Primate Dieties, hummm....

[Agaliha]

After having many dreams invloving me and Chimpanzees and Gorillas [weird I know, lol-- I saved one and it was my "baby" Heh.] I began to wonder if there were any primate Dieties.

I knew of Hanuman, the Hindu Monkey god...but I was curious if there were more.
I found, courtesy of pantheon.org: [there isn't much more info than what they provived in their articles]

Mbotumbo-- The monkey-god of the Baule
Monkey-- found in Buddhism
Balin-- Hindu/Vedic one, A monkey King
Sugriva-- another Hindu/Vedic one, A monkey King
Sun Wu-Kung-- Chinese
And I know Djehuty is linked to the Baboon as his sacred animal.Now that made me wonder some more.
Primates aren't on all the contients of the world...but they are found in many areas: Africa including Madagascar [lemurs only], South East Asia, Asia, Centeral and South America. I don't know the exact percentage of land that is, but by looking at a map-- that looks like a lot of land! And even more, there are a lot of different people and cultures in those lands.

So I began to wonder why there were not more primate [excluding humans] Dieties. I mean the people of Africa, South East Asia and South America see them all the time-- for millions of years!
We have frog dieties, a dung beetle god, birds, cats, whales, snakes, on and on....but little to no primates [depending on the area].

I took a university level class at my 2 year college all about Physical anthropology [for the science credit] and we learned everything [way more than you'd care to know] about all the primates....I was going to ask the teacher about this, but she was a little...eh...not rude, but just not into that sort of thing...so I never asked.

I guess I am curious as to what others thought were about this topic...any ideas, theories, facts...?
Maybe I'm just weird to be thinking about it, lol. I don't know.


Oh and if anyone is really intersted in learning about the history and evolution of humans and of the other living primates the book we used in my class was:
Humankind Emerging (8th Edition) (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0321022742/qid=1129518400/sr=8-2/ref=pd_bbs_2/102-4774519-7448147?v=glance&s=books&n=507846) by Bernard G. Campbell, James D. Loy (Paperback)
It's really long, detailed, with tons of facts and such but I totally learned a lot.

[argento_occhi]

I know I've been wondering lately whether it's just baboons that Djehuty likes, or whether the other primates can be His as well. I'm doing a Human Evolution and Ecology class this semester and it's been on my mind since we covered primates (and went to the zoo to boot).

I suppose it depends on the area where they lived too, whether the people had any contact with them enough to consider them important enough to be sacred animals. Like, a lot of the primates in Africa probably weren't seen in Egypt, least, the Great Apes like gorillas probably weren't. They obviously had baboons, and possibly other small monkeys, but I'm no expert on this so I'll stop speculating.

And I don't think you would see them all the time in Asia, Africa, South America unless you went looking for them. Most of the South American monkeys live in the forest, and unless you were looking for them, I doubt you'd see them. Lowland gorillas spend a lot of their time in the forest too, though they do venture out to the *tries to think of the word* those swampy grassy areas to graze on grass for a few hours a day. I love the thought of a lowland gorilla climbing trees.

I think the lack of primate deities is mainly to do with primates and humans just not being in close enough contact to make them important to any particular culture. They may be to a few, but primate habitat might be a barrier to their interation with humans. Besides, once you have one monkey deity, do you really need another? They're not found worldwide, and that has impacted on which cultures/civilisations have shared the same space with them.

These are just my thoughts on this as I understand primates and such. Don't take my word for this, as I'm sure there's others who know more about this than I. And, yeah I did focus on Egypt (and Africa) as that's about the only civilisation I know anything about. I'd love to hear others thoughts on this too.

Argent

[Agaliha]

Yeah a reply! :bouncysmi

I am no expert on primates either. Though I can rattle off all the things to classify them into the different groups and what makes something bipedial and what carrying angle there needs to be and all the structures of their heads and blah blah blah...serious I learned more than I need to know in that area, lol.

As for humans not having contact with them for some that is true, but for others it's not.

I've seen videos of India and those regions and little monkeys [eck I forget their species name] are running around all over-- in the streets, in the trees, in houses. In one country the population of the little monkeys go so high that people had to tame this bigger monkey species to scare the little ones away. Heh. But they are all over there, mingling with the people.

If you watch video of Centeral America there are dozens of species of New World monkeys. There are still tribes and people who live [I]in those forests and areas...surely they see those primates everyday, or at least hear them! I would think that their ancestors all saw and knew about the primates there. So is it that we have so little information about those various tribes that we don't know that there are primate Dieties....or is it that they don't have any?

In Africa, there are baboons, Chimpanzees, Colobus monkeys, guenons, Macaques, bonobos [the closest to humans they say], western gorilla and eastern gorilla.
Gorillas like you said people probably didn't come in contact with due to how they live and where.
But there are many subspecies of each of these. For example there are 26 subspecies of guenon. Not all are in Africa, some are in Asia...but still.
So I'm thinking that it is impossible for tribes in Africa not to see primates....and I'm talking about all of Africa.... Egypt probably didn't see very many primates...though I do remember reading that they used to have lions up there, which is odd because they aren't anywhere close now, so it might be possible they did see some other primates there.
On Madagascar the Lemurs are all over, and those people see them all the time. Actually I hear they were killing them because they thought they were demons :( It's a bad problem there, even though those Lemurs have been there for millions of years...and they are only found there.
So again I'm wondering, because there are some many different tribes, cultures and beliefs in Africa and we don't know anything really about them all, could it be possible there are many primate dieties that we are missing?

Surely people can look at them and see that they are intelligent and human-like, especially with the Great Apes.
I just find it strange that over all these millions of years there aren't more out there...especially because they are the most like us....I mean no offense to all the other Dieties and cultures, but if you can have a fish diety and dung beetle God [Khepri-- who is cool, btw!] and other things....why not a primate?
Eh...I'm just going in circles with this now, lol.

[argento_occhi]

Yeah a reply! :bouncysmi

I am no expert on primates either. Though I can rattle off all the things to classify them into the different groups and what makes something bipedial and what carrying angle there needs to be and all the structures of their heads and blah blah blah...serious I learned more than I need to know in that area, lol.

As for humans not having contact with them for some that is true, but for others it's not.

And now that I'm back from Evolution and Ecology, I can reply to this. Didn't have time before I left, see? We just started going over early humans, and early Homo species.

I think a lot of it depends on how those cultures see/saw primates, and whether the contact they did have was meaningful enough to warrant it becoming part of their mythos.

I've seen videos of India and those regions and little monkeys [eck I forget their species name] are running around all over-- in the streets, in the trees, in houses. In one country the population of the little monkeys go so high that people had to tame this bigger monkey species to scare the little ones away. Heh. But they are all over there, mingling with the people.

I've seen that too, all those monkeys sitting on the rooves, and everyone just leaving them alone. They got full run of the cities, being sacred as they are. No one touches them or does harm to them. I even remember seeing a funeral for a dead baby monkey the people held, bringing its body to the Temle and such. Enlightening stuff.

If you watch video of Centeral America there are dozens of species of New World monkeys. There are still tribes and people who live [I]in those forests and areas...surely they see those primates everyday, or at least hear them! I would think that their ancestors all saw and knew about the primates there. So is it that we have so little information about those various tribes that we don't know that there are primate Dieties....or is it that they don't have any?

I think it's more significant that we know hardly anything about those tribes to know if they even have religion the way we define religion. There's probably other tribes in those rainforests we don't even know about yet. I think it's more a lack of information about them in general. And they're all so isolated, usually living in small groups, if I remember correctly.

In Africa, there are baboons, Chimpanzees, Colobus monkeys, guenons, Macaques, bonobos [the closest to humans they say], western gorilla and eastern gorilla.
Gorillas like you said people probably didn't come in contact with due to how they live and where.
But there are many subspecies of each of these. For example there are 26 subspecies of guenon. Not all are in Africa, some are in Asia...but still.

So I'm thinking that it is impossible for tribes in Africa not to see primates....and I'm talking about all of Africa.... Egypt probably didn't see very many primates...though I do remember reading that they used to have lions up there, which is odd because they aren't anywhere close now, so it might be possible they did see some other primates there.
On Madagascar the Lemurs are all over, and those people see them all the time. Actually I hear they were killing them because they thought they were demons :( It's a bad problem there, even though those Lemurs have been there for millions of years...and they are only found there.

Actually, I thought Egypt didn't actually have lions, that they never got as far north as Egypt. I was under the impression they only had like wild cats and such, lions weren't naturally found there. Might be wrong, but that's what I read somewhere. If lions were in Egypt, they came from elsewhere, or came later on in their history, like domestic cats did, apparently brought by the Greeks, if I remember correctly.

If they did see them, did they see them enough to see them as part of their spirituality/religion or were they unimportant? Just because you see something doesn't mean it will be an important part of your culture.

So again I'm wondering, because there are some many different tribes, cultures and beliefs in Africa and we don't know anything really about them all, could it be possible there are many primate dieties that we are missing?

Possibly. Who knows? There's a lot of Africa out there.

Surely people can look at them and see that they are intelligent and human-like, especially with the Great Apes.
I just find it strange that over all these millions of years there aren't more out there...especially because they are the most like us....I mean no offense to all the other Dieties and cultures, but if you can have a fish diety and dung beetle God [Khepri-- who is cool, btw!] and other things....why not a primate?
Eh...I'm just going in circles with this now, lol.

Just because we now can look at an orang utan or a bonobo or a gorilla and see it as a human-like relative doesn't mean every culture sees them that way. I think a lot of this depends on the frequency of contact with primates and the type of contact with primates and how they saw them as to whether those civilisations felt them worthy of their attention.

And just because an animal is out there in the world, doesn't mean that it must have a deity. Humans are under no obligation to have a God for every animal on the planet. I suppose also that primates in themselves may not have been all that helpful to humans, so they'd be less likely to want to see them as a God. That's just my thoughts though. They may have seen them as spirits or something. I don't know. I don't know enough about this to say for sure.

For a lot of cultures, we may never know, especially if they had an oral tradition and died out some time ago. And of course, with ancient cultures we do have written records of, we'll see everything about their culture through our own modern minds. Maybe they didn't have many primate deities because they didn't think they were important to their lives? Who knows? We can argue all we want that there must be some because they're related to us, but maybe not every culture actually saw them as being our relatives. Maybe they were just animals to them. Maybe they are out there and no one knows they are. Interesting to think about, though.

And there you go, the long rambling post I wanted to make earlier but couldn't because I had to run to class. Hope it all makes sense. It's a collection of my rambled thoughts.

Argent

[aluokaloo]

maybe there are but they are just not as widely known? Why don't you try looking towards the deeper african tribes like more towards the lush congo. Although you have a pretty good liost going already :)