The most widespread beliefs about species on earth and their origins before the studies of Charles Darwin?

Contrary to many assumptions, evolutionary theory did not begin in 1859 with Charles Darwin and The Origin of Species. Rather, evolution-like ideas had existed since the times of the Greeks, and had been in and out of favor in the periods between ancient Greece and Victorian England. Indeed, by Darwin's time the idea of evolution - called "descent with modification" - was not especially controversial, and several other evolutionary theories had already been proposed. Darwin may stand at the beginning of a modern tradition, but he is also the final culmination of an ancient speculation

ANCIENT GREECE

While the Greeks did not specifically refer to their concepts as "evolution", they did have a philosophical notion of descent with modification. Several different Greek philosophers subscribed to a concept of origination, arguing that all things originated from water or air. Another common concept was the idea that all things descended from one central, guiding principle. Aristotle suggests a transition between the living and the nonliving, and theorizes that in all things there is a constant desire to move from the lower to the higher, finally becoming the divine.

MEDIEVAL

During medieval times, the idea of evolution was quite out of fashion, since the time was dominated by the Christian theory of special creation. This idea, which argued that all living things came into existence in unchanging forms due to divine will, was notably in opposition to the concept of evolution.

Medieval thinking was also, oddly enough, confused by the idea of spontaneous generation, which stated that living things can appear fully formed from inorganic matter. In this view, maggots came from rotting meat, frogs came from slime, etc. This sort of a concept prevented both genetic thinking and speculation about evolution or descent with modification. Nevertheless, a few philosophers theorized about some sort of teleological principle by which species might derive from a divine form.

MORE:

http://library.thinkquest.org/C004367/eh1.shtml

http://www.jstor.org/pss/985422

http://www.edu365.cat/aulanet/comsoc/visions/docum...

Various religious explanations were the widespread belief before Darwin. It depends on the region of the world. Christians believed an invisible man in the sky created everything in 6 days and then rested.

The vast majority of people attended church during the 1800's so the story of creation set out in the Bible was widely accepted, although there were some who put forward other beliefs, check out the websites below.

Darwin did not come up with the idea of evolution. Instead, he had a theory about how evolution worked. Evolution was pretty commonly regarded as a fact in the scientific community in Darwin's day...which you would have known if you'd paid attention in class.