Darwin's Apes, Dental Apes, and the Descent of Man: Normal Science in Evolutionary Anthropology

Abstract

This paper sketches successive refinements, optional renderings, and disclaimers of the ape model of hominid evolution from its initial statement by Darwin, Huxley, and Haeckel until 1973. I suggest that of the four principal ape models that have been advanced-brachiating troglodytian; brachiating, bipedal hylobatian; knuckle-walking, brachiating troglodytian; and pristine ground ape-the hylobatian model of Morton is the most convincing. Thus, future biomechanical, experimental, and theoretic studies might be profitably focused on determination of the arboreal adaptive complexes that were fundamental to the initial divergence of the hominids and the pongid apes. The 19th-century ape model and the burgeoning research provoked by it during the past century seem to satisfy Kuhn's criteria for the establishment of a normal science. Hence we might refer to the ape paradigm as the foundation of a normal science of evolutionary anthropology, especially in the aspect which deals with the emergence and other early phases of the hominid career.

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