The beginnings of human palaeontology and prehistory

At the beginning of the 19th century, fixism prevailed in the natural sciences. According to this biblically-inspired "theory", there could be no transformation or profound changes in animal and plant species, or in the universe in general. Of course, we owe Jean-Baptiste de Lamarck the notion of transformism - an organ of a living being can be transformed according to need, and this transformation can be passed on to descendants. But the man who reigned supreme in the natural sciences at the time was Frenchman Georges Cuvier, a professor at the Muséum. He violently opposed Lamarck's ideas, defending fixism and the notion of creation, particularly for the human species, which he excluded from his work in any case. Indeed, he had no hesitation in declaring that any human bones discovered in caves would be particularly uninteresting (1).

It was in this climate that Schmerling began his work... with very limited means. He carried out his excavations in parallel with his daily work as a doctor; he was not appointed Professor of Zoology at the University of Liège until 1834. He often spent his nights studying his finds, without losing sight of his research into cave geology, a field in which his contribution was also essential. In addition, he had rare reference collections at his disposal. The university collections of the time were particularly incomplete, and Schmerling often had to limit himself to comparisons based on engravings, which were also rare and which he did not know if they accurately reflected the reality of the specimens depicted. These material and intellectual conditions made his work even more innovative and astonishing.

considered today, Schmerling's discoveries would not be extraordinary," explains Marcel Otte, Professor of Prehistory at the University of Liège, "but their interpretation was. Others had discovered animal or human bones before him. Schmerling discovered human bones in association with those of Pleistocene animals and tools. And he drew the best possible conclusion, obvious today but revolutionary at the time: "since I have found these remains mixed together, associated, in the same geological layer, I am forced to admit that mankind has undergone a long evolution; man was contemporary with the extinct animals I have discovered; he lived in the Pleistocene epoch". In so doing, he gave a geological dimension to the human species." From Schmerling onwards, mankind appeared to be much older than the 5 or 6,000 years set down in the Bible by theologians who were not yet called "creationists".

The valley of the Schmerling caves in Awirs, Belgium, site of the first paleoanthropological discoveries in 1829.

From caves to humans

Philippe-Charles Schmerling's findings are set out in a seminal work, Recherches sur les ossemens fossiles, published in 1833 (2). As Charles Morren, professor of botany at ULg and a friend of Schmerling's, points out in a notice published shortly after his death (3), " Schmerling divided his work into three orders: the study of caves themselves, that of animals and that of the human bones he had the good fortune to encounter ". The first chapter is devoted to general observations on caves, and here he is more of a geologist than a paleontologist; in the second chapter, he examines the caves one by one. This is a meticulous description of each cave in itself, in relation to what he found there: Schmerling attaches great importance to the position of the remains. In the third chapter, he turns to human fossils, beginning with some general reflections that serve as a warning: " For a long time, the existence of these bones was denied, and it was hotly contended that none of our kind had ever been found in regular layers. This assertion supported the gratuitous hypothesis that man only appeared on earth at a time when our globe had taken on its present form; that, having no exact data on the human remains that must have been found with those of the bear, hyena, etc., either in caves or in cracks, it was concluded that their presence was only accidental. (4) " He admits that mistakes may have been made in the past, but in his day, this is no longer excusable, and warns his reader that we're about to get down to business: " The order of our work now prescribes that we take a look through all the divergent opinions, and set out the most remarkable facts we have observed (5)". What follows is a meticulous description of the human remains discovered in two caves, Engis and Engihoul, complemented by the remarkable drawings (6) of its designer, S. Mathieu (see illustrations). In the former, in particular, there is the skull of an elderly individual, whose "elongated, narrow forehead" and other features "bring it closer to the skull of the Ethiopian than to that of the European" (7), and another skull of a young individual. And Schmerling concludes this chapter with a thought that will revolutionize humanity's idea of its ancestors: " I have abandoned the hypotheses established up to now, and I have come to the conclusion that these human remains were buried in these caves at the same time, and consequently by the same causes that led to a mass of bones of different extinct species (8)".

" This is absolutely extraordinary," enthuses Marcel Otte. "In his work, we sense that he is tormented and worried! But he sticks to the facts, he tells himself that the facts impose the truth on him. And that's a superb scientific attitude; for me, he's an aristocrat of science. He doesn't care what's been said before; he feels obliged to respect the truth, at the risk of going against the received and dominant ideas of his contemporaries. That shook me when I was a student. I said to myself: here's someone from my university shaking up dogmas, long before Darwin, long before French prehistorians! This is a model of the fully accomplished academic.

Homo neanderthalensis versus leodiensis

Among Schmerling's discoveries, the two skulls were to take on importance a posteriori. Schmerling himself didn't dwell on them, merely hypothesizing that the skull of the older subject was that of a non-European. Julien Fraipont demonstrated much later (1909) that this was a Cro-Magnon, i.e. a direct ancestor of present-day man. But it is above all the second Engis skull, that of a child, which is essential. When Schmerling tried to examine it, it fell to pieces. The reconstruction was carried out later, and it wasn't until 1936 and the studies of Charles Fraipont that it became clear that this skull was not that of a homo sapiens, but of a homo neanderthalensis, or Neanderthal man, a name derived from the discovery in 1856 of a skeletal fragment in the Düssel valley in the so-called "Neandertal Gorge" (named after the poet Neuman), near Düsseldorf. The first person to discover a Neanderthal was Schmerling. Why didn't we make the connection until a century later? "Firstly, because it had to be reconstructed more correctly ", explains Marcel Otte, " and secondly, because it's the skull of a child whose Neanderthal features are still less pronounced. But to realize this, we had to discover entire Neanderthal skeletons History, however, should have vindicated the University of Liège, as Marcel Otte recalls: " The French paleontologist Yves Coppens, the famous discoverer of Lucy, said in his speech at the University that they should have been called 'homo leodiensis' rather than 'neandertalensis', since the first specimen was discovered here! "

Plate I of Recherches sur les ossemens fossiles. Figure 5 shows the maxillary bones of a young individual, i.e. Engis 2. The others, notably the cranial cavity, are Homo sapiens remains, Engis 1; see also illustration below, which is a contemporary photo of the cranial cavity, the other remains being shown by their outline.

The power of scientific prejudice

Schmerling's death, which occurred shortly after the publication of his work, undoubtedly did not help to gain recognition for his work. It would have been easy to check Schmerling's observations, but his colleagues preferred to forget him, deeming his thesis implausible and thereby bowing to the theses of Cuvier, who at the time reigned a veritable terror over the field: no access to collections and no publication rights for those who didn't share his views. Schmerling's pioneering work met with little recognition. In a note published in 1944 in the Bulletin de la société préhistorique de France, Louis Eloy claimed that a large part of the edition had been sold as waste paper, as the author was unable to pay his publisher (9)! While Schmerling's work remained little known in Paris, this was less the case in Germany and especially in Great Britain. An English geologist, Charles Lyell, visited Schmerling and quoted his opinion in his work on geology. " That the natural sciences should take hold of Schmerling is to be expected ", explains Marcel Otte. " During the 19th century, prehistory was a branch of the natural sciences, because animal remains were the main thing to be found, and artifacts remained without any real interpretation. At the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, prehistory separated from the natural sciences and a purely humanistic discipline was formed. "

What does Schmerling have to say about these tools? He devotes a very brief chapter to them, the tenth, because he seems to have found few tools, or at least few that caught his attention. And he uses them to support his thesis. all things considered," he writes, "we must admit that these flints were cut by the hand of man, and that they could have been used to make arrows or knives. (...) As I dare to guarantee that none of these pieces were introduced after the fact, I attach great value to their presence in the caves; for, even if we had not found human bones, in conditions entirely favourable for considering them as belonging to the antediluvian era, such evidence would have been provided by the carved bones and shaped flints (10)." A conclusion that once again delighted Marcel Otte: " He had sensed that these objects were a human affair! That's brilliant. At the time, nobody knew what flint was. There was no experimentation with cutting. To understand that a stone is not natural, but cut by man, is really extraordinary when you've never seen any other. "

One of Schmerling's final, prescient reflections touches on the sublime: " Time alone, moreover, will decide to what extent we were right to express ourselves so categorically, and no enlightened geologist would maintain that man did not exist at the time when our caverns were filled with the silt and fossils they conceal " (11).

A school in Liège

Liège's contribution to human paleontology was not limited to Schmerling, quite the contrary. In 1886, Liège prehistorian Marcel de Puydt founded the chair of prehistory at the University of Liège and the Curtius Museum in the City of Liège. With his assistant, Max Lohest, soon to become Professor of Geology, he discovered two particularly well-preserved skeletons in the Spy cave. Their colleague and future Rector, Julien Fraipont, identified them as Neanderthals, thus confirming the authenticity of this human form, which predates modern man. Among De Puydt's disciples, Jean Servais became the first Curator of the Curtius, and Joseph Hamal-Nandrin the first Professor of Prehistory. "It was really the Liège school that launched the notion of human paleontology and prehistory ", explains Marcel Otte. " For those who defined the Spy men were guided by Schmerling's observations made at Engis in the early nineteenth century. At Spy, not only were the first complete Neanderthals discovered, but also two burials. These populations therefore possessed a spiritual activity, associated with behavioral evidence attested by their elaborate technical methods. From that moment on, it was possible to evoke vanished traditions, and thus make history!

Text by Henri Dupuis