“For years I had been searching, I dug carefully with my hands in the sands and silts which the tides of the seasons had brought there, when, O tragic moment! I saw the remains and that in circumstances of remarkable interest.
“In a long rectangular trench, clearly dug by a human being, rested a skeleton lying on its back, oriented in an east-west direction, the head raised up against the wall of the grave, which proves overwhelmingly that, following a custom still alive among some races, one had placed the deceased facing the east, as if one had wished to signify by doing so that another sun, the sun of a new life, would rise before the deceased’s soul. Flint and quartz tools, those which he had no doubt used to sustain and protect his life, were arranged around him, as is still done today, with the weapons and medals of honor of our dead. Besides this, the abundance of bones told of the diverse fauna which has been partaken of in the funerary banquets which the anthropoids gave, as we do, in honor of their departed parents.
“As you can see, these are the hints of a budding civilization. Like us they avoided solitude and silence; like us, they ate and pondered things in a group; like us, they called upon their dead to preside over the principal actions of life.
“But they were men, you will say! Eh! well, no! For there to be no possible doubt, one need only carefully consider these remains from a morphological point of view. The features of the skull are bestial; all the traits of simians are present together; the cranium was flattened, the prominent brow, and beneath the superciliary arch, the nose was separated from it by a deep depression resembling the notch of an axe. To all of this, add a facial prognathism even more hideous as among the descendants of Charles Quint.82 So tell me, does there remain any doubt on the simian identity of our precious subject?
“You see gentlemen, our searching has paid off. Our ancestors after 10,000 or 20,000 years of sleep and waiting seem to be rising from their graves to claim from their descendants the recognition of their paternity.”
Brother Levrai thought he was dreaming. He would not have described it otherwise if he had had to give an account of what he had recently seen in Borneo. What to do? Would he speak of his own discovery? His faith no longer stopped him. But how could he confess to his pointless crime? Also, he thought, the question is resolved, and it would be rather poor manners, not being registered as a speaker, to get involved in a discussion wisely organized in advance.
Already the illustrious Dr. Moyen had reached the podium.
This professor enjoyed a most envied reputation as a prudent scientist, resistant to immoderate enthusiasm regarding bold theories, faithful to the wisdom of learned men of the old school.
“I shall begin by paying homage,” he said, “to my eminent colleague; it is our duty to encourage the researchers whose discoveries are the very spring from whence science drinks. However, let us not be carried away in our desire to attain certainty. Truth is not so simple. As long as it was only a theory, one could close one’s eyes and let young minds get heated through its contact, but today, when events appear to confirm their thesis, we must see things in another light. Besides, it would be unworthy of a scientist to believe for an instant that truth could let itself be captured.
“But, especially consider the noble and genuine monuments of intellect, which such a truth would undermine to their ultimate collapse. What would become of the admirable inventions of the philosophers and creators of the book of Genesis? Let the members of this assembly take hold of themselves and return to a wiser conception of things.
“Why, then, would these discoveries that one cannot deny not incite us to proclaim that these half-simian, half-human remains, those of a lost species, a species which would stand—I would propose officially—as the happy medium between man and ape, an inferior race not ascending but parallel, and which would be to the human being what the curate is to the priest, the clergy to the bishop, or in a well-structured society, the poor to the rich.
“Man would thus remain the center of the universe.
“This is a new theory, you will say, yes, but a theory which leaves the question open and does not rattle too forcefully the doors of the sanctuary within which we must leave truth inviolate.
“Nothing,” he added, “would allow us to settle the question today. The proof has not been made. What have been brought are, I will admit, suggestive hints, but doubtful, incomplete hints. I believe I express the opinion of the majority in affirming that true scientists will only face the facts when one among us will come and tell us: I saw him with my own eyes, I touched with my own hands Pithecanthropus erectus.”
“I am the one,” Levrai cried out, no longer able to silence the truth which leapt from his heart to his lips. “I have seen it, I have touched it, I have spoken to it, I have even killed it...”
The rest was lost in the general din and indignation.
The most charitable among them thought him mad.
The ushers drew around him quietly; they took him away; he allowed himself to be taken, already regretting the scandal he had caused. It was only in the cabin where the Brothers of Charity locked him up that he finally understood the reality of things.
The kindest care, the most persuasive treatments were never able to overcome his insanity, and, many years later, his keeper, more in compassion than in irony, would still tell visitors who felt sorry for the meek and taciturn man:
“That one, he’s the man who has seen truth.”
Marcel Roland: The Missing Link
From the village where they had set up the center of their explorations, they had left with the rising sun and had already been walking for three hours. The part of Borneo through which they made their way was mountainous, and divided by deep, dark valleys. Rocky peaks alternated with almost impenetrable jungles. Accompanied by a native guide and carrying their plant presses, the two naturalists had just climbed half-way up a precipitous outcropping. After stopping in the shade of one of the rare trees growing on this gravelly slope, they went on their way. Suddenly, they found themselves in a natural hollow, carved out of the rock.
“A cave!” cried out Mounier.
“No, a tunnel!” answered the other.
In saying these words, the second European, Steiner, pushed aside a curtain of dried lianas which half covered the opening. A narrow circle of pale daylight appeared at the other end. It was indeed a passageway which extended at both ends into open air.
“Let’s go in!” Mounier offered resolutely. “I’ll go first!”
They silently made their way down the passage, their rifles at the ready, followed by the native whose supple tread barely brought a crackle from the granitic debris strewn across the floor. They could walk upright, but sometimes the ceiling would abruptly drop or bristle with sharp spikes, forcing them to bend over. Large bats, hanging upside-down from the roof, their serenity disturbed, took wing with cries that spun through the oppressive air. They finally reached the end of the straight passageway
Steiner, who had taken the lead, lifted a sort of blind of twigs such as hung at the other end, but suddenly stepped back.
“Just in time,” he grumbled, “I was going to take quite a tumble.”
Indeed, the ground dropped off abruptly in front of the cave floor, sloping down sharply, almost perpendicularly to heaps of boulders. The three companions stopped and took in the scene which presented itself to them. They saw an extremely deep, funnel-shaped cirque, at the bottom of which, amongst fearful shadows, one could hear the roar of an invisible torrent. The edges of this deep granite basin were lost at a dizzying height, far above their heads, and the light from the sky, falling on the chaotic assemblage of irregularly-shaped boulders, contrasted areas of light with black pits.
The corridor from which the explorers were emerging, continued on the other side of the cirque, but to reach it one had to follow an extremely narrow platform, created by a freak of Nature, which ran all along the wall.
“It’s dangerous!” pointed out Steiner, “but if we want
to know what this underground passage leads to, there’s no hesitating!”
“Let’s go!...You don’t suffer from vertigo, do you, Sikoula?” said Mounier.
The native smiled. Vertigo, pah! He was well acquainted with peaks, and experienced in the most awkward of balancing acts!
They continued their perilous hike. Here and there the suspended walkway widened and the piles of boulders beneath made any possible fall much shorter.
Then, mere meters away, Steiner made out, upon a crag, a bunch of pale mauve flowers.
“Velamina Sigillata!” he cried out triumphantly, his face glowing with happiness. “Finally! I knew I would succeed in finding it!”
This Velamina Sigillata, was an extremely rare plant, a genuine jewel of Botany, of which only one living example existed in cultivation and which he had searched for in vain for years! He had come to Borneo with the hope of perhaps finding, in the midst of its abundant vegetation, the coveted specimen, which he counted upon to cement his professional reputation. This expectation had not been a disappointment! On the edge of the walkway, his eyes sparkling, he contemplated the object of his dreams.
He extended a finger. “There, Sikoula...Ten dollars for you if you bring me back that plant with its roots!”
In a flash, the native had slipped down a granite rib to a spot a few feet below the walkway, and began to leap from boulder to boulder to where the Velamina opened its mauve corollas.
Suddenly, there was a stifled cry and his arms flailed out: he had lost his footing. The Europeans, who had been following him, saw him waver and drop, head first, over the precipice. But at the very moment he was to disappear, from behind a rocky outcropping emerged a huge, muscular black arm, bearing a crooked hand. This hand grabbed the man as he fell, and held him still, suspended over the abyss like a gesticulating puppet. Slowly, something fearful, a gigantic, hideous creature, was revealed before the explorers’ eyes.
They had enough time to make him out clearly, to notice his body’s long fawn-colored hair, his spindly legs, bending under the weight of the torso, the head’s flattened skull, the sunken brow, the prominent cheeks and forward-jutting jaws that made up its features. Buried beneath the beetling brow, gleamed a set of furtive, yellow eyes. Still holding Sikoula at arm’s length, the marvelous creature had turned towards the strangers and was looking them over. They too looked him over, frozen in fear and amazement. This was no orang, for it was much bigger, better proportioned and missing the pair of lateral cranial protrusions characteristic of the Asian anthropoid. There was, all told, over his features a singular, indefinable expression, less bestial than human. The features of this creature would not allow it being assigned to any species of ape. The two naturalists, accustomed to all forms of the simian race, of which the island had supplied them with numerous examples, had no doubt whatsoever of this. What they were seeing was a new, unknown life-form.
Struck by a sudden thought, Mounier leaned over and whispered:
“Steiner! Could it be...It...the ape-man?...You know of course, the pithecanthrope, the missing rung in the ecological ladder between the gorilla and us! There are claims it is not extinct. Travelers have met it in certain old-growth forests. I myself didn’t believe it, however...”
But already, his partner, driven by his haste to save the native had shouldered his rifle. Before his partner could stop him he had shot at the monster without further thought.
It jerked, threw down its stick and put its free hand to its chest, over its heart. With its other arm it still held Sikoula, suspended motionless over the abyss. It had but to open its fingers and the poor wretch would have been splattered over the bottom. At this thought the two explorers shuddered. Furious at his own thoughtlessness, Steiner muttered,
“What an idiot I am!”
But, rather than perpetrate the act of vengeance they feared, to their amazement the creature put the native softly down on a boulder from which he could easily regain the platform. Then in a look which gave away its suffering it seemed to say: “Go back to your own kind, go...You are safe now!”
And while a still trembling Sikoula returned to his companions, the mysterious creature, leaned tottering against a boulder. His hairy hand pressed against the thorax from which a red stream flowed. It moaned, and turning its head several times towards the men, towards those who had just condemned him to death, he moved off towards the underground passage. Helping himself up by way of great masses of stone, he climbed the fairly steep slope leading to it. Having reached the tunnel’s entrance, he called feebly. The travelers immediately saw a long-haired female and her agile children emerge and busy themselves around him...One last look back and the creature disappeared.
“I feel like I’ve committed murder,” Steiner admitted.
Perplexed, almost anguished, they turned back. A few days later they returned to this spot with a large escort. The tunnel, the cirque, the neighboring areas were searched, but no trace was found of the family of anthropoids.
Had they come face to face with a human ancestor, which remained the matter of legends, or had they simply encountered an orangutan of superior instincts? None was ever able to solve this enigma.
Notes
1 All available in Vamireh, translated by Brian Stableford, Black Coat Press, ISBN 978-1-935558-38-5.
2 Available in a Black Coat Press edition translated by Brian Stableford, ISBN 978-1-934543-61-0.
3 Available in a Black Coat Press edition translated by Georges T. Dodds, ISBN 978-1-935558-34-7.
4 Available in a Black Coat Press edition of Zembla, translated by Jean-Marc Lofficier, ISBN 978-1-932983-93.7.
5 The actual saying is: “better to be an advanced ape than a degenerated Adam” and is attributed to the Swiss comparative anatomist René-Edouard Claparède (1832-1871). His father, who was French, found refuge in Switzerland after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes by Louis XIV in 1685. Interestingly, Paul Broca (1824-1880), the resolutely free-thinking, progressive French physician, anatomist and anthropologist after whom the speech production center of the brain is famously named (Broca’s area), who opposed slavery, fought against the conservatism of the church, was denounced as a radical, etc., invoked Claparède’s saying and held a complex position in the raging debates of his day. On the one hand he defended Darwin’s common ancestor of all life forms thesis, which one assumes can only rely upon mongenism, and yet still made a case for polygenism. [Ed.]
6 A common mechanism in this and the following tales is the projection of anthropomorphized sexuality onto primates, and a racist, comparative anatomical ranking between primates and ethnic human groupings. [Ed.]
7 In Gabon. [Ed.]
8 This was the theory put forward by Ernst Haeckel (1834-1919), a German biologist and evolutionist perhaps best known for his beautiful illustrations of organisms collected in books such as Natürliche Schöpfungsgeschichte (1868, translated into English as The History of Creation in 1876) and Kunstformen der Natur (1904). Unfortunately, Haeckel was prone to wild speculation, and the so-called 21st phase or “missing link” of his Chain of the Animal Ancestors of Man, whilst inspiring many writers, also gave credence to the racial anthropology which came to inform much of New Imperialism. [Ed.]
9 Anthropopithecus was the scientific name for the chimpanzee and meant “man-like ape.” [Ed.]
10 The orangutan (genus: pongo) is here given its modern English spelling. Elsewhere, or when cited from French or antiquated sources, it is given as orang-outang or ourang-outang. Also sometimes referred to in antiquarian literature as Wurmb’s Pongo after Baron Von Wurmb (?-1781) who established the pongo in the taxonomical order of Primates. Huxley referred to him as the “very intelligent German officer.” [Ed.]
11 Needless to say, one of the many problems which finally managed to dismiss the “missing link” from serious scientific credibility was its de facto racism. [Ed.]
12 Tum primos ab Oriente Garamantas, post Augilas et Troglodytas, et ultimos ad Occasum Atlantas, au
dimus. Intra (si credere libet) vix jam homines, magisque semiferi, Aegipanes, et Blemyes, et Gamphasantes, et Satyri, sine tectis ad sedibus passim vagi, habent potius terras, quam habitant. [De Situ Orbis, Book I, chap iv].
13 Port-Gentil, Gabon. [Ed.]
14 Coast of Senegal. [Ed.]
15 Banc d’Arguin, Mauritania. [Ed.]
16 The Arabic word for valley or dry riverbed. [Ed.]
17 Alphonse Daudet. Les Aventures prodigieuses de Tartarin de Tarascon. Paris: Dentu, 1872. Alphonse Daudet (1840-1897), a French novelist aligned, though not without tension, to the naturalist school. Tartarin of Tarascon was a naïve and boastful character appearing in three of his burlesque novels. [Ed.]
18 Alphonse Daudet. Tartarin sur les Alpes. Nouveaux Exploits du Heros Tarasconnais (1885).
19 Pierre-Jean de Béranger (1780-1857), a popular songwriter of the time, credited with reviving the French chanson (song) with intelligence and sentiment. [Ed.]
20 Jean de La Bruyère (1645-1696), French essayist and moralist. The allusion is presumably to the reputation La Bruyère had following the publication of his masterpiece, the harshly satirical study in manners, Les Caractères (1688). This work was revered for its sharply poignant style of composite suggestion as opposed to direct expression. [Ed.]
21 A species of the Tragulidae family of deer. [Ed.]
22 Georges Cuvier (Jean Léopold Nicolas Frédéric Cuvier, 1769-1832), a French naturalist and zoologist. Cuvier only applied this now obsolete classificatory mechanism, a term first conceptualized by the remarkable German physician, physiologist and anthropologist Johann Friedrich Blumenbach (1752-1840). The Latin quadrumana refers to “four hands,” such as found on apes, and bimana to “two hands” as found on human beings. [Ed.]
23 Jean Baptiste Bory de Saint-Vincent (1778-1846), a French naturalist (botanist), explorer, and soldier who developed an influential system of racial classification. [Ed.]
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