The image above is of a sculpture monkey from the Pre-Columbian Aztec civilization in Mexico.
My first thoughts about it was that it appeared to be rather dumpy looking, which is somewhat unusual for the spider and howler monkeys that are indigenous to Mexico. Spider monkeys are quite gracile animals, and howler monkeys are basically tree gorillas with really ponchy bellies.
Then I noticed the wrinkles.
Light bulb.
I have spent some time reading about Pre-Columbian dogs throughout the Americas. One of my favorite books is Marion Schwartz’s A History of Dogs in the Early Americas. The book contains lots of artwork from these civilizations and cultures. Of particular note was how the various peoples of Meso-America would denote hairlessness on a dog sculpture.
They would give the dog a lot of wrinkles– probably more than any hairless dog actually had. However, if the sculptors did not give them wrinkles, we would not know that these animals were hairless. It would simply be impossible to tell a hairless dog sculpture from a normal short-coated dog sculpture.
The wrinkles on this monkey are very far up on its head. This sculpture is supposed to denote a very bald monkey.
Dumpy monkey with a very bald head. Hmmm.
There isn’t one native to Mexico.
But there is one of them in Amazonia.
The bald uakari.
Not only is it a bald monkey. It is a strikingly bald monkey:
These animals are most common in the Peruvian Amazon, which isn’t that far from the advanced civilizations of the Inca. We also know that there had to have been some trade between Peru and Mexico, because the hairless dogs originated from a mutation in Mexican dogs that occurred 4,000 years ago. The hairless dogs of Peru and other parts of South America have exactly the same mutation, and because of this finding, we know that the peoples of Mexico and Peru definitely traded animals.
We also know that people in Amazonia keep unusual pets. They always have tapirs, coatis, giant otters, jaguars, ocelots, parrrots, macaws, and bush dogs running around their camps. They also also keep monkeys, which one of their favorite things to hunt. They likely have kept pet uakaris for centuries.
These monkeys are quite bizarre. They would have been a novelty that could have been traded for just about anything. I think that is very likely that an Aztec saw one of these monkeys on a trading expedition.
And we also know that the Aztecs were obsessed with their menageries. They kept all sorts of different wild animals in them, and not all of them were native to Mexico. It is quite possible that a pet uakari from a village in the Peruvian Amazon could have made to Mexico and became part of a menagerie.
These sound like possible reasonable guesses to this monkey’s identity. These facts fit in nicely with what we already know about Pre-Columbian Latin America and their cultures and wildlife.
***
Unfortunately, not everyone agrees with such analysis. Brett Booth and I have commented about this monkey statue at the Frontiers of Zoology blog.
The author of that blog swears that this monkey must be a Japanese macaque that the Chinese brought over before Columbus. The notion that the Chinese made to Mexico before Columbus is relatively new, and there is some evidence to suggest that this did happen. The theory goes that the legendary Admiral Zheng He made to Mexico and South America in 1421, which was when the Chinese were at the peak of their maritime power.
We do not have conclusive evidence of this voyage, and it may have never happened. Remember, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
The only evidence the author of Frontiers of Zoology has is that the head and muzzle look like an Old World monkey– and that it can only be an Old World monkey.
Keep in mind that the sculpture is a piece of art. It is not a photograph or an actual specimen.
Art is often not in keeping with actual anatomy.
Let me give you a hypothetical to see if this makes sense:
Let’s say 2,000 years from now someone comes across a cartoon image of Mickey Mouse.
Would it be logical for them to assume that we once had giant black rodents with cream-colored faces living in North America?
Well, we would say “That’s silly.”
But that’s kind of what is going on at the Frontiers of Zoology blog.
We cannot assume that this is an Old World monkey until we have considered other possibilities.
And the Peruvian Amazon is a lot closer to Mexico than China or Japan.
And we have conclusive evidence that the peoples of Peru and those of Mexico were connected via trade routes.
The assumption that this is an Old World monkey is a large one, but if we look at the context of he art, it seems that this monkey fits with how someone from Pre-Columbian Meso-America might depict the uakari.
This monkey may have reminded the Aztec sculptor of a human, and the way the Aztecs portrayed humans in their art was to give them wedge-shaped heads and high cheek bones (that’s where he’s getting the perception of macaque cheek pouches.)
The principle of parsimony is a very useful thing to keep in mind when doing these sorts of speculative analysis. The principle requires us to keep our assumptions under control. When we make broad assumptions without much evidence, we are likely to make errors. The two big assumptions at work here are:
- The Chinese regularly traded with the Americas before Columbus– and they brought macaques.
- That artwork is always a depiction of reality.
Number 1 is an assumption that is still being explored with skeptical inquiry. I am not convinced that the Chinese made to America. I need more evidence.
Number 2 is a simple falsehood. I don’t need to explain it any more. Everyone who has seen a cartoon knows what I am talking about.
I actually don’t know why it’s “so uncool” that the Mexicans knew about uakaris, which found thousands of miles away and are not that common at all. It would even be more fascinating if we found evidence that a bald uakari had been kept in an Aztec menagerie.
I have always found implications within certain theories that the people native to the Americas are somehow inferior to those of the Old World. I think that’s at least somewhat implied here. Only the Chinese could have brought them monkeys like this. It’s just like the theory that the Mandans were actually Welsh and that their long-backed canoe-type dogs were descended from corgis. It says that the peoples native to the New World would never have been able to have the shining civilizations that existed in Eurasia. They could never have knowledge about exotic animals or breed their own strains of long-backed, short-legged dogs. It had to come from somewhere else.
It’s just not so.
