Morris positioned man as part of the animal world -- a radical idea at the time for a public brought up to think of homo sapiens as derived from the divine

Morris positioned man as part of the animal world -- a radical idea at the time for a public brought up to think of homo sapiens as derived from the divine

 Gabriel BOUYS

Celebrated British zoologist Desmond Morris, who died Sunday aged 98, shook up the world in 1967 when his book "The Naked Ape" posited that humans are essentially primates still captive to evolutionary impulses.

The idea that homo sapiens -- while cleverer and less hirsute than the average ape -- should be analysed as a belonging to the animal world was not new to anthropologists. 

Originally published on doc.afp.com, part of the BLOX Digital Content Exchange.

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