For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God. 1 Corinthians 3:19
"Saartjie (Sara) Baartman (c. 1789 –1815) was the best-known South African woman exhibited as a “missing link” under the name Hottentot Venus
in 19th-century Europe.
Baartman’s 20 some-year-old,
4-feet-10-inch-tall (147.3 cm) body was exploited by many leading
scientists and others attempting to prove the evolutionary link between
apes and humans.
In 1810 she journeyed to England with her employer, William Dunlop, who supplied showmen in Britain with animals. For over four years visitors paid two shillings to gaze on her apelike body.
Although Baartman died before Darwin published his famous book in 1859, evolution was widely believed by many intellectuals before then. Leading evolutionists included Charles’ paternal grandfather Erasmus Darwin (1731-1802) and French naturalist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck (1744 – 1829). Darwin’s achievement was mostly to popularize the theory widely throughout the world.
The claims of a link between ape and modern man was used to prove not only evolution, but also race inferiority.
Baartman was discussed in Arthur de Gobineau’s (1816 –1882) infamous racist book The Inequality of the Human Races. This book was especially influential in the American South and in Germany.
Georges Cuvier (1769-1832) was Europe’s most revered scientist and the founder and professor of the comparative anatomy department at the French Museum of Natural History. In the past, and even today, Cuvier remains a central figure in modern science, so central that “without Cuvier, Darwin may well not have discovered evolution.”
It was Cuvier who carefully examined Baartman in his search for scientific evidence of the missing link between apes and humans. When Baartman died in December of 1815, at the age of 26, Cuvier conducted a dissection to learn more about evolution.
Cuvier’s display of her remains in the Paris “Museum of Man” in support of evolution was a chief attraction there for more than a century.
When talk of removing the Baartman exhibit began, French naturalist and close colleague of Cuvier, Geoffroy Saint Hilaire attempted to retain her corpse on the grounds that “for us she 
remains a very important treasure” of science and proof for evolution.
Hilaire concluded that the Khoisan people, of which Baartman was a member, “were closer to the great apes than to humans,” solidifying the racists’ worldview that culminated in the Holocaust.
In spite of efforts to exploit her by claiming she was physically in-between apes and humans, those who knew her agreed she was a multitalented woman in spite of her sparse level of formal education. Cuvier, who had interviewed Baartman when she was alive, noted that she was intelligent, her memory was very good, and, in addition to her native tongue, she spoke fluent Dutch, passable English, and a smattering of French.
Cuvier conceded that she was a skilled dancer, and possessed a very un-ape lively, gregarious personality.
The popular Baartman exhibit eventually elicited a chorus of complaints for degrading women. The skeleton was removed only in 1974, and her remains were returned to South Africa in 2002."
CEH
