Prolegomenon to a history of paleoanthropology: The study of human origins as a scientific enterprise. Part 2. Eighteenth to the twentieth century

Abstract

Modern scientific theories of human origins can be traced directly back to the discoveries, arguments, and theories of the seventeenth century. But as we have seen in the first part of this paper, a great many critical steps had been taken, ideas proposed, and discoveries made long before this. The scientific advances of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries owed much to ancient science, while still retaining many aspects of the medieval Christian world view. Yet both science and Christianity changed significantly as a result of the Renaissance, the Protestant Reformation, the Scientific Revolution, the voyages of exploration, and the changes wrought on European society as a result of industrialization. The question of human origins was directly affected by the archeological study of prehistoric ruins, new geological theories, the study of fossils, the discovery of “savage” peoples living in the New World, and the comparison of prehistoric stone implements from Europe with those collected in the New World. This proliferation of new discoveries, new theories, and the emergence of completely new scientific disciplines in the seventeenth century laid the foundation for the dramatic new discoveries and theories that came over the next three centuries.