Natural History

The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex

by Charles Darwin

Twelve years after the Origin, Darwin said plainly what he had left almost unsaid there: that people, too, are descended from earlier animals. Most of the book is about sexual selection, the choosing of mates, which he thought explained the peacock’s tail and a good deal of human difference besides. His guess that humanity began in Africa, made from the apes then living there, has held.

The librarian

Read it in the Library After Dark Or read it as plain text

Reading time

About 20 hr 25 min

Where to find it

The Naturalist’s Cabinet

Edition

Project Gutenberg, eBook #2300. In the public domain in the United States.