The Beginnings of the Configuration of Human Palaeontology and Darwin’s The Descent of Man Authors Francisco Pelayo Instituto de Historia, Centro de Ciencias Humanas y Sociales (CSIC, Madrid) Keywords: Darwin, The Descent of Man, Human Evolution, Human Palaeontology, Neanderthal, 19th Century Abstract The discovery of Neanderthal human bone remains in 1856, together with the publication of Darwin’s “On the Origin of Species” in 1859 and “The Descent of Man in 1871” were two relevant facts that intensified the discussion on the origin of humans. The emergence of the Paleoanthropology as a new scientific discipline was a result of the complex interactions of social and cultural factors and the influence of new scientific orientations in the field of Palaeontology, such as uniformitarian Geology and the theory of evolution. However, in the anatomical study of human fossils there still persisted traditions of research different from the transformist framework coming from history and linguistics. Downloads PDF (Català) Published 2011-05-20 Issue Nova època, vol. 3 (2) : 2010 Section Articles License The intellectual property of articles belongs to the respective authors.On submitting articles for publication to the journal Actes d’Història de la Ciència i de la Tècnica, authors accept the following terms:Authors assign to Societat Catalana d’Història de la Ciència i de la Tècnica (a subsidiary of Institut d’Estudis Catalans) the rights of reproduction, communication to the public and distribution of the articles submitted for publication to Actes d’Història de la Ciència i de la Tècnica.Authors answer to Societat Catalana d’Història de la Ciència i de la Tècnica (SCHCT) for the authorship and originality of submitted articles.Authors are responsible for obtaining permission for the reproduction of all graphic material included in articles.SCHCT declines all liability for the possible infringement of intellectual property rights by authors.The contents published in the journal, unless otherwise stated in the text or in the graphic material, are subject to a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs (by-nc-nd) 3.0 Spain licence, the complete text of which may be found at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/es/deed.en. Consequently, the general public is authorised to reproduce, distribute and communicate the work, provided that its authorship and the body publishing it are acknowledged, and that no commercial use and no derivative works are made of it.Actes d’Història de la Ciència i de la Tècnica is not responsible for the ideas and opinions expressed by the authors of the published articles.
