Images of the Wildman Inside and Outside Europe

Research Article

Bibliographic Data

ID8066740
AuthorsG Forth (0000-0001-6298-8665, corresponding author)
Year2007
Volume118
Issue3
Pages261-281
Publication date2007-11-14
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueFolklore (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0015-587X • E-ISSN: 1469-8315
PublisherRoutledge (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/00155870701621772
OpenAlexW1493367708
LanguageEN
Citations received5
References cited32

Originally a figure of folklore, the European wildman gained prominence as a literary and artistic figure in the late Middle Ages, and in this form has commonly been interpreted as exercising a definite influence on later European representations of non-western peoples, non-human primates, and pre-sapiens hominids. Comparing the European image with wildman images encountered among indigenous peoples outside of Europe, this essay comprises a critical review of such arguments. Focusing on physical and behavioural attributes, consideration is first given to similarities and differences between European and non-European wildmen, paying particular attention to images recorded among small-scale societies in Asia. Turning to the reconstructions of palaeoanthropology and the objects of cryptozoology, it is then shown how reducing representations of ancient humans and modern wildmen to a discursive survival of the European mediaeval figure obscures both the radical transformation of the European image in later centuries and the independent existence of comparable non-western images. Acknowledgements Fieldwork concerning eastern Indonesian wildman images has formed part of more general ethnographic investigations conducted by the author between 1984 and 2005 and sponsored by the Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI) and Nusa Cendana and Artha Wacana Universities in Kupang. Library research was facilitated by a McCalla Research Professorship (2004–5) awarded by the University of Alberta and a sabbatical appointment (2005–6) as Senior Fellow at the International Institute of Asian Studies in Leiden, The Netherlands. Funding has been provided from grants awarded by the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada and the British Academy. The author is grateful to all of these bodies for their considerable support and assistance. Some of the ideas presented here were explored in a paper delivered in October 2005 at the University of Kent at Canterbury where the author was British Academy Visiting Professor in the Department of Anthropology, and in a "Masterclass" conference entitled "Images of the Wildman in Southeast Asia," which the author convened at the International Institute of Asian Studies in February 2006. Notes [1] In zoological usage, "hominoid" denotes a super-family that includes humans and apes (chimpanzees, gorillas, orang-utans, and gibbons). In this paper, I use "hominoid" to refer to putative humanlike creatures not currently recognised by modern science, thus essentially as a synonym of "wildman." "Hominid," by contrast, denotes recognised species of the genera Homo, Australopithecus, and Paranthropus. In a recently proposed taxonomy, it further includes the great apes (chimpanzees, gorillas, and orang-utans), Homo, then, being more exclusively assigned to the "hominini" (or "hominins"). In regard to Homo floresiensis, the type skeleton—the only individual for which complete cranial evidence exists—has been interpreted by, among others, the Indonesian palaeoanthropologist Teuku Jacob (Jacob et al. 2006 Jacob, Teuku, Indriati, E., Soejono, R. P., Hsu, K., Frayer, D. W., Eckhardt, R. B., Kuperavage, A. J., Thorne, A. and Henneberg, M. 2006. Pygmoid Australomelanesian Homo Sapiens Skeletal Remains from Liang Bua, Flores: Population Affinities and Pathological Abnormalities. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 103(36): 13421–6. [Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]), as the remains of a microcephalic modern human. Published between 2005 and 2007, other analyses of the remains, comprising as many as nine individuals, appear to support the interpretation of a new species. However, as is common in palaeoanthropology, it will probably be a long time before the matter is fully resolved. [2] Possibly qualifying this assessment are literary accounts seemingly describing particular encounters in northern Europe mostly in later centuries. Citing Pierre Boaistuau (Histories of Wonderfull Secrets in Nature. Translated from the French by Edward Fenton. London: Henry Bynneman [printer], 1569, 110 and 111), Jeffrey Jeffrey, David Lyle. 1980. "Medieval Monsters". In Manlike Monsters on Trial: Early Records and Modern Evidence, Edited by: Halpin, Marjorie and Ames, Michael. 47–64. Vancouver, B.C.: University of British Columbia Press. [Google Scholar] refers to two reports dating to 1409 and 1531, respectively, of the sighting and in one case the killing and capture of wildmen in Norway and Saxony (1980, 60–2). Other than a human face, however, these accounts include few details of the creatures concerned; and in one case where a hirsute body is indicated, the creature is further described as possessing a tail and reptilian or birdlike feet. [3] A connection with Roman divinities is suggested by names for wildmen in European languages. Referring more specifically to a wild woman, one name is "fangge" or "faengge," which Bernheimer (1952 Bernheimer, R. 1952. Wild Men in the Middle Ages: A Study in Art, Sentiment, and Demonology, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar], 41–4) associates with the Latin "faunus" (compare the Greek "Pan"). [4] The hairy hominoids called "boqs" by the Bella Coola Indians of British Columbia are supposed to have long penises; these they employ to engage unsuspecting women at a distance (McIlwraith 1992 McIlwraith, T. F. 1992. The Bella Coola Indians, Toronto: University of Toronto Press. First published 1948[Crossref] , [Google Scholar], 60–3), a mythological theme encountered the world over. With regard to the Chinese wildman, the possibility of mating with humans is implicit in the notion that deformed infants, called "monkey babies," result from the rape of a human female by a male wildman (Poirier and Greenwall 1992 Poirier, Frank E. and Greenwall, J. Richard. 1992. Is there a Large, Unknown Primate in China? The Chinese Yeren or Wildman. Cryptozoology, 11: 70–82. [Google Scholar], 72). [5] According to a complementary interpretation, depicting apes holding on to lengths of wood reflects an eighteenth-century view of these creatures as bipedal, but imperfectly so; hence the wooden implements shown in the illustrations may be understood simply as props (Spencer 1995 Spencer, Frank. 1995. "Pithekos to Pithecanthropus: An Abbreviated Review of Changing Scientific Views on the Relationship of the Anthropoid Apes to Homo". In Ape, Man, Apeman: Changing Views since 1600, Edited by: Corbey, R. and Theunissen, B. 13–27. Leiden: Department of Prehistory, Leiden University. [Google Scholar], 15 and 17). At the same time, recent studies of what has been called "chimpanzee culture" have documented the extent to which chimpanzees do indeed employ lengths of wood as tools (see McGrew 2004 McGrew, William. 2004. The Cultured Chimpanzee: Reflections on Cultural Primatology, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar], 111–14). [6] As Janson Janson, H. W. 1952. Apes and Ape Lore in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, vol. 20, London: University of London. Studies of the Warburg Institute [Google Scholar] has shown, in late mediaeval iconography wildmen were sometimes opposed to "apes," as when the latter, depicted as chivalrous knights, were shown rescuing a human damsel abducted by the wild figure. These "apes," however, were not anthropoid apes, but monkeys (the tails make this clear), creatures far more familiar to Europeans, as captive animals, since classical antiquity. Underscoring the contrast, Janson suggests that an anthropoid ape finding its way into mediaeval Europe might have been construed in several ways, one of which is "a wild man covered with hair" (1952, 261–2, 332 and 349 note 25). [7] Somewhat paralleling what I have called the "naturalisation" of the European wildman, the nineteenth-century discovery of pygmies gave rise to interpretations of European fairies as empirical beings descended from small humans comparable to the diminutive Africans (Silver 1999 Silver, Carole G. 1999. Strange and Secret Peoples: Fairies and Victorian Consciousness, New York: Oxford University Press. [Google Scholar]). [8] Geneticists Watson, Eastall and Penny (2001 Watson, E. E., Eastall, S. and Penny, D. 2001. "Homo Genus: A Review of the Classification of Humans and the Great Apes". In Humanity from African Naissance to Coming Millennia: Colloquia in Human Biology and Palaeoanthropology, Edited by: Tobias, Phillip V., Raath, M. A., Moggi-Cecchi, J. and Doyle, G. A. 317–18. Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press. [Google Scholar]) have proposed that chimpanzees and gorillas be placed in the same genus as humans. [9] The palaeoanthropological comparison may require qualification. Homo erectus could be considered "ambiguous" in regard to the contrast of "human" and "animal," or the question of whether members of this species were "fully human." But these questions are ultimately philosophical, not palaeoanthropological. Taxonomically, erectus is securely assigned to both the genus Homo and to a species other than sapiens. As the distinction illustrates, "human" is not a fully scientific category [10] It is interesting how this opinion parallels Teuku Jacob's counter-interpretation of the type specimen of Homo floresiensis as a microcephalic modern human (see note [1]). Jacob, however, appears no longer to contest the date for this individual of eighteen thousand years before present, proposed by the discovery team (Jacob et al. 2006 Jacob, Teuku, Indriati, E., Soejono, R. P., Hsu, K., Frayer, D. W., Eckhardt, R. B., Kuperavage, A. J., Thorne, A. and Henneberg, M. 2006. Pygmoid Australomelanesian Homo Sapiens Skeletal Remains from Liang Bua, Flores: Population Affinities and Pathological Abnormalities. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 103(36): 13421–6. [Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). [11] Possible connections between the Flores hominid and local representations like the ebu gogo form the point of departure for a book project I am currently completing which comprises a comparative study of Southeast Asian wildman categories

Geography · Geographies of human-animal interactions · History · Indigenous Studies and Ecology · Pleistocene-Era Hominins and Archaeology