Engraving of an ape-like cave man accompanying an article by Boitard in the French 'Magasin Universel' (April 1838). This is the earliest reconstructi

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Engraving of an ape-like cave man accompanying an article by Boitard in the French 'Magasin Universel' (April 1838). This is the earliest reconstruction of a pre-historic human. It is striking that it predates the Darwinian debates on human origins and antiquity by over 20 years. A second, different version was produced in 1861 in Boitard's postumous 'Paris Avant Les Hommes'. This figure was the result of 1830's discoveries of tertiary fossil primates made by Hugh Falconer in India and Edouard Lartet in France, and particulalry P. Schmerling's discoveries of fossil humans and stone tools from caves in Liege France. Schmerling's human remains were mixed with bones of extinct species of mammals. In popular science, as notes in \World's Before Adam\" (2008), the jump from fossil primate to human ancestor was already being made by reference to the European transmutation of Lamarck."

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Size: 3485px × 5015px
Photo credit: © PAUL D STEWART/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No

Keywords: 1838, 19th, ancestor, antiquity, artwork, boitard, cave, century, early, evolution, falconer, fossil, human, illustration, lamarck, magasin, man, origins, people, person, pre-darwinian, reconstruction, restoration, schmerling, stone, tool, transmutation, universel