Philippe-Charles Schmerling

Philippe-Charles Schmerling was born in Delft (now the Netherlands) in 1791; his father was a doctor. He too was destined for medicine. He studied medicine first in Delft, then in Leiden and The Hague. He then became a medical officer in the Dutch army, and was garrisoned in Venlo until 1816. He married in 1821 and moved to Liège, where he resumed his studies at the University to obtain a doctorate in medicine.

He then devoted himself to caring for the sick in the Liège region. According to his own account, in 1829, while visiting a patient in Chokier, he saw children playing with bones, which he quickly identified as mineralized fossils. From then on, he explored dozens of caves in the Liège region, unearthing human and animal bones, carved stones and objects fashioned from hard animal materials.

In 1833, he began publishing the results of his observations in a landmark work in the history of human paleontology: Recherches sur les ossemens fossiles découverts dans cavernes de la Province de Liège. In it, he defends the thesis that human bones found in the company of the remains of extinct animals are contemporary: the human species is therefore much older than previously thought. A thesis that clashed with the prejudices of the time.

In 1834, he was appointed Professor of Zoology at the University of Liège and corresponding member of the Royal Academy of Belgium. But his work as a doctor, exploring caves, working on fossils and then teaching, were to weaken Schmerling. He died in 1836, exhausted and ruined. He can nevertheless be considered the true founder of human paleontology and of a Liège school of paleontology and prehistory.