Darwin's ape skull. View of the skull of an ape at Down house, Kent, England, where Charles Darwin (1809-1882) lived for the last 40 years of his life. It was at this house that he wrote his revolutionary work On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection (1859), and he did all his major thinking and writing there. The ape skull is one of a number of specimens Darwin brought back from his travels around the world. While travelling, he observed wildlife, and developed the idea that small changes which occur in species tend to prevail if they are beneficial to them. This lead to the idea that humans evolved from apes. Down House is now open to the public.