In 1859 Darwin’s views appeared in his Origin of Species. He contended “that species have been modified during a long course of descent . . . chiefly through the normal selection of numerous successive, slight, favourable variations.” The Origin of Species, the most important book of the century, revolutionized the concepts about the origin and evolution of life on planet earth. Darwin followed his first bombshell by a second. In 1871 his Descent of Man applied the natural selection to human beings and reached the controversial conclusion that man’s ancestors were probably monkeylike animals.
