Amphithéâtre Maurice Halbwachs, Site Marcelin Berthelot
    Open to all, subject to availability
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    Abstract

    This lecture evokes the birth of the prehistoric sciences in the middle of the XIXthcentury, and focuses on the colorful figure of Jacques Boucher de Perthes : amateur archaeologist and prolific author, an inventive mind with a vivid imagination, he led the fight for scientific acceptance of the notion of fossil Man as a contemporary of cave bears and mammoths, at a time when acceptance of human antiquity required a radical transformation of collective representations.

    Portrait d’un officier en uniforme militaire du XIXe siècle
    Gédéon Forceville, Buste de Jacques Boucher de Perthes, 1865, white marble, Saint-Germain-en-Laye, Musée d'Archéologie nationale, inv. MAN 22 352, © Musée d'Archéologie nationale / Baptiste Simon.

    Biography

    Claudine Cohen is a historian and philosopher of life and earth sciences. She is director of studies at EHESS and EPHE/PSL (Laboratoire Biogéosciences). Her publications include : Boucher de Perthes, les origines romantiques de la Préhistoire (with Jean-Jacques Hublin ; Belin, coll. Alpha, 2017), Nos Ancêtres dans les arbres, penser l'évolution humaine (Paris, éd. du Seuil, 2021) and Aux origines de la domination masculine (Paris, Passés Composés/Humensis 2025).

    Speaker(s)

    Claudine Cohen

    Historian and philosopher

    Events

    See also

    Exhibitions and European Heritage Days
    Conferences " Prehistory : between utopia and reality "