The Long Nineteenth Century: A History of Germany 1780-1918; Du condor au lama: Chasse, peche et domestication au pays des Incas; CitŽs lacustres; Dolmens et Menehirs: Secrets des Megalithes; Thinking about Social Thinking; Human Diversity and the Culture Wars: A Philosophical Perspective on Contemporary Cultural Conflict; Race and Human Evolution; Genetics, Society and Clinical Practice

1998 ◽  
Vol 39 (1) ◽  
pp. 0-0
Author(s):  
Placeholder Author
Author(s):  
Peter C. Kjærgaard

In the nineteenth century the idea of a ‘missing link’ connecting humans with the rest of the animal kingdom was eagerly embraced by professional scientists and popularizers. After the publication of Charles Darwin's Origin of Species in 1859, many tied the idea and subsequent search for a crucial piece of evidence to Darwin and his formulation of the theory of evolution by natural selection. This article demonstrates that the expression was widely used and that the framework for discussions about human's relation to the apes and gaps in the fossil record were well in place and widely debated long before Origin of Species became the standard reference for discussing human evolution. In the second half of the century the missing link gradually became the ultimate prize in palaeoanthropology and grew into one of the most powerful, celebrated and criticized icons of human evolution.


2016 ◽  
Vol 49 (3) ◽  
pp. 387-409 ◽  
Author(s):  
MATTHEW R. GOODRUM

AbstractSince the nineteenth century, hominid palaeontology has offered critical information about prehistoric humans and evidence for human evolution. Human fossils discovered at a time when there was growing agreement that humans existed during the Ice Age became especially significant but also controversial. This paper argues that the techniques used to study human fossils from the 1850s to the 1870s and the way that these specimens were interpreted owed much to the anthropological examination of Stone, Bronze, and Iron Age skeletons retrieved by archaeologists from prehistoric tombs throughout Europe. What emerged was the idea that a succession of distinct human races, which were identified using techniques such as craniometry, had occupied and migrated into Europe beginning in the Ice Age and continuing into the historic period. This marks a phase in the history of human palaeontology that gradually gave way to a science of palaeoanthropology that viewed hominid fossils more from the perspective of evolutionary theory and hominid phylogeny.


Author(s):  
Ana Luisa Santos

One of the main pillars of bioanthropological studies are the identified osteological collections. The goal of this document is to describe this heritage and show its importance. Since the nineteenth century, several countries have collected sets of skulls and skeletons from people about whom we know some biographical data; among other details, their age when they died and their sex. There are currently around fifty collections in different countries of North and South America, Africa, Europe, and Asia. Researching into them has applications for the study of human evolution, past populations, palaeopathology, and the history of medicine, among others. The need to increase the number of individuals and extend the geographic distribution of samples leads to the continuous development of these collections.


2003 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 299-316 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hans-JüRgen Lechtreck

Two early nineteenth century texts treating the production and use of wax models of fruit reveal the history of these objects in the context of courtly decoration. Both sources emphasise the models' decorative qualities and their suitability for display, properties which were not simply by-products of the realism that the use of wax allowed. Thus, such models were not regarded merely as visual aids for educational purposes. The artists who created them sought to entice collectors of art and natural history objects, as well as teachers and scientists. Wax models of fruits are known to have been collected and displayed as early as the seventeenth century, although only one such collection is extant. Before the early nineteenth century models of fruits made from wax or other materials (glass, marble, faience) were considered worthy of display because contemporaries attached great importance to mastery of the cultivation and grafting of fruit trees. This skill could only be demonstrated by actually showing the fruits themselves. Therefore, wax models made before the early nineteenth century may also be regarded as attempts to preserve natural products beyond the point of decay.


2013 ◽  
Vol 40 (2) ◽  
pp. 244-256 ◽  
Author(s):  
Holger Funk

In the history of botany, Adam Zalužanský (d. 1613), a Bohemian physician, apothecary, botanist and professor at the University of Prague, is a little-known personality. Linnaeus's first biographers, for example, only knew Zalužanský from hearsay and suspected he was a native of Poland. This ignorance still pervades botanical history. Zalužanský is mentioned only peripherally or not at all. As late as the nineteenth century, a researcher would be unaware that Zalužanský’s main work Methodi herbariae libri tres actually existed in two editions from two different publishers (1592, Prague; 1604, Frankfurt). This paper introduces the life and work of Zalužanský. Special attention is paid to the chapter “De sexu plantarum” of Zalužanský’s Methodus, in which, more than one hundred years before the well-known De sexu plantarum epistola of R. J. Camerarius, the sexuality of plants is suggested. Additionally, for the first time, an English translation of Zalužanský’s chapter on plant sexuality is provided.


2002 ◽  
Vol 29 (3) ◽  
pp. 333-336
Author(s):  
PIOTR DASZKIEWICZ ◽  
MICHEL JEGU

ABSTRACT: This paper discusses some correspondence between Robert Schomburgk (1804–1865) and Adolphe Brongniart (1801–1876). Four letters survive, containing information about the history of Schomburgk's collection of fishes and plants from British Guiana, and his herbarium specimens from Dominican Republic and southeast Asia. A study of these letters has enabled us to confirm that Schomburgk supplied the collection of fishes from Guiana now in the Laboratoire d'Ichtyologie, Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle, Paris. The letters of the German naturalist are an interesting source of information concerning the practice of sale and exchange of natural history collections in the nineteenth century in return for honours.


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