The Law of Progress, Atavism, and Prehistory in the Belle Époque
Résumé
Prehistory as a scientific discipline emerged in the second half of the 19th century. Under the influence of evolutionism, anthropologists blended “fossil men” and “present men” into a single biological and cultural anthropology, even if this meant that the resurgence of the geological past in the present became possible through the principal of atavism.