D. degree in Anthropological Sciences (1997) from the Florence University with a work on the eco-ethology of two species of Brazilian Amazonian primates. She served some years as Assistant Professor at the Florence and Pisa Universities and was invited professor in others Italian Universities. She worked as collaborator at many institutions, including the National Institute of Health (US), Fluminense Federal University, State of Rio de Janeiro (Brazil), Lion Tamarin Conservation Society also in Brazil), Museum of Natural History "La specola" of Florence (Italy), and the Museum of Natural History of Barcelona (Spain). In 2011 she received a Doctorate degree in History of Science (University of Pisa/Florence/Siena), with a thesis about the knowledge of New World primates in Renaissance Europe. She has various articles published in national and international peer reviewed journals and as well as in popular journals and various book chapters. She is author of a popular book (Primati, University Press of Florence)" and of three videos on ecology and conservation of Brazilian primates and Amazonian deforestation.
Bernard Wood is University Professor of Human Origins and Director of the Center for the Advanced Study of Hominid Paleobiology at George Washington University (USA). His edited publications include Food Acquisition and Processing in Primates and Major Topics in Primate and Human Evolution and he is the author of The Evolution of Early Man, Human Evolution, Koobi Fora Research Project - Hominid Cranial Remains (Vol. 4), Human Evolution: A Very Short Introduction, and Wiley-Blackwell Student Dictionary of Human Evolution and co-author of Comparative Anatomy and Phylogeny of Primate Muscles and Human Evolution, and editor of the Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia of Human Evolution.
