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Marcellin Boule (1 January 1861 – 4 July 1942) was a French palaeontologist. He studied and published the first analysis of a complete Neanderthal specimen. 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.〔Boule, M. (1920) - ''Les hommes fossiles - Éléments de paléontologie humaine'', Paris, Masson et cie.〕 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 in subsequent decades as being highly primitive creatures with no direct relation to anatomically modern humans. Later re-evaluations of the La Chapelle-aux-Saints skeleton have roundly discredited Boule's initial work on the specimen.〔Hammond M (1982). The Expulsion of Neanderthals from Human Ancestry: Marcellin Boule and the Social Context of Scientific Research. Social Studies of Science, 12 (1): 1-36.〕 He was one of the first to argue that eoliths were not manmade.〔Boule, M. (1905) - « L'origine des éolithes », ''L'Anthropologie'', t. XVI, pp. 257-267.〕 Boule also expressed some scepticism about the "Piltdown man" discovery — later revealed to be a hoax. As early as 1915, Boule recognized that the jaw belonged to an ape rather than an ancient human.〔Boule, M. (1915) - « La paléontologie humaine en Angleterre », ''L'Anthropologie'', t. XXVI.〕 However, the Piltdown forgery has been characterised as providing evidential support for Boule's "branching evolution" conclusions drawn from his Neanderthal research — research which is likewise said to have "prepar() the international community for the appearance of a non-Neanderthal fossil such as Piltdown Man."〔 ==References and sources== * Marc Groenen, ''Pour une histoire de la préhistoire'', éd. J. Millon 1994, ISBN 2-905614-93-5 〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Marcellin Boule」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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