Inventing Homo gardarensis: Prestige, Pressure and Human Evolution in Interwar Scandinavia

TY - JOUR

T1 - Inventing Homo gardarensis: Prestige, Pressure and Human Evolution in Interwar Scandinavia

AU - Kjærgaard, Peter C.

PY - 2014/6

Y1 - 2014/6

N2 - Argument: In the 1920s there were still very few fossil human remains to support an evolutionary explanation of human origins. Nonetheless, evolution as an explanatory framework was widely accepted. This led to a search for ancestors in several continents with fierce international competition. With so little fossil evidence available and the idea of a Missing Link as a crucial piece of evidence in human evolution still intact, many actors participated in the scientific race to identify the human ancestor. The curious case of Homo gardarensis serves as an example of how personal ambitions and national pride were deeply interconnected as scientific concerns were sometimes slighted in interwar palaeoanthropology.

AB - Argument: In the 1920s there were still very few fossil human remains to support an evolutionary explanation of human origins. Nonetheless, evolution as an explanatory framework was widely accepted. This led to a search for ancestors in several continents with fierce international competition. With so little fossil evidence available and the idea of a Missing Link as a crucial piece of evidence in human evolution still intact, many actors participated in the scientific race to identify the human ancestor. The curious case of Homo gardarensis serves as an example of how personal ambitions and national pride were deeply interconnected as scientific concerns were sometimes slighted in interwar palaeoanthropology.

U2 - 10.1017/s0269889714000106

DO - 10.1017/s0269889714000106

M3 - Journal article

SN - 0269-8897

VL - 27

SP - 359

EP - 383

JO - Science in Context

JF - Science in Context

IS - 2

ER -