Philip "Phil" Stewart Robinson (13 October 1847 – 9 December 1902) was an Anglo-Indian naturalist and author who was one of the earliest writers on what would become the field of hominology, as well as cryptozoology. Based on interviews with explorers of Africa and Central America, he posited the contemporary survival of Darwinian "missing links".[1]
Cryptozoological work[]
In his book Noah's Ark, or, Mornings at the Zoo, Robinson expressed his belief that "missing links" between humans and other apes could still exist in unexplored parts of the world.[1]
| “ | ... if [Huxley] were only to travel to-morrow into an unknown land, I am not at all sure that he would not ultimately emerge from some primeval forest hand in hand with the "missing link".
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While editing Henry Morton Stanley's Through the Dark Continent, he and Stanley discussed an ape known in the Congo as "meat of the forest," but which they called soko, which was reported be a hairy biped standing a little under 5 ft (1 m 50 cm) high, which carried a stick. Stanley had been given skulls, teeth, and a hairy skin allegedly belonging to this primate. The skulls were identified as human by Thomas Henry Huxley, but Stanley told Robinson that he only half-accepted this, and that the skin and teeth were not human. Robinson suggested three explanations: that the people had been ashamed of their cannibalism, and had therefore described their victims as beasts, and given Stanley chimpanzee skins; that the dehumanised description was simply because they were strongly prejudiced against the people they had eaten, or genuinely believed them to be non-human; or that the sokos were genuine "missing links," with very human skulls but primtive dentition and hairy coats.[1]
Robinson also received a report of a sisimite from a Monsieur Auguste of Cay, who claimed he had seen one killed in Honduras. He described it as "as much a man as himself." Robinson did not consider the sisimite as plausible as the "soko," but implied that it could be a "missing link" closer to man in the chain of evolution.[1]
Robinson published some of the earliest accounts of Utah's Bear Lake monster, which he theorised was a species of freshwater seal or sirenian. He also covered sea serpent sightings in some of his works, and was an early proponent of the idea that such animals are giant eels. He also wrote a short story featuring the Congo ape, The Hunting of the Soko (1881), as well as a story about a man-eating tree.