Neanderthals and the Search for Human Ancestors
Overview
During the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the search for man's evolutionary past lead to dramatic new conclusions about life on Earth and the biological history of mankind. The search for our fossil ancestors, once initiated, began to answer questions about where humans first appeared, what they looked like, and most importantly, how old they are. The first discovery of fossil humans threw surprising new light on our past, though challenged established views about society, race, and Christian religious beliefs concerning man's special place in the universe.
Background
During the Enlightenment, Western thinkers disillusioned with the Genesis story of creation began to speculate about how human beings had originated. The problem that plagued these researchers was that there was no physical evidence to support their theories. Some fossils had been discovered that looked human, but these were passed over as the remains of Homo Diluvinii—giants killed off during Noah's flood. These early discoveries not withstanding, the science of paleoanthropology (the study of early people) began in earnest in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries when naturalists began finding curious artifacts and bones. Frenchmen Isaac de la Peyrere (1596-1676) and Jacques Boucher de Crevecoeur de Perthes (1788-1868), and Englishman John Frere (1740-1807) claimed that stones they found in caves in France and England were actually stone tools created by people in the distant past.Though they looked man-made, it could not be proven whether these tools had been fashioned by the hand of man or formed naturally.
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