| Abstract |
A white people inhabiting in Africa generated great curiosity among the eighteenth-century savants, especially because it correlated with the question of the origin of human beings. Those savants, no matter they supported monogenism (Buffon, for example), or polygenism (Voltaire, for example), strongly believed the existence of legendary white people living in African inlands. Some thought that it belonged to a race of Albinos, while some others resolutely denied this opinion. In addition, Linnaeus adovcated that a sort of “Homo trogelodytes” or “Homo nocturnus” stands between Homo sapiens and monkeys. This study starts from Linnaeus’ strange imagination and focuses on the interaction of the scientfic knowledge and classical literature in modern Europe. The sources consulted by this Swedish savant perhaps primarily derived from the travelogues and the classical writers, such as, Homer, Herodotus, Aristotle, Pliny the Elder, Procopius and so on. Linnaeus’ case shows that the formation of the natural knowledge among the philosophes of the Enlightenment largely depended on the heritage of ancient literature. |
