Marcellin boules

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Marcellin Boule , with full name Pierre Marcellin Boule (born January 1, 1861 in Montsalvy, Cantal , France, † July 4, 1942 ibid), was a French paleontologist , paleoanthropologist and geologist .

Life

After graduating in 1884, Boule worked at the Collège de France and the Muséum national d'histoire naturelle . He was qualified to teach science in 1887. He received his doctorate in 1892. From 1902 to 1936 he held the chair of paleontology at the same museum.

The Institut de paleontologie humaine in Paris was co-founded by him. Boule was co-editor of various professional journals, including the Archives de l'Institut de paleontologie humaine et L'Anthropologie , which he headed from 1893 to 1940.

As early as 1915 he expressed doubts about the authenticity of the Piltdown man after he had recognized the lower jaw as belonging to a monkey that could not have anything to do with the skull presented.

In 1923 he became an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh .

The man of La Chapelle-aux-Saints

Model of the Neanderthal skull from Chapelle-aux-Saints, Rostock Zoological Collection

His knowledge of geology and stratigraphy was useful for Boule in researching human prehistory. He examined human fossils from Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East.

Boule published the first scientific description of an almost complete skeleton of a Neanderthal man , namely the so-called Old Man of La Chapelle . The skeleton was discovered on August 3, 1908 in the commune of La Chapelle-aux-Saints in the Corrèze department . Although the description of the skeleton was extremely precise and detailed, the reconstruction turned out to be flawed: The result was a Neanderthal man in a crooked, bent forward posture, with a crooked spine and bent legs. A drawing that Boule had commissioned showed the Neanderthal man as a kind of hairy gorilla. It would take many decades for the scientific world to break away from this image of the Neanderthal. The image of the Neanderthal was falsified by this reconstruction because the pathological changes had not been recognized: The old man from La Chapelle had, among other things, a left hip deformity, he suffered from severe arthritis of the cervical spine, a rib was broken and there was one Damaged knee. The reconstruction of his posture at that time was therefore the reconstruction of a seriously ill person. The old man also had no teeth, which is why there were no more tooth cavities.

In the first World War

Influenced by the tendency towards chauvinism, which also prevailed among French scientists, Boule took part in the biologized culture war of French doctors and biologists, who tried to determine in more detail how the characteristics of the "race française" differed from those of the "race germanique". Boule came to the conclusion that the "Germanic race" differed from the French in that an imbalance had arisen in its development. An excessive development of intellectual abilities, as it would also be reflected in German science, has led to the fact that other tendencies such as the love of justice and moral beauty have died out. Together with their allies, the French soldiers would "put an end to the Germanic monster whose evolution went so wrong." Such perceptions were, however, common at the time and had covered all medical circles.

The École auvergnate

Influenced by the Le Félibrige movement , he founded the École Auvergnate ( Escolo oubergnato ) in 1894 together with Arsène Vermenouze and Louis Farges .

Works (selection)

  • Le Pachyaena de Vaugirard , 1903
  • L'âge des derniers volcans de la France , 1906
  • Geology , 1914
  • with Henri Vallois, Les hommes fossiles. Éléments de paleontologie humaine , Paris, Masson 1946 (1920)
    • German: Fossil people. Basic lines of human tribal history , translated by Frédéric Falkenburger, Baden-Baden, Verlag für Kunst und Wissenschaft 1954
  • Le paleolithique de la Chine , Mémoire des archives de l'Institut de Paléontologie 4, Paris, Masson 1928
  • with Henri Vallois, L'homme fossile d'Asselar (Sahara) , Mémoire des archives de l'Institut de Paléontologie 9, Paris, Masson 1932
  • Le Sinanthrope. In: L'Anthropologie. Volume 47, 1937, pp. 1-22

literature

  • Groenen, M., Pour une histoire de la préhistoire: le paleolithique , Grenoble, Millon 1994, ISBN 2-905614-93-5
  • Michl, Susanne, In the service of the "people's body": German and French doctors in the First World War , Göttingen, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 2007, ISBN 978-3-525-37000-1

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ La paléontologie humaine en Angleterre , L'Anthropologie , Volume XXVI, 1915
  2. ^ Biographical Index: Former RSE Fellows 1783–2002. Royal Society of Edinburgh, accessed October 10, 2019 .
  3. ↑ L'homme fossile de la Chapelle-aux-Saints , Annales de paleontologie , Volumes VI-VII-VIII. 1911-1913.
  4. ^ Erik Trinkaus : Pathology and the posture of the La Chapelle-aux-Saints Neandertal. In: American Journal of Physical Anthropology. Volume 67, No. 1, 1985, pp. 19-41, doi: 10.1002 / ajpa.1330670105
  5. ↑ James E. Dawson and Erik Trinkaus: Vertebral Osteoarthritis of the La Chapelle-aux-Saints 1 Neanderthal. In: Journal of Archaeological Science. Volume 24, No. 11, 1997, pp. 1015-1021, doi: 10.1006 / jasc.1996.0179
  6. ^ La Biologie et la Guerre , in PM, partie paramédicale, March 27, 1915, No. 13; quoted here from Michl, pp. 64–65
  7. ↑ Michl, Susanne, In the service of the "people's body": German and French doctors in the First World War , Göttingen, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 2007, with further evidence
personal data
SURNAME Boule, Marcellin
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Boule, Pierre Marcellin (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French paleontologist, paleoanthropologist and geologist
DATE OF BIRTH January 1, 1861
PLACE OF BIRTH Montsalvy, Cantal , France
DATE OF DEATH 4th July 1942
Place of death Montsalvy, Cantal , France