8 1

CONTINENTAL ANTHROPOLOGISTS' INITIAL OPPOSITION TO DARWINISM

AND THE PROSPECT OF HUMAN EVOLUTION2

Stephen R. Holtzman'

The initial reaction of anthropologists on the
continent of Europe to Darwin's theory of evolu-
tion was one of widespread opposition. To be sure,
there were some in France (e.g., Eugene Dally) and
more in German-speaking Europe (Carl Vogt, Ernst
Haeckel, Hermann Schaaffhausen) who quickly
espoused the concept of human evolution. But, as
T. Dale Stewart (1959:22) puts it, "[T]he vocal
opponents outweighed the vocal proponents, both
in numbers and in influence." Specifically, the
leaders of anthropology in France (Paul Broca,
Armand de Quatrefages) and Germany (Rudolf
Virchow, Adolf Bastian) were at first quite skepti-
cal. However, opposition was not adamant, though
frequently it was long lasting. Furthermore, con-
trary to Darwin's charge of "prejudices against my
views" which according to Steward (1959:12, em-
phasis mine) "were surprisingly widespread,"
intelligent opposition to Darwinism was well-
founded in the context of the ethos of mid-19th-
century science. Given the state of the field at the
time, reasoned opposition to Darwinism and the
prospect of human evolution quickly developed
amongst anthropologists on the Continent.

The concept of evolution had a strong impact on
anthropology during the first decades after it was
enunciated in 1858. First in England and a few
years later in France and Germany anthropological
societies were engaged in lengthy discussions on
the questions of fossil man and human evolution.

Though anthropologists were interested in the
idea of evolution, the concept was not to structure
actual anthropological research appreciably until
about the turn of the century. The initial contro-
versy over Darwinism may have delayed anthro-
pological studies, but those studies were quickly
resumed with little if any alteration in direction.
The concept of biological evolution was simply
not applicable to most anthropological concerns of
the last century. "A theory can sustain avid inter-
est and be discussed only so long. Moreover, the
theory of evolution, envisioning as it does very
slow changes over a long period of time, could not
be taken into consideration in the majority of
studies that physical anthropologists were pursu-
ing" (Stewart 1959:23).

The concept of evolution, however, did find
notable application in structuring discussions of

human paleontology. The Neandertal skullcap
from Germany (1856) and the Naulette mandible
from Belgium (1866) which together were used to
represent the taxon Homo sapiens neanderthalensis
(Quatrefages 1873:1313-1317), were very much
discussed in the context of the question of human
evolution. Believers in human evolution generally
accepted the Neandertal remains as typical of an-
cient man. Non-believers, at first, generally dis-
missed them as exceptional.

Though the idea of human evolution did struc-
ture, in part, many early discussions on the Nean-
dertal and Naulette remains, those specimens were
generally considered to provide no decisive evi-
dence in favor of human evolution. No one claimed
that Neandertal or Naulette in any sense 'proved'
human evolution. The proponents of evolution,
however, were in fact accused of covertly claiming
Neandertal or Naulette as such proof. J. Barnard
Davis, for example, charged that the opinion had
been suggested that the man of Neandertal was a
link in the chain which reunited the other races of
man to the apes.

Although that opinion was not clearly enunciated, it
is evident that some of the authors who have written
on the famous skull were disposed to interpret it
thusly, and have considered the man from Neandertal
rather as an anticipated phenomenon, aiding, lacking
other proofs, certain hypotheses in which they be-
lieve [Davis 1864:714].

However that may be, I have come across no claim
in the early literature on Neandertal to the effect
that the remains were conceived as decisive evi-
dence for human evolution. One reason that Nean-
dertal was not claimed as good evidence for human
evolution is that it was almost universally consider-
ed in the context of human races. Only William
King of Galway advocated (1864a&b) specific
status for Neandertal.

Armand de Quatrefages (1810-1892) was Pro-
fessor of Anatomy and Ethnology at Muse'e nation-
al d'Histoire naturelle. One of the founders of the
Societe de Anthropologie de Paris, he was a leading
figure in French science, whose understudies in-
cluded Hamy, Verneau and Delisle. Quatrefages
said of the Neandertal remains:

Some anatomists wished . . . to consider this speci-
men as a special species, and even a fresh genus. It
was especially considered as intermediate between

8 2

man and apes, and here and there traces may be still
found of these opinions (1879:307).

Quatrefages characterized such efforts on behalf of
Darwinism in the following manner:

The only cause of these exaggerations is a feature,
striking it is true, which is presented by this cranial
vault. In the Neanderthal man the frontal sinuses have
an exceptional development, and the superciliar
ridges, almost lost in the middle of the glabella, form
a most strange protuberance above the orbit. This
conformation has not failed to be compared to the
bony ridges which the anthropomorphous apes pos-
sess in the same place. Then, starting from this fact,
it has been thought necessary to find in the rest of
the cranium characters in harmony with this simian
feature. Stress has been laid upon its slight elevation,
the lengthened form, the projection of the occipital
region, etc. [Quatrefages 1879: 302-303] .

But the efforts of the Darwinists were in vain, ac-
cording to Quatrefages. After more careful re-
search, he said, the Neandertal skull was revealed
as merely that of an individual belonging to an an-
cient race of the human species.

With a little partiality, and by only comparing it with
modern skulls, which are considered as normal, a
separate species of being has been made of the Nean-
derthal man. By degrees, however, other crania equal-
ly fossil have been connected with this type. Indeed,
in several parts of Europe those characters which
were too hastily declared to be unique have been ob-
served in dolmens in less ancient burial places, in his-
torical persons, and even in individuals living at the
present time. There was, then, no alternative but to
conclude that the Neanderthal man belonged to a
formation which was unquestionably human, to a
race, certain features of which were merely exagger-
ated in his case [Quatrefages 1879:303].

To a critic of evolution such as Quatrefages, the
demonstration of racial rather than specific status
for the man from Neandertal deprived proponents
of Darwinism of a second human species and,
therefore, of any argument for human evolution
which that fact, once established, might have
provided.

To be sure, the presence in ancient times of a
primitive race of men was a fact altogether consist-
ent with and predicted by the idea of human evo-
lution. But it was also a fact altogether consistent
with and predicted by assumptions generally held
in the 19th century by evolutionists and critics of
evolution alike concerning the correspondence of
primitive physical characteristics with primitive
social and cultural systems. Loren Eiseley says:

Long before the clear recognition of fossil forms of
man there existed in the minds of western Europeans
a notion of racial gradation, and a conception of that
gradation as leading downward toward the ape. More-
over, the less culturally advanced members of the hu-
man stock are increasingly seen as affording "a glim-

mer of the ape beneath the human envelope." These
people are regarded as living fossils both culturally
and physically; in fact, there is evident a lack of clear

distinction between the two categories (Eiseley 1961:
264).

Thus the presence of a brutish race of men in
Europe before the rise of civilization was a fact
providing no argumentative advantage to pro-
ponents of human evolution.

DARWINISM AND THE

TRANSMUTATION OF SPECIES

The question of the transmutability of species
was the central issue that divided evolutionists and
critics of evolution. Evolutionists argued that races
were simply incipient species-a view still widely
held. Critics of evolutionism, however, adhered to
the belief, traditional to nineteenth century biolo-
gy, that races and species were fundamentally dif-
ferent entities. Quatrefages argued the classical
position most clearly. Stating that races interbreed
to form mongrels while species interbreed to form
hybrids, he argued (1879:70) that "the race and
the species display very distinct and characteristic
phenomena. We shall now see this opposition as
strongly marked in the product of . . . unions in
mongrels and hybrids." A "mongrel race" is char-
acterized by "universal, free and indefinite fertil-
ity" (Quatrefages 1879:71). Hybrids are not so
characterized. Quatrefages tells us (1879:79) that
"the characters of hybrids are infertility, as a gen-
eral rule, and, in the exceptions, a very limited
fertility." Species cannot be successfully mixed in
nature, and not even under artificial circumstances
for any great number of generations, according to
Quatrefages. "The infertility, or, if you will, the
restricted and rapidly limited fertility between
species, and the impossibility of natural forces,
when left to themselves, producing series of inter-
mediary beings between two given specific types, is
one of those general facts which we call a law"
(Quatrefages 1879:80). The term species refers to a
natural category. "Species is then a reality" (Qua-
trefages 1879:84).

Darwinism is not scientifically founded, accord-
ing to Quatrefages (1879:92). "Darwin has formed
a complete and systematic theory, the whole, and
often the details, of which it is impossible not to
admire. . . . I should doubtless have yielded as so
many others have done, if I had not long under-
stood that all questions of this kind depend es-
pecially upon physiology." Specifically, Darwin
had failed to recognize the fact that race and
species are essentially different natural categories;
"Darwin had formed no clear conception of the
sense which he attributed to the word species"
(Quatrefages 1879:95-96). There is in Darwin's
conception no proper appreciation of the physio-

logical differences between races and species; "a
species is only a kind of conventional group similar

8 3

to those which are used in classification. As for
races, they are only species undergoing transmu-
tation . . . ; to what confusions such a vague kind
of theory must lead" (Quatrefages 1879:96). If
races are completely interfertile and species are
mutually infertile, or at best capable of a most
restricted infertility, and if races become species,
then one might ask at what point and how does a
race switch over into a species? "Now, as we have
seen, the fertility among races of the same species
remains constant. . . . Darwin, then, himself and
his most enthusiastic adherents must admit that at
some given moment these races become suddenly
[sic! ] incapable of crossing with their predecessors.
Whence then arises the sterility which separates
species" (Quatrefages 1879:100)? The use of the
term suddenly suggests that Quatrefages either did
not grasp or else chose not to accept Darwin's
notion of transmutation occurring through the
accretion of small variations through long periods
of time.

No one had ever seen a race change into a
species. Many different species are known, and not
one of them ever was observed to transmute into
another. "[I] n order to admit the physiological
transmutation of race into species, a fact which is
contrary to all positive facts, Darwin and his fol-
lowers reject the secular results of experience and
observation, and substitute in their place a possible
accident, and the unknown" (Quatrefages 1879:
100). Such a procedure is unscientific, according
to Quatrefages. "Now, in a truly liberal spirit, I ask
every unprejudiced man, however little he may be
conversant with science, the question, is it upon
such foundations that a general theory in physics
or chemistry would be founded? . . . In every page
of Darwinian writings . . . possibility, chance, and
personal conviction are invariably adduced as
convincing reasons. Is modern science established
upon such foundations" (Quatrefages 1879:101)?
Increasingly, in the 20th century the answer to
Quatrefages' rhetorical question has become "yes"!

It should be emphasized that Quatrefages' argu-
ment against the idea that races are incipient
species was based on his conception of science as
an enterprise that is properly restricted to the
known and knowable. As a scientist he repeatedly
emphasized his duty to refrain "in the name of
science" (Quatrefages 1879:127-128) from specu-
lations concerning ultimate beginnings. Some had
not done so. But, according to Quatrefages:

Others have resisted the impulse of the time; they
have remained faithful to method, the mother of
modern science; they have carefully preserved their
inheritance of solid and precise knowledge, acquired

from past centuries. They cannot on that account be
accused of acting from routine or be considered as
retrograding. As warmly as the most ardent partisans

of the so-called advanced theories, they have applaud-
ed all the progress, and have received with equal favor
new ideas, on the condition of exposing them to ex-
periment and observation. But when they meet with
questions the solution of which is at present impos-
sible, and will perhaps always be so, they have not
hesitated to answer:-WE DO NOT KNOW;-and
when they find purely metaphysical theories are
being imposed upon them, they have protested in the
name of experiment and observation [Quatrefages
1879:127-128].

So far as science is concerned, until a race can be
observed to become a species, i.e., until one species
is seen to transmute into another, there is no
justification in believing it ever happened, accord-
ing to Quatrefages.

Quatrefages' insistence on actually observing the
phenomenon of transmutation predicted by Dar-
win's theory must be considered in historical con-
text. It is after all only an extension of the prin-
ciple of uniformitarianism, whereby only extant
forces should be used to explain the past. If one
can assume that in the past events took place that
are not observed in the present, is not the door
opened to theories, e.g., catastrophism, that many
scientists during Quatrefages' lifetime labored to
reject? To Quatrefages the essential physiological
difference between races and species was a univer-
sal law derived from countless observations, and no
observations contradicted the general validity of
that apparent law. Indeed, transmutation of species
was not actually observed until the 20th century.3

Quatrefages maintained his empirical and uni-
formitarian approach to the question of human
origins until the end of his life. In his last years he
wrote:

I recall two rules which I have constantly followed in
the solution of questions sometimes so ardently con-
tested, which are raised in the history of Man. The
first rule is, to put aside absolutely every considera-
tion borrowed from dogma or philosophy, and to in-
voke only science, that is experience and observation.
The second rule is not to isolate man from other
organized beings, but to recognize that he is subject
(in all that is not exclusively human) to all the gen-
eral laws which govern animals and plants [Quatre-
fages 1893:513].

A hard science attitude precluded unskeptical
acceptance of the application of Darwinism to
man, lacking even one single demonstration of
transmutation in the animal and plant kingdoms.

Rudolf Virchow (1821-1902) was Professor of
Pathological Anatomy at the University of Berlin
and co-founder of the Gesellschaft fur Anthropolo-
gie, Ethnologie and Urgeschichte. He was an
enormously authoritative figure in nineteenth
century Germany. His pupils included Ranke, Koll-
mann, His, Haeckel, Bastian and Boas. Virchow

was, like Quatrefages, an advocate of a no-nonsense,
scientific approach to the Darwinian hypothesis.

8 4

Virchow was not opposed to Darwinism and the
concept of human evolution as hypothesis. Indeed,
in 1887 he wrote:

Although facts are still lacking to prove generic varia-
tion experimentally or by direct observation, the ex-
periences of embryology, zoology, and pathology are
in excellent accord with the hypothesis of descent. It
is evident even that all these disciplines have made
important progress in the knowledge of actual proc-
esses under the rule of the descent hypothesis.
Darwinism has proved to be a most fertile idea, and
will act as an energetic ferment for a long time [in
Ackerknecht 1953:200].

Nevertheless, as Ackerknecht notes (1953:199),
Virchow tended "to become more and more over
simplified and misrepresented" as taking a "stub-
born, reactionary, absolute position. . . ." Specif-
ically, with regard to the question of human evo-
lution, at the turn of the century when German
scholars generally had come to accept evolution,
Virchow's interpretations of Neandertal man were
characterized as "dictated in not small part by his
repugnance against Darwinism.... He showed that
he like so many other potentates had learned noth-
ing and forgotten nothing, that he still was be-
witched by preconceived opinions" (Leche 1911:
318-319). However, Virchow was in fact by no
means repulsed by Darwinism or the idea of hu-
man evolution.

I have spoken as a friend, not an adversary of traris-
formism, and at all times I have approached the im-
mortal Darwin in a friendly, not a hostile way. But I
have always differentiated between friend and parti-
san. I can salute and even support a scientific hy-
pothesis, before it is proven by facts. But I cannot
become its partisan as long as sufficient proof is lack-
ing [in Ackerknecht 1953:200].

Specifically, in 1895 Virchow wrote of the Pithe-
canthropus remains from Java that "he is ... a new
link in the series of forms which make the whole
realm of vertebrates appear to us as one that be-
longs together in an evolutionary sense" (in Acker-
knecht 1953:203, emphasis mine). Appearances,
however, do not constitute proofs.

Virchow had been receptive to the hypothesis of
transmutation of species before publication of the
Origin in 1859. To be sure, in 1858 he wrote, "To
the extent that . . . movement continues under our
eyes, it displays itself as something specifically dif-
ferentiated and broken up into a great number of
fixed lines among which no direct connection
exists. - . . [Al nimals reproduce themselves only
within their species" (in Rather 1958:117, empha-
sis mine). This view was in perfect accordance with
the principle of uniformitarianism as understood in
the mid-nineteenth century. However, Virchow by
no means rejected in 1858 the possibility of the

transmutation of species. "[0] ur experiences do
not . . . justify us in regarding the invariability of
species, which currently appears so certain, as a

rule established for all time" (in Rather 1958:118,
emphasis mine). But, again, current appearances
are not proofs. Hence, even before Darwin's Origin,
Virchow argued that "scientific necessity" required
the "possibility" of transformism, even though
"the experience of our time argues against it" (in
Rather 1958:118, emphasis mine). Virchow is em-
phasizing empirical evidence as a requirement for
the establishment of fact as opposed to hypothesis.

Virchow was not opposed to Darwinism, but
rather he was opposed to uncritical acceptance of
the hypothesis as though it were an established
fact. He wrote in 1877 of "the inclination, inher-
ent in mankind, to overhasty generalizations ...
(in Rather 1958:147).

May I recall in this connection that I belong to those
who did not require this new stimulus in order to
conceive of the variability of species as a necessary
presupposition of the mechanistic theory of life? In a
lecture . . . one year before the appearance of the first
edition of the Origin of Species I expressed this view
in the most clear-cut manner. In fact, as early as 1849
I had emphasized as a logical necessity the mechanical
origin of all life out of general movement. Thus I
have always been ready and willing to accept in a
friendly manner and to treasure as a valuable acquisi-
tion every fact which illustrates the variability of the
species and the primal creation. But I cannot avoid
voicing a forceful warning, based on my own experi-
ence, against taking hypothesis for facts and for-
getting the necessity for factual proof of particular
cases because of the ease of general explanation [in
Rather 1958:146].

It is clear that Virchow's self-admitted "conserva-
tism" was based on the failure to observe actual
transmutation of species: "I am a Darwinist at
heart . . ." (in Rather 1958:148).

Virchow throughout his career had espoused a
mechanistic view of physiological process in oppo-
sition to the vitalism inherent in early German
Romantic Naturphilosophie. But in rejecting the
life force, he did not deny transmutation; indeed, a
mechanistic interpretation of process, according to
Virchow, logically led ultimately to transmutation
of species, though transmutation had never been
observed in fact. Virchow's quarrel was not with
Darwin, whom he treated with admiration, but
with relapse away from scientific induction back to
the Romantic deductive spirit of Naturphilosophie
in the facile acceptance of Darwin's hypothesis.

[N] othing has had a more devasting effect than the
crude schematization of the Darwinists. It was cer-
tainly somewhat surprising, for those of us who were
still acquainted with the old nature-philosophy, to see
how the genius of a single man restored to its rightful
place an idea already given official status as an a
priori necessity by the nature-philosophers, not only
reactivating it, after its long and alas not entirely

unjustified banishment, but making it the basis of a
general conception of the history of the organic
world. But to make an article of faith out of a prob-
lem, a principle of synthesis out of a ground for inves-

8 5

tigation, thereby drugging oneself with assumptions
instead of seeking further, was almost worse than the
a priori approach of the nature-philosophers. For all
the valid facts which had been brought out in the
meantime were also forced into the new system, and
in this context they ran a very definite risk of losing
their true meaning under a cloak of hypothesis [in
Rather 1958:146].

In 1877 as in 1858 Virchow was hostile not to
transformism but rather to any relapse to the vices
of Romantic biology. Empiricism and induction
were essential to his logical positive, hard science
approach to the Darwinian hypothesis.

Virchow became more inflexible with age. Like
Quatrefages, Virchow persisted in his demands for
direct evidence for transmutation, especially in the
case of man. He wrote (1893b:2), "Darwin and his
followers have, as regards man, got no further than
the formation of a mere hypothesis." Indeed, with
regard to the human fossil record, his demands for
proof appear to have become quite stringent when
he refers to "data respecting strange individual
cases, by the aid of which it is impossible to form a
continuous line or constitute a genealogical tree,
but which should be kept in the scientific lumber-
room till the time when we can find the interme-
diate links that may unite them into a series" (Vir-
chow 1893a:376-377). By such demanding stan-
dards, even today there is not hard data enough in
the "scientific lumber-room" to build a lasting edi-
fice.

Virchow was by no means the only authoritative
German skeptic with regard to Darwinism. Adolf
Bastian (1826-1905), co-founder with Virchow of
the Berlin Gesellschaft, was even more given to
"puritanical empiricalism" and insisted even more
on the collection of facts, according to Lowie
(1937-31), who refers to "his determined opposi-
tion to Darwinism." "Like Virchow, Bastian re-
garded transformism as untenable so long as no
one had ever seen one species changing into an-
other" (Lowie 1937:31).

The transmutability of species, an hypothesis on
which evolution is based, required for proof an
actual observation of one species transmuting into
another, according to Quatrefages, Virchow and
Bastian, and many other scholars of their day. It
followed from that fact that even an extensive
series of extinct forms leading from living men to
the apes would provide no final proof for human
evolution.

Paul Broca (1824-1880) was Professor of the
Faculty of Medicine of the University of Paris. He
was the principal founder and General Secretary
until his death of the Societe de Anthropologie de
Paris. Broca first commented on Darwin's theory in

1862. "England has been reading with stubborn
animosity for years, an old but charming and very

remarkable work . . . which is entitled 'On the
Origin of Species by Natural Selection' " (in Stew-
ard 1959:18). After outlining Darwin's argument
and commenting, "Each of us will be able to
demonstrate his genealogy back to the trilobites
(in Steward 1959:18)," Broca took the following
stand:

Now, is Mr. Darwin right or wrong? I do not know and
I do not wish to know. I find in the things accessible
to science sufficient nourishment for my curiosity,
without losing myself in the night of origins. When
Mr. Darwin speaks of my trilobite ancestors I do not
feel humiliated, but I say to him: What do you know
about it? You were not there. And those who refute
him know no more about it than he does.

Here Broca adumbrates Quatrefages' refusal in the
name of science to become involved in metaphysi-
cal discussions of ultimate beginnings.

In 1886 while discussing the mandible of La
Naulette, Broca argued that even a series interme-
diate between two species or genera would not
prove evolution.

The opinion of Darwin on the transformation and
evolution of the species is an ingenious hypothesis
which lacks, in my opinion, only one essential thing:
the demonstration. . . . [T] he first condition to be
fulfilled before an affiliation can be established be-
tween two species or two groups of species is to ver-
ify the existence of intermediate types arranged in a
continuous series between the two groups. When this
intermediate series is once established, it in no way
results that the Darwinian hypothesis is demonstrated,
nor even that it is probably, but it results at least that
it is no longer impossible [in Steward 1959:18-19] .

Was there in 1866 any known link in that required
chain from men to the apes which, when complete-
ly recovered, would provide necessary, if insuffi-
cient evidence to prove the reality of human
evolution?

Now, up to this point, the known anatomical gulf be-
tween the lowest human type and that of the higher
apes constituted an immense hiatus. The Darwinists
were not unaware of this and not finding in existing
humanity the transition types, they announced that
at least these types ought to be found in the fossil re-
mains of primitive humanity.... I do not hesitate ...
to say that the mandible of the Trou de la Naulette is
the first fact which furnished an anatomical argu-
ment to the Darwinists [in Steward 1959:19].

The Neandertal skullcap, though somewhat simian
in appearance, was not demonstrably ancient, and,
therefore, not evidence.

In 1867 Broca, after describing the peculiarities
of the Naulette jaw, said:

These facts correspond to the views of partisans of
the so-called Darwinian hypothesis of transformism.
. . . However, they prove only a single thing, a thing,
it is true, vital to that hypothesis. Namely, the serial
disposition and the gradual development of organic

characteristics, long ascertained in the rest of the ani-
mal gradation, is observed also in the higher grades. In
other words the chain of beings, everywhere else

8 6

more-or-less continuous, is not abruptly broken at
this level. The paleontological facts have already
diminished the vast interval which would appear to
exist between the characteristics of man and those of
apes. We can believe that that interval will be narrow-
ed still more when we become acquainted with other
human races of the Quaternary epoque and especially
when we discover . . . the remains of Tertiary man
[Broca 1868: 401-402].

But the inclusion of man in the Chain of Being did
not prove the idea of human evolution. Man had
always been considered part of the Great Chain of
Being.

The continuity of the series does not account at all in
my eyes for the idea of the transformation of species.
. . .That [bold] hypothesis is all the more strongly
attractive intellectually as there is no other that has
been opposed to it. But, those who look at it coldly,
with the rigor of the scientific method, must recog-
nize that till now it does not rest on any direct proof
[Broca 1868:401-402].

Darwinism predicted and required the existence in
the past of primitive human forms linking man to
the apes. The concept of the Chain of Being did
not predict or require extinct human forms linking
man to the rest of the animal world. The discovery
of such primitive forms in the Quaternary, how-
ever, did not at all contradict the old idea of spe-
cies, living and dead, as links in the Chain of Being.
Direct evidence for the transmutation of one
species into another was required to ultimately
prove the Darwinian hypothesis.

The ancient and primitive jaw from La Naulette
provided no proof for the hypothesis of human
evolution-whether it had originally belonged to an
extinct race or an extinct species of Homo. It was
only one of many newly found extinct links in the
Chain of Being. But if the Naulette jaw and the
many other extinct animal forms recently recov-
ered from the earth did not prove evolution to be
a logical necessity, perhaps collectively they were
beginning to have a psychological impact on Broca.
In 1870 he summed up his views as follows:

The struggle for life is a law. The selection which re-
sults from it is a fact. The production of individual
variations is another fact. The eventual transmission of
these variations . . . is one of the possible conse-
quences of the law of heredity ... but what is neither
a fact nor a law, what is no more than an hypothesis
is the infinite divergence which natural selection im-
poses on anatomical and morphological characteris-
tics [Broca 1870:188].

Later in 1870, during his last known statement on
the subject of Darwinism, Broca appears to have re-
versed his former views on the probability of the
transmutability of species.

"The permanence of species seems nearly im-
possible; it is in opposition to the manner of

succession and distribution of species in the
series of beings present and past. It is therefore
very probable that the species are variable and
subject to evolution" [in Stewart 1959:20].

Despite Broca's "now grudging admission that
evolution might apply to man" (Stewart 1959:19),
he denied the power of any of the proposed
mechanisms including selection to explain it. "The
causes, the agents of this evolution are still un-
known. All the theories which have been advanced
until now are insufficient. The great synthesis of
nature is not yet realized" (in Stewart 1959:20).
We cannot be sure that Broca by 1870 had waived
the requirement for direct evidence for the trans-
mutability of species and become an evolutionist.
It would seem, however, that the expanding fossil
record, including the Naulette discovery, was pres-
sing some scholars toward that end.

DARWINISM AND THE FOSSIL RECORD

The theory of evolution was not erected on the
fossil record. The power of Darwin's theory lay in
the fact that it explained a number of diverse
phenomena (Lyell 1863:413-415). Phenomena re-
lated to the fossil record were just among a number
of phenomena that the theory of evolution ex-
plained. As the fossil record expanded, it support-
ed, in turn, the theory of evolution.

There were phenomena pertaining to the fossil
record, most notably the many gaps in it and the
magnitude of those gaps which, indeed, the theory
of the separate creation of each species did in fact
explain more handily. Darwin was forced to ex-
plain away the gaps in the fossil record on the
grounds of the unlikeliness of preservation and the
accidents of discovery. Charles Lyell (1863:424-
425) tells us:

The most obvious and popular of the objections
urged against the theory of transmutation may be
thus expressed: If the extinct species of plants and
animals of the later geological periods were the pro-
genitors of the living species, and gave origin to them
by variation and natural selection, where are all the
intermediate forms, fossil and living, through which
the lost types must have passed during their conver-
sion into the living ones? And why do we not find al-
most everywhere passages between the nearest allied
species and genera, instead of such strong lines of
demarcation, and often wide intervening gaps?

The fossil record of the day was far from a sup-
port, indeed, it was one of the major obstacles in
the way of acceptance of Darwin's theory.

Opponents of human evolution especially cited
the gap between man and the primates. Again, pro-
ponents argued the inadequacy of the fossil record
in support of their case.

The opponents of the theory of transmutation some-
times argue that, if there had been a passage by varia-
tion from the lower Primates to Man, the geologist
ought ere this to have detached some fossil remains of
the intermediate links of the chain. But. . . , we have

not yet searched those pages of the great book of
nature, in which alone we have any right to expect to
find records of the missing links alluded to. The coun-
tries of the anthropomorphous are the tropical

8 7

regions of Africa, and the islands of Borneo and
Sumatra, lands which may be said to be quite un-
known in reference to their pliocene and post-plio-
cene mammalia [Lyell 1863:498].

Lyell went on to predict that intermediate fossil
forms would be found. "[I]n more equatorial re-
gions . . . there will be the greatest chance of dis-
covering hereafter some species more highly or-
ganized than the gorilla and chimpanzee" (Lyell
1863:500).

Not only were there gaps between species in the
fossil record, rendering fossil species discreet
entities, but in addition the record provided ex-
amples of species persisting for long periods of
time and showing no discernible change. For ex-
ample, according to the paleontologist, Hugh
Falconer:

Between the Pliocene . . . and the new Quaternary
formations an enormous lapse of time had intervened
amounting to many hundreds of thousands, if not
millions, of years-during which a great portion of the
Continents of Europe, Asia, and America had been
chilled down.... How faired it with the large Mam-
malia during this mighty change? . . . In this case the
argument of the imperfection of the geological record,
which has been so powerfully handled by Darwin,
could not be urged; the materials were abundant, and
the deposits which marked the successive change of
dry land, submergencee, and re-emergence were
amply represented. . . . [H] ere was a case where
quadrupeds which were either contemporaries [sic]
of man or close upon his period, could be traced back
into remote time, and thus furnish a test of the mut-
ability or persistence of specific characters, of much
higher value than that yielded by observation upon
living animals, necessarily limited to a brief lapse of
time ... [Falconer 1868:586, emphasis mine].

Transmutation of species was not notable in the
fossil record.

Darwinists could and did argue against the claim
that the fossil record supported the permanence of
species by countering that change took a longer
time than the record provided for any single
species. Nevertheless the recorded fact that species
do not change over long periods of time in addi-
tion to the fact that the many gaps in the fossil
record were not at all predicted by Darwin's theory
remained and gave the appearance of refuting Dar-
win. On the other hand, these phenomena were
consistent with and, indeed, demanded by the idea
of separate creation and permanence of species.

Despite its inadequacies the fossil record was
getting better. Lyell (1868:482) singled out the
work of Albert Gaudry, an early French evolu-
tionist, at Pikermi in Greece as showing there were,
indeed, transitional forms.

[I] n . . . osteology, the evidence already obtained
since the time of Cuvier, in favour of transmutation,

is certainly very striking. By no naturalist has its bear-
ing been more clearly pointed out than by M. Gaudry,
who, under the influence of the great teachers who
preceded him, entered on the enquiry with a theoreti-

cal bias directly opposed to the conclusions which he
now so ably advocates. . . . [H] e has pointed out the
transition through many intermediate forms of Upper
Miocene species to others of Pliocene and Post-
Pliocene date, showing how each successive discovery
has enabled us to bridge over many gaps which
existed only 20 or 30 years ago.

Even the primate material was of help to the
theory of evolution. "Only 14 species of the ape
and monkey tribe have as yet been detected in a
fossil state, and each of these has usually furnished
but a few bones of its skeleton to the osteologist.
Yet they have not failed to throw much light on
the transmutation hypothesis" (Lyell 1868:483).

DOES DARWINISM APPLY TO MAN?

The inadequacies of the fossil record were gen-
erally an obstacle in the way of acceptance of Dar-
winism. To be sure, some of the gaps were filled
fairly quickly in the mammalian record and certain
lines of descent could be discerned, especially in
the case of horses. However, this was not true for
man. Fossil hominids did not provide any signifi-
cant evidence for evolution until long after good
sequences were established for a number of other
kinds of mammals. Scholars, then, in so far as they
were influenced by the fossil record, either did or
did not believe in evolution on the basis of evi-
dence provided by organisms other than man.

There were scholars who could accept evolution
as applicable to the animal world but not to man.
The lack of significant fossil links between man
and the animal world encouraged that viewpoint.
Haeckel in 1879 explained:

For many years [before 1871] it was even asserted
that Darwin had no intention of applying his theory
to Man, but that he shared the prevalent opinion, that
an entirely peculiar place in creation must be assigned
to Man. Not only men unversed in science, . . . but
even educated naturalists, asserted with the greatest
ingenuousness, that the Darwinian Theory in itself
was not to be combated, and was entirely correct,
for it afforded an excellent means of explaining the
origin of various species of animals and plants; but
that the theory was in no way applicable to Man [in
Stewart 1959:11].

No less a geological authority than Charles Lyell
showed reluctance to apply the principle of evolu-
tion to man. In 1863 Lyell wrote, "I can only say
that I have spoken out to the full extent of my
present convictions and even beyond my state of
feeling as to man's unbroken descent from the
brutes . . ." (in Haber 1959:282). It would appear,
however, that Lyell later came to feel more kindly
toward the prospect of human evolution. He wrote
in 1868:

It is clearly seen that there is such a close affinity,
such as identity in all essential points, in our cor-
poreal structure and in many of our instincts and pas-
sions, with those of the lower animals-that man is so

8 8

completely subjected to the same general laws of re-
production, increase, growth, disease, and death,-
that if progressive development, spontaneous varia-
tion, and natural selection have for millions of years
directed the changes of the rest of the organic world,
we cannot expect to find that the human race has
been exempted from the same continuous process of
evolu.tion [Lyell 1868:493].

EARLY ANTHROPOLOGISTS ON

DARWINSIM AND HUMAN EVOLUTION

Belief in human evolution during the first few
decades after the publication of Origin was based
more on one's general belief in evolutionary theory
and its applicability to man than on the basis of
fossil materials. Darwin writing in 1871 in The
Descent of Man, in which he elaborated his belief
in human evolution, spoke of a "great break in the
organic chain between man and his nearest allies,
which cannot be bridged over by any extinct or
living species," and of "the absence of fossil re-
mains, serving to connect man with his ape-like
progenitors" (1871:520-521). For the most part,
acceptance or rejection of the idea of human evo-
lution was not based on paleoanthropological re-
search.

Anthropologists per anthropologists had little to
contribute to the debate over evolution in terms of
their own reserach. Most anthropological problems
of the day had little applicability to evolutionary
questions. Human paleontology was potentially
applicable, but the known human fossils failed to
have any significant impact on general evolutionary
questions.

Anthropologists of the third quarter of the nine-
teenth century were not, of course, strictly anthro-
pologists (or physical anthropologists as they
would be called today in the English-speaking
world). They were medical doctors, zoologists,
anatomists, paleontologists, geologists or anyone
else with an abiding interest in anthropological
problems, which were then primarily biologically
construed. Since their orientation was primarily
biological, it would be expected that societies of
anthropology would engage themselves in extended
debate on the general subject of evolution. They
did so, and anthropologists offered many opinions
on the subject. Still, as anthropologists pursuing
anthropological problems, they had little in the
way of research to bring to bear on the general
question of evolution.

The initial opposition of anthropologists to Dar-
winism and the prospect of human evolution in
Europe was not based on research, not even on
paleontological research. It was based rather on a
view of the scientific process as properly empirical

was a threat to the ethos of scientific method as
then conceived and, therefore, quickly and widely
opposed.

NOTES

1This article appears posthumously. Stephen Holtz-
man died at the age of 38 in December, 1975. He
had taught anthropology at Brandeis University
and was Assistant Professor of Anthropology at
Northern Illinois State University. His obituary was
published in The American Journal of Physical
Anthropology 45:349.

2Acknowledgement goes to Cecil Brown, Peggy
Salovesh and especially T. Dale Stewart for critical
comment on this paper. All responsibility is, of
course, my own.

3In 1927 a true-breeding hybrid between a radish
and a cabbage was reported by the Russian genet-
icist G. D. Karpechenko. Since some of the seeds
produced were highly fertile when crossed within
their type but infertile when crossed with either of
the parental types, technically this was a case of
transmutation of species. (Garrett Hardin: Biology/
Its Human Implications, 1954:555. San Francisco:
W.H. Freeman and Company.)

and inductive. Darwinism as hypothesis was well
received on the Continent. As established fact it

8 9

REFERENCES CITED
Ackerknecht, Erwin H.

1953 Rudolf Virchow: Doctor, Statesman,

Anthropologist. Madison, Wisconsin: U.
Wisconsin Press.
Broca, Pierre Paul

1868 Discours sur l'ensemble de la question

(caracteres anatomiques de l'homme dans
les temps pre-historiques). C.R. Congres
international d'Anthropologie et d'Arche-
ologie prehistorique (2ieme sess.), Paris,
1867:367-402.

1870 (On transformism.) Bull. de la Societe

d'Anthropologie de Paris, ser. 2, 5:188.
Darwin, Charles

1871 The Descent of Man and Selection in

Relation to Sex. London: John Murray
(N.Y.: The Modern Library. 1962).
Davis, J. Barnard

1864 De la valeur reele de la forme speciale

d'un fragment de crane trouve dans la
caverne de Neanderthal. Bull. de la
Societe d'Anthropologie de Paris, ser. 1,
5:708-718.
Eiseley, Loren

1961 Darwin's Century. Garden City, N.Y.:

Doubleday (Anchor).
Falconer, Hugh

1868 Paleontological Memoirs and Notes, vol. 2.

London: Robert Hardwick.
Haber, Francis C.

1959 The Age of the World: Moses to Darwin.

Baltimore: John Hopkins U. Press.
King, William. B.R.

1864a On the Neanderthal Skull, or Reasons for

Believing it to Belong to the Clydian
Period and to a Species Different from
that Represented by Man. Report of the
British Association for the Advancement
of Science, Notices and Abstracts, New-
castle-upon-Tyne, 1863:81-82.

1864b The Reputed Fossil Man of the Neander-

thal. Quarterly J. Science 1:88-97.
Leche, Wilhelm

1911 Der Mensch: Sein Ursprung und seine

Entwicklung. Hena: Gustav Fischer.
Lowie, Robert H.

1937 The History of Ethnological Theory.

N.Y.: Holt, Rinehart, Winston.
Lyell, Charles

1863 The Geological Evidences of the Antiqui-

ty of Man, with Remarks on Theories of
the Origin of Species by Variation. Lon-
don: John Murray.

1868 Principles of Geology, or the Modern

Quatrefages, Armand de

1873 Races humaines fossiles. Race de Canstadt.

C.R. Acad. Sciences, Paris 76:1313-1317.

1879 The Human Species. N.Y.: D. Appleton.

(trans. from 1877 French language ed.)

1893 The Advent of Man in America. Ann.

Report Smithsonian Institution 1892:
513-520.
Rather, Lelland J.

1958 Disease, Life, and Man: Selected Essays

by Rudolf Virchow. Stanford, Ca.: Stan-
ford U. Press.
Stewart, T. Dale

1959 The Effect of Darwin's Theory of Evolu-

tion on Physical Anthropology. Evolution
and Anthropology: A Centennial Apprais-
al. Anthropological Society of Washing-
ton, 11-25.
Virchow, Rudolf

1858 On the Mechanistic Interpretation of Life.

Translated in Disease, Life, and Man:
Selected  Essays by  Rudolf Virchow.
Lelland J. Rather, ed. Stanford, Ca.:
Stanford U. Press.

1877 Standpoints of Scientific Medicine. Trans-

lated in Disease, Life, and Man: Selected
Essays by Rudolf Virchow. Lelland J.
Rather, ed. Stanford, Ca.: Stanford U.
Press.

1893a The Problems of Anthropology. Popular

Science Monthly 42:373-377.

1893b Transformation and Descent. J. Pathol-

ogy and Bacteriology 1:1-12.

Changes of the Earth and its Inhabitants
Considered as Illustrative of Geology, vol.
2, 10th ed. London: John Murray.