This paper investigates an historical episode that involved an object that was both
scientific and popular. In 1908, the first almost complete Neanderthal skeleton was
discovered at La Chapelle-aux-Saints, France. From its very rebirth, the specimen
became an object of interest to scientists holding different views of human
evolution. It also was of interest for a public whose Catholic and anti-clerical
stances were voiced through the press, and for the modernist clerical prehistorians
who had discovered it. Conceiving of reconstruction as referring to either
verbal or visual representation of the caveman from La Chapelle-aux-Saints, this
paper discusses the multiplication of Neanderthal images in newspaper articles and
illustrations that expressed particular scientific and political interests. This
treatment of the newspaper as a site of encounters and knowledge production among
these various constituencies is afforded by a set of newspaper excerpts on the
specimen collected by the first person to physically reconstruct the bones,
Marcellin Boule, at the Mus éum d'Histoire Naturelle in Paris.
While the newspapers were welcome allies in the dissemination of the discovery and
of the scientist's renown at home and abroad, Boule might have been less
content with the way in which the various papers represented his work – or
was he? As an object associated with such large issues as religion, evolutionism and
nationalism, the ‘Old Man from La Chapelle-aux-Saints’ had to
fulfil contradictory desires and his images multiplied accordingly.
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