Haeckel on the Evolutionary History of Man, 1877. Illustration showing a chimpanzee (upper left), a gorilla (upper right), an orangutan (lower left) and a human (lower right). This page is from an 1877 edition of 'Anthropogenie oder Entwickelungsgeschichte des Menschen' (Anthropogeny: Or, the Evolutionary History of Man), first published in 1874 by German naturalist Ernst Haeckel (1834-1919). In his studies on evolution, Haeckel used Darwin's theory of evolution (natural selection) to justify the idea that the Germans should be considered a master race.