The termsAnthropopithecus (Blainville, 1839) andPithecanthropus (Haeckel, 1868) are obsolete taxa describing eitherchimpanzees orarchaic humans. Both are derived from Greek ἄνθρωπος (anthropos, "man") and πίθηκος (píthēkos, "ape" or "monkey"), translating to "man-ape" and "ape-man", respectively.
Anthropopithecus was originally coined to describe thechimpanzee and is now ajunior synonym ofPan. It had also been used to describe several other extant and extinct species, among others the fossilJava Man. Very quickly, the latter was re-assigned toPithecanthropus, originally coined to refer to a theoretical "missing link".Pithecanthropus is now classed asHomo erectus, thus a junior synonym ofHomo.
ThegenusAnthropopithecus was first proposed in 1841 by the Frenchzoologist andanatomistHenri-Marie Ducrotay de Blainville (1777–1850) in order to give a genus name to somechimpanzee material that he was studying at the time.[1]
After the genusAnthropopithecus was established by De Blainville in 1839, the Britishsurgeon andnaturalistJohn Bland-Sutton (1855–1936) proposed thespecies nameAnthropopithecus troglodytes in 1883 to designate thecommon chimpanzee. However, the genusPan had already been attributed to chimpanzees in 1816 by the German naturalistLorenz Oken (1779–1851). Since any earliernomenclature prevails over subsequent nomenclatures, the genusAnthropopithecus definitely lost its validity in 1895,[2] becoming from that date ajunior synonym of the genusPan.[note 1]
In 1879,[3] the Frencharchaeologist andanthropologistGabriel de Mortillet (1821–1898) proposed the termAnthropopithecus to designate a "missing link", a hypothetical intermediate between ape and man that lived in theTertiary and that supposedly, following De Mortillet's theory, producedeoliths.[4] In his work of 1883Le Préhistorique, antiquité de l'homme (The Prehistoric: Man's Antiquity, below quoted after the 2nd edition, 1885[4]), De Mortillet writes:
Nous sommes donc forcément conduits à admettre, par une déduction logique tirée de l’observation directe des faits, que les animaux intelligents qui savaient faire du feu et tailler des pierres à l’époque tertiaire, n’étaient pas des hommes dans l’acception géologique et paléontologique du mot, mais des animaux d’un autre genre, des précurseurs de l’homme dans l’échelle des êtres, précurseurs auxquels j’ai donné le nom d’Anthropopithecus. Ainsi, par le seul raisonnement, solidement appuyé sur des observations précises, nous sommes arrivés à découvrir d’une manière certaine un être intermédiaire entre les anthropoïdes actuels et l’homme.[4]
We are therefore forced to admit, as a consequence of a logical deduction drawn from the direct observation of the facts, that intelligent animals who knew how to make fire and cut stones in the Tertiary Period, were not men in the geological and paleontological sense of the word, but animals of another kind, precursors of Man in thechain of beings, precursors to whom I gave the nameAnthropopithecus. Thus, by reasoning alone, firmly supported by precise observations, we have come to discover with certainty a being intermediate between the presentanthropoids and Man.
When in 1905 the Frenchpaleontologist,paleoanthropologist andgeologistMarcellin Boule (1861–1942) published a paper demonstrating that the eoliths were in factgeofacts produced by natural phenomena (freezing,pressure,fire), the argument proposed by De Mortillet fell into disrepute and his definition of the termAnthropopithecus was dropped.[5] Yet the chimpanzee meaning of the genus persisted throughout the 19th century, even to the point of being a genus name attributed tofossilspecimens. For example, a fossil primate discovered in 1878 by the BritishmalacologistWilliam Theobald (1829-1908) in thePakistani Punjab inBritish India was first namedPalaeopithecus in 1879 but later renamedAnthropopithecus sivalensis, assuming that these remains had to be brought back to the chimpanzee genus as the latter was being understood at the time. A famous example of a fossilAnthropopithecus is that of theJava Man, discovered in 1891 inTrinil, nearby theSolo River, inEast Java, by Dutch physician and anatomistEugène Dubois, who named the discovery with the scientific nameAnthropopithecus erectus. This Dubois paper, written during the last quarter of 1892, was published by the Dutch government in 1893. In those early 1890s, the termAnthropopithecus was still being used by zoologists as the genus name of chimpanzees, so Dubois'Anthropopithecus erectus came to mean something like "the upright chimpanzee", or "the chimpanzee standing up". However, a year later, in 1893, Dubois considered that some anatomical characters proper to humans made necessary the attribution of these remains to a genus different thanAnthropopithecus and he renamed the specimen of Java with the namePithecanthropus erectus (1893 paper, published in 1894).Pithecanthropus is a genus that GermanbiologistErnst Haeckel (1834-1919) had created in 1868.[1] Years later, in the 20th century, the Germanphysician andpaleoanthropologistFranz Weidenreich (1873-1948) compared in detail the characters of Dubois' Java Man, then namedPithecanthropus erectus, with the characters of thePeking Man, then namedSinanthropus pekinensis. Weidenreich concluded in 1940 that because of their anatomical similarity with modern humans it was necessary to gather all these specimens of Java and China in a single species of the genusHomo, the speciesHomo erectus.[1] By that time, the genusAnthropopithecus had already been abandoned since 1895 at the earliest.
The termAnthropopithecus is scientifically obsolete in the present day but did become widespread in popular culture, mainly inFrance andBelgium:
Il dormait bien, le général Mac Kackmale, sur ses deux oreilles, plus longues que ne le comporte l’ordonnance. Avec ses bras démesurés, ses yeux ronds, enfoncés sous de rudes sourcils, sa face encadrée d’une barbe rêche, sa physionomie grimaçante, ses gestes d’anthropopithèque, le prognathisme extraordinaire de sa mâchoire, il était d’une laideur remarquable, – même chez un général anglais. Un vrai singe, excellent militaire, d’ailleurs, malgré sa tournure simiesque.
He slept well, did General MacKackmale, with both eyes shut, though longer than was permitted by regulations. With his long arms, his round eyes deeply set under their beetling brows, his face embellished with a stubbly beard, his grimaces, his semi-human gestures,[note 2] the extraordinary jutting-out of his jaw, he was remarkably ugly, even for an English general. Something of a monkey but an excellent soldier nevertheless, in spite of his apelike appearance.[6]