KEY POINTS:
An observation that might have influenced Charles Darwin's theory about the evolution of man has been attributed to an English artist during his travels in New Zealand in the19th century.
Paul Moon, a history professor at Auckland University of Technology, told the Weekend Herald yesterday that he had stumbled on an interesting entry in the journals of Augustus Earle, an artist he is researching who completed many early paintings of New Zealand and documented his trip.
Earle completed his manuscript in 1831, and it was published in 1832.
Professor Moon said Earle visited Australia before he arrived in New Zealand, where he stayed several months from 1827-1828, and was struck by the difference between Aborigines and Maori.
"In it he wrote of the differences ... He concluded that the Aborigines were the 'last link in the great chain ofexistence which unites man with the monkey'."
Professor Moon said the statement, which was dated 1828, not only suggested humans evolved from monkeys, but also talked about the idea of a missing link. That was particularly significant because Earle had spent a year with Darwin, who left England at the end of 1831 for his five-year voyage on HMS Beagle.
Professor Moon said on that voyage Darwin completed the basis of the work which led to his theory of evolution.
He said that in the early stages of the voyage Earle was the expedition artist and had clearly already come up with his own thoughts about possible links between monkeys and men.
"What this shows is that at the time when Darwin's mind first opened to the idea of the transmutation of species while on the Beagle voyage, his travelling companion Augustus Earle had already developed a remarkably similar idea about evolution ... there was plenty of time to talk about it."
Professor Moon said Darwin'stheory of evolution was not published until 1859, and even his private writings on the topic began in 1837, about nine years after Earle's observations.
He said Earle's manuscript was 200 pages long and loosely dated.
Earle had not held Aborigines in particularly high regard and saw them as something less than humans, whereas he compared Maori to classical Greeks with their muscular bodies.
Professor Moon expects his book on Earle will be ready for publication in about two years.
