Ape Chronicles #045 - Hunter's Planet of the Apes Archive

the dictates of the Sacred Scrolls. Cornelius is
afraid of what will be done to him, to Zira, to their
very future if they should risk it all on putting their
culture's Religion to the test.
Zira seems to be so much of a truth seeker that she
recklessly is willing to risk the punishment of the
State for daring to question its cherished beliefs.
She tells Cornelius to "Show some strength!"... but
he fears where that will lead. Perhaps because he
knows more about what really happened, decades
ago, when the gorilla Army had been led to fight
against chimpanzee heretics and apostates.
Taylor and his crew had discovered what looked to
them like "scarecrows" on the border of the
Forbidden Zone. What appears to be black-hair
hides covering X-shaped crosses, spaced at
intervals along the border. Are they there to
frighten the primitive humans
I think they were put there to scare the crap out of
any Ape who might think to flee into the Forbidden
Zone again. Those black-haired hides in cruciform
poses suggest the skins of chimpanzees. Perhaps
that was the punishment for Apostasy: the Army
killed them during the war -- the "crusade" against
Heresy -- and then skinned them, using their hides
to serve as terrifying reminders to others who may
venture in that direction, fleeing to the Forbidden
Zone. The apostates and heretics would have been
denied burial in hallowed ground. Instead, they are
strung up along the Forbidden Zone border, just as
Spartacus' army of rebel slaves was crucified along
the Appian Way as a very public warning to other
slaves not to revolt against their masters.
The Apes who set up those "scarecrows" didn't
have to worry about Humans going into the
Forbidden Zone. Why would the Apes care if those
nuisances, those crop-destroying pests, were going
off into the lifeless desert At the time those
"scarecrows" were set up, it was believed that
nothing lived in the Forbidden Zone... so they can't
have been put up to scare Humans from
approaching the Waterfall and Cornfield areas.
Humans are said to live in the forest -- what the
Lawgiver referred to as his "jungle lair" -- not in the
Forbidden Zone.
So, those so-called "scarecrows" were not intended
to frighten the Humans. They were there to warn
away apostate Apes from venturing into the
Forbidden Zone. They were probably made from
the skins of apostate chimpanzees the last time the
Army had to be mustered to fight against simian
heresy. We see those "scarecrows" later in the film,
when the renegade chimpanzees Cornelius, Zira,
and Lucius proceed to the Diggings, the Cave, into
the Forbidden Zone.
The Orangutans have a stranglehold on Ape
Society. They probably have strict laws that punish
pre-marital sex.
We know that Zira is engaged to Cornelius during
PLANET. They had become lawfully wedded by
the time we see them in BENEATH, at which time
Zira refers to "our child" with whom she is
pregnant. Shortly thereafter, she and her husband
join Dr. Milo on a flight in an ANSA ship that gets
into orbit just when Taylor detonates the Doomsday
Bomb... sending the trio and her unborn child back
through Time...
Proving that Zira and Cornelius had engaged in premarital
sex before they had gotten married! Indeed,
the first time we see Cornelius in PLANET, he
shares a scandalous moment of intimacy with Zira.
Using what sounds like a code-phrase ["Do you
have to work tonight"], he establishes that they
will both have time to meet... and they quickly
exchange a series of passionate smooches. "Oh,
Cornelius...!" she says just after.
The impression I get is that Zira and Cornelius are
violating the societal rules regarding the expression
of affection between UNMARRIED persons.
Nobody knows that Zira is already pregnant with
Cornelius' child. By the time PLANET takes place,
Zira has to have been upwards of half-a-year
pregnant! When Hasslein asked her, "How long
have you known" she replies, "Oh, since well
before the war..."
Dr. Zira is a brilliant scientist in her own right,
engaged to a scientist whom she considers to be
brilliant in his own field of Archaeology. She
considers his theory of Evolution to be "a brilliant
hypothesis". But it's an hypothesis that could
destroy his career if he dares to champion it. For
her sake, he chooses to refrain from championing
his own brainchild. But she's a feisty broad! At one
point, Zaius had to "caution" her regarding her
Behavioural studies of Humans. Comparing the
behaviours of Apes and Humans is little different
from Cornelius comparing the physiological
attributes of Apes and Humans in the context of a
theory of Evolution that requires no "god" to act as
a Creator.