The Expulsion of the Neanderthals from Human Ancestry: Marcellin Boule and the Social Context of Scientific Research

Abstract

Marcellin Boule's Neanderthal research, and his conclusion that the slouching cave brute could not be ancestral to modern man, were pillars of human paleontological theory for the first half of this century. Moving from the initial selection of the Neanderthal problem to the international acceptance of his ideas, Boule's research is analyzed in terms of various social and theoretical commitments linked to his position in the French and international paleontological communities. In particular, the paper tries to delineate the factors that made the stooping Neanderthal caricature so appealing and plausible to Boule and his contemporaries, thereby setting the stage for the infamous Piltdown forgery.