The Pithecometra principle or Pithecometra thesis describes the evolution of humans; the pithecometra law is analogous to the concept that "man evolved within apes" or "man descended from apes" as advocated by Thomas Henry Huxley.

In evolution, Huxley first developed the concept of the "Pithecometra principle" which was discussed by Charles Darwin

Charles Darwin

Charles Robert Darwin FRS was an English naturalist. He established that all species of life have descended over time from common ancestry, and proposed the scientific theory that this branching pattern of evolution resulted from a process that he called natural selection.He published his theory...

 and Ernst Haeckel

Ernst Haeckel

The "European War" became known as "The Great War", and it was not until 1920, in the book "The First World War 1914-1918" by Charles à Court Repington, that the term "First World War" was used as the official name for the conflict.-Research:...

, when Huxley wrote the 1863 essay "On the Origin of Species" stating that mankind was more closely related to apes than the apes were to monkeys.

Huxley added that to hunt evidence of this close ancestry between apes and humans, the regions where modern apes are found should be the focal point, hence, Africa

Africa

Africa is the world's second largest and second most populous continent, after Asia. At about 30.2 million km² including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of the Earth's total surface area and 20.4% of the total land area...

.

The pithecometra principle has been most notable in evolution theory

Evolution Theory

Tin1 Yin2 Leun6 is Candy Lo's 9th studio album. It was released on 4 June 2005. For this album Candy Lo worked together with Hong Kong producer Kubert Leung with whom she worked on previous albums as well.- Track listing :...

 by placing mankind as an offshoot of animal species, rather than a separate divine creation, and thus pithecometra has generated intense religious controversy for decades.

Impact

Another of Darwin’s colleagues was Ernst Heinrich Haeckel

Ernst Haeckel

The "European War" became known as "The Great War", and it was not until 1920, in the book "The First World War 1914-1918" by Charles à Court Repington, that the term "First World War" was used as the official name for the conflict.-Research:...

 (1834–1919). Haeckel agreed with Huxley on several aspects of the pithecometra thesis. However, Haeckel frequently lectured on the Asian origin of the "missing link" between apes and humans. Consequently, Eugene Dubois

Eugène Dubois

Marie Eugène François Thomas Dubois was a Dutch paleoanthropologist. He earned worldwide fame for his discovery of Pithecanthropus erectus , or 'Java Man'...

, a student of Haeckel’s indoctrinated with the idea of Asian hominid origins, traveled to Java, Indonesia in 1890-1892. It was during this expedition when Dubois made the incredible discovery of Homo erectus

Homo erectus

Homo erectus is an extinct species of hominid that lived from the end of the Pliocene epoch to the later Pleistocene, about . The species originated in Africa and spread as far as India, China and Java. There is still disagreement on the subject of the classification, ancestry, and progeny of H...

fossil

Fossil

Fossils are the preserved remains or traces of animals , plants, and other organisms from the remote past...

s in Asia

Asia

Asia is the world's largest and most populous continent, located primarily in the eastern and northern hemispheres. It covers 8.7% of the Earth's total surface area and with approximately 3.879 billion people, it hosts 60% of the world's current human population...

. Also known as Java Man

Java Man

Java Man is the name given to fossils discovered in 1891 at Trinil - Ngawi Regency on the banks of the Solo River in East Java, Indonesia, one of the first known specimens of Homo erectus...

, that specimen was validation of mankind’s deep ancestry outside of Europe.

The pithecometra thesis with the work of Darwin, Huxley and Haeckel helped liberate the European scientific community of its Eurocentric biases. However, their work did not directly produce a change. It required the later revolution in evolutionary thought, of the Neo-Darwinian Synthesis of the mid-20th century, to cause a change in the recovery of fossils from regions outside Europe. Evidence of refusals to accept the fossils that began to be found in Asia and Africa after the late 19th century was the Piltdown Hoax.

The perpetrator of the Piltdown hoax is uncertain but the year and location indicate a rejection of growing evidence for man’s ancestry outside of Europe. In 1912 in England, a fossil was presented and named Piltdown Man. This specimen was the combination of ape and human features the scientific community had been seeking in order to argue human/ape affinities. The high, globular braincase signified human-like features while the robust jaw and molars resembled ape skulls. This fossil was used as proof of human evolution having occurred in England. With the discovery of the Piltdown specimen, actual fossil specimens of the prehistoric australopithecine

Australopithecine

The term australopithecine refers generally to any species in the related genera Australopithecus or Paranthropus. These species occurred in the Plio-Pleistocene era, and were bipedal and dentally similar to humans, but with a brain size not much larger than modern apes, lacking the...

 genus

Genus

In biology, a genus is a low-level taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of living and fossil organisms, which is an example of definition by genus and differentia...

 coming from Africa were being ignored. Raymond Dart

Raymond Dart

Raymond Arthur Dart was an Australian anatomist and anthropologist, best known for his involvement in the 1924 discovery of the first fossil ever found of Australopithecus africanus, an extinct hominid closely related to humans, at Taung in the North of South Africa in the province...

, who obtained a fossil skull of an actual hominid showing human-ape affinities from South Africa

South Africa

The Republic of South Africa is a country in southern Africa. Located at the southern tip of Africa, it is divided into nine provinces, with of coastline on the Atlantic and Indian oceans...

 was treated with disdain. Later in the 1950s, as the Neo-Darwinian Synthesis had thoroughly saturated the European scientific community, fewer people chose to ignore the significant Australopithecus

Australopithecus

Australopithecus is a genus of hominids that is now extinct. From the evidence gathered by palaeontologists and archaeologists, it appears that the Australopithecus genus evolved in eastern Africa around 4 million years ago before spreading throughout the continent and eventually becoming extinct...

 fossils coming from Africa, and the Piltdown Man fossil was re-examined. Upon closer inspection, the cranium was judged to be of a modern human and the jaw matched a modern orangutan

Orangutan

Orangutans are the only exclusively Asian genus of extant great ape. The largest living arboreal animals, they have proportionally longer arms than the other, more terrestrial, great apes. They are among the most intelligent primates and use a variety of sophisticated tools, also making sleeping...

. The molars had been filed down to appear like human upper molars, and the surface of the Piltdown specimen had been painted to give it the illusion of having been buried a long time. The rejection of the Piltdown fossil in the 1950s removed a significant barrier that had blocked the European scientific community’s view of more accurate human origins.