Marcellin Boule (1 January 1861 — 4 July 1942) was a French palaeontologist. He studied and published the first analysis of a complete Homo neanderthalensis. The fossil discovered in La Chapelle-aux-Saints was an old man, and Boule characterized it as brutish, bent kneed and not a fully erect biped [1]. In an illustration he commissioned, the Neanderthal was characterized as a hairy gorilla-like figure with opposable toes, according to a skeleton which was already distorted with arthritis. As a result, Neanderthals were viewed as highly primitive creatures in subsequent decades. Boule also helped to inform the public about the hoax known as "Piltdown man". As early as 1915, Boule recognized that the jaw belonged to an ape rather than an ancient human [2].
References and sources
- Marc Groenen, Pour une histoire de la préhistoire, éd. J. Millon 1994, ISBN 2-905614-93-5
- ^ Boule, M. (1920) - Les hommes fossiles - Éléments de paléontologie humaine, Paris, Masson et cie.
- ^ Boule, M. (1915) - « La paléontologie humaine en Angleterre », L'Anthropologie, t. XXVI.
