Theodore D. McCown

Theodore Doney McCown (born June 18, 1908 in Macomb , Illinois , † August 17, 1969 in Berkeley ) was an American paleoanthropologist and professor at the University of California, Berkeley . He became internationally known in professional circles in the 1930s due to his excavations in the area of ​​the Carmel Mountains in today's Israel . Among his most important finds are the fossils of Skhul that the day early anatomically modern humans are attributed. McCown also wrote the first detailed description of finds from the Tabun Cave , which are now classified as Neanderthals . In the 1950s and 1960s, among other things, he dealt with the interpretation of finds of the genus Homo from India .

Life

Theodore McCown grew up in Berkeley in 1914, when his father was appointed director of the Pacific School of Religion . After the father became director of the Palestine Exploration Fund , the family lived in Palestine for several years in the 1920s . The presence at excavations aroused Ted McCown's interest in archaeological research, so that he studied anthropology at Berkeley from 1926 and graduated there with a bachelor's degree in 1929 . In the following two years he took part in extensive archaeological excursions in France, Spain, Germany, Switzerland and Austria, and worked as an assistant at the Yale-American School of Oriental Research on excavations in Gerasa in what is now Jordan .

The Skhul V fossil, side view (copy)

In 1931, McCown was accepted into Yale University 's graduate program. After that he was responsible for the planning and execution of the excavations in the Carmel Mountains in today's Israel until mid-1932 , the overall direction of which was Dorothy Garrod . During this time, his tasks also included contact with the antiquities authority responsible for the area of ​​the League of Nations mandate for Palestine ; the result of these negotiations was that the hominine fossils discovered in caves of the Carmel Mountains were exported to the United Kingdom for in-depth scientific study and kept at the Royal College of Surgeons .

He spent the academic year 1932/33 in Berkeley. He then went to London , where he remained until 1937 together with Arthur Keith as Mount Carmel Neanderthal fossils identified initially from their embedding in limestone - breccia uncovered, she described in detail and anfertigte reconstructions. The publication of these studies, which took place in 1939, was described by Ashley Montagu in 1940 as "exemplary" and in Berkeley University's obituary for Theodore McCown as a "classic of archaeological interpretation". This publication, published as the second part of the work The Stone Age of Mount Carmel , triggered an ongoing professional discussion about the relationship between the Neanderthals and modern humans (Homo sapiens) : McCown had pointed out that the finds from the Tabun Cave were more likely to be "Neanderthaloid" (similar to the Neanderthal) were, the finds from Skhul were more similar to the Cro-Magnon people .

In June 1938 McCown became a lecturer in the Department of Anthropology at Berkeley University, even before he had finished his PhD . The doctorate followed in 1940; it was based on the exploration of fossil skull bones from the Carmel Mountains in Alfred Kroeber's group . He then spent a year with field studies in Peru, where he worked in Huamachuco and Cajabamba of excavation work in the area of settlements from the pre Inca was involved -Epoche. From 1942 to 1945 McCown served in the Presidio in San Francisco from his military service as a medical forensic scientist ; His tasks included in particular the identification of soldiers killed in the Second World War .

From 1946 McCown was in Berkeley as an associate professor. In 1951 he was appointed full professor; he held this professorship at Berkeley until his death. He undertook research trips in 1958 and 1964/65 to the Narmada Valley in India, where he cooperated with Indian colleagues. Outside of professional circles, McCown became known in the USA for his work as a forensic scientist. Among other things, he was involved in an exhumation and identification of the body of Juan Bautista de Anza in Arizpe ( Sonora state in Mexico ), who is considered the founder of San Francisco ; he also directed the exhumation of Junípero Serra in Carmel-by-the-Sea , when his beatification was being prepared. McCown was also involved in the investigation of a corpse that - it turned out: wrongly - had been attributed to the aviation pioneer Amelia Earhart .

Works (selection)

• with Arthur Keith : The Stone Age of Mount Carmel. Vol. II: The Fossil Human Remains from the Levalloiso-Mousterian. Oxford University Press at the Clarendon Press, Oxford 1939
• The Genus Palaeoanthropus and the Problem of Superspecific Differentiation among the Hominidae. In: Cold Spring Harb Symp Quant Biol , Vol. 15, 1950, pp. 87-96
• The Training and Education of the Professional Physical Anthropologist. In: American Anthropologist , Vol. 54, No. 3, 1952, pp. 313-317, doi : 10.1525 / aa.1952.54.3.02a00010

literature

• Kenneth AR Kennedy, Sheilagh T. Brooks: Theodore D. McCown: A Perspective on a Physical Anthropologist. In: Current Anthropology , Vol. 25, No. 1, 1984, pp. 99-103

Web links

• University of California : Biography in the California Digital Library

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Book Review of Ashley Montagu in American Anthropologist f, Volume 42, 1940, S. 518th
2. ^ University of California : Biography in the California Digital Library
3. ^ Theodore D. McCown: The Natufian crania from Mount Carmel, Palestine, and their inter-relationships. Ph. D. thesis, University of California, Berkeley, 1940
4. ^ Theodore D. McCown: Pre-Incaic Huamachuco; Survey and Excavations in the Region of Huamachuco and Cajabamba. In: American Anthropologist , Vol. 48, No. 4, 1946, pp. 635-637, doi : 10.1525 / aa.1946.48.4.02a00130