Paper short abstract:

This work aims to point out the role and meaning of non-human primates in the Age of Discovery. We show how these embarrassing animals in the debate about human nature, were perceived and described by first navigators and, how their knowledge was integrated in Early Modern Natural History.

Paper long abstract:

Although much has been written on the cultural, economic and political consequences of the European expansion in the 15th and 16th centuries, the role of animals has been often underestimated or sometimes misunderstood. Actually recent evidence proves that in all the phases of this process animals were an unavoidable and fundamental presence. If all animals have been a prominent element in civilization, non-human primates have always had a special status due to their similarity with human beings. They entered as an embarrassing presence in the central debate about human nature and human origins. During the Middle Ages monkeys were considered evil creatures, symbol of sin and lust expanding even more the boundary which separated the human from the beast. The European explorations brought new, awkward first-hand information shattering conceptual patterns and ideas that had taken centuries to develop. By reviewing most of the Portuguese and other European travelling chronicles, scientific and philosophically works of the beginning of the Modern Age, our work presents evidence of non-human primates. Such evidences portraits these animals has been introduced into Europe in greater quantities than previously assumed, and in fact, Europeans were already familiar with some of these primates as early as the 16th century. We discuss how these animals were perceived by, interpreted by and integrated in Early Modern European culture and natural history. Moreover we point out how European perceptions of other primates (and perhaps of ourselves?) started to change gradually mainly due to the contact with African apes and Neotropical primates.