Noted Anthropologists

Father Joseph-François Lafitau (1681–1746)
Sir Daniel Wilson (1816–1892)
David Boyle (1842–1911)
James Anderson (1926–1995)
Bruce G. Trigger
Dr. David Meyer
Charles R. Darwin  (1809–1882)
Gregor Mendel  (1822–1884)
Esteban Parra
Linda Fedigan and Biruté Galdikas
David R. Begun
Louis S.B. Leakey  (1903–1972)
Mary Leakey  (1913–1996)
Dr. Becky Sigmon
Adrienne Zihlman  (b. 1940)
Davidson Black  (1884–1934)
Ariane Burke
Knut Fladmark and Chen Shen
Jean-Luc Pilon
Louise I. Paradis
Ashley Montagu  (1905–1999)
Emoke J.E. Szathmáry

Father Joseph-François Lafitau (1681–1746)
Sir Daniel Wilson (1816–1892)

In Canada, anthropological studies began in the 18th and 19th centuries with the help of dedicated scholars interested in the study of human culture.  Two early contributors to Canadian anthropology, neither of whom were academic anthropologists, were Father Joseph-François Lafitau and Sir Daniel Wilson.

Father Lafitau was a Jesuit missionary who lived with the Iroquois near Montreal from 1715 to 1720. Although Father Lafitau is most often credited with discovering wild ginseng in North America, his firsthand observations and scholarly writings provided valuable insight into the plants, animals, and people of the region. He noted a possible connection between Asian peoples, who used ginseng over 15 000 years ago, and North American aboriginal peoples. Among his literary works, Father Lafitau wrote Customs of the American Indians Compared with the Customs of Primitive Times (Toronto: Champlain Society, 1974).¹

Sir Daniel Wilson was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, and educated at the University of Edinburgh. He moved to Canada in 1853, to become the first professor of history and English literature at the University of Toronto, and in 1881 he became the first president of the University of Toronto. Wilson’s contributions to science and education are many; he is described as an educator and administrator, archaeologist, artist, and anthropologist. Most notably, he recognized the importance of cultural studies, and is credited with founding the first anthropology courses at a Canadian university, nearly 150 years ago. Among his scholarly works, Wilson wrote The Archaeology and Prehistoric Annals of Scotland, which laid the groundwork for scientific inquiry in archaeology and introduced the term “prehistoric” to the scientific community.² Wilson was a significant influence on the development of professional anthropology and archaeology in Canada.

¹Progenix Corporation. (1998). The history of ginseng in the United States. Retrieved March 12, 2001, from the World Wide Web: http://progenixcorp.com/ushistory.html.

²Kelley, J.H., & Williamson, R.F. (1996, January). The positioning of archaeology within anthropology: A Canadian historical perspective. American Antiquity, 61 (1), 5–20.

David Boyle (1842–1911)
James Anderson (1926–1995)
Bruce G. Trigger

David Boyle, a teacher and naturalist, was the first professional archaeologist in Canada. He actively worked on producing the Ontario provincial site inventory at the Canadian Institute and published many archaeological reports. Scholars in Canada such as Boyle did not work in isolation.

An influential figure in Canadian biological anthropology was James Anderson of Perth, Ontario. He graduated in 1953 as a medical doctor, but one of his professors at the University of Toronto was J.C.B. Grant. Grant had studied the biological variation of several First Nations communities, and Anderson was determined to follow his example. By 1958, Anderson was the first biological anthropologist in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Toronto. His legacy is still felt throughout Canada. One of Anderson’s innovations was the study of discrete traits along with metric data. His study of single traits and their variation had a considerable influence on future generations of researchers.

Bruce G. Trigger has been a pivotal force in anthropological archaeology since the early 1960s. As a student, Trigger became interested in the study of archaeological settlement patterns. His Ph.D. dissertation examined the factors that influenced changing population size and distribution of population in Lower Nubia, from the beginnings of agriculture (ca 4000 b.c.) until the end of the Christian period (ca a.d. 1500).

In 1963, Trigger began teaching at McGill University, where he is currently Professor in the Department of Anthropology. Trigger trained archaeologists interested in the Iroquoian prehistory of southern Ontario. These researchers focused on understanding Iroquoian development in terms of economic, social, and political change in individual communities. Trigger has also produced major historical and ethnohistorical works on the eastern woodlands peoples, in particular the Huron. His historical publications have helped expand and define the goals of ethnohistory and aligned pre-contact archaeology with history.

In the 1980s, Trigger focused his studies on the history of archaeology in an effort to understand the changing ideas that have shaped archaeologists’ understanding of the past. His book, A History of Archaeological Thought, is used as a textbook on the history of archaeology in many countries.

In recent years, Trigger has devoted his time to discerning the factors that shape human behaviour and the archaeological record. He conducted a comparative study of early civilizations that seeks to explore those factors that account for the cross-cultural similarities and differences that have evolved independently in cultures in various parts of the world. Trigger has concluded that in addition to ecological constraints on cultural traditions, culture is shaped by the specific psychological and cognitive needs of human beings that are a product of their biological evolution. Inevitably, his research will have implications for general theory construction in anthropology and will provide a basis for critiquing processual and postmodern approaches in archaeology.

Throughout his career, Trigger has attempted to use archaeological data to avoid narrow or simplistic explanations and to understand human behaviour in its full complexity (see Trigger 1998). He has also been interested in using archaeological findings to refute ethnic stereotypes, especially as these relate to aboriginal peoples of North America. Trigger has often encouraged First Nations students to become archaeologists, and to become involved in interpreting their own history.

Dr. David Meyer

Growing up on the Canadian plains, David Meyer acquired a permanent interest in the archaeology of the region. The subject of his master’s thesis was a Paleo-Inuit site in the Churchill, Manitoba, region. In the 1970s, he undertook ethnographic and historical research at Red Earth, a Plains Cree community in east central Saskatchewan. It later became his Ph.D. dissertation.

In 1974, Meyer directed the archaeology portion of the Churchill River Study, an early environmental impact study in northern Saskatchewan. This project resulted in a lasting research interest in the prehistory of the northern forests. The Churchill River work led, in 1976, to a permanent position as an archaeological consultant with the Saskatchewan Research Council. Over the next decade he worked on many archaeological projects, widely scattered from northernmost Saskatchewan south to the Montana border. One of the largest projects was the Nipawin Reservoir Heritage Study in 1981–85. During this time he enlarged upon an early interest, the pre-contact pottery assemblages of the northern forests of Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and Ontario, developing this interest into a broader expertise in archaeological pottery. In particular, he researched and published on the late pre-contact Selkirk culture and its pottery.

In 1988, Meyer joined the faculty of the Department of Anthropology and Archaeology (now the Department of Archaeology) at the University of Saskatchewan. Since that time he has been involved in a number of field projects, including at Cumberland House and southern Reindeer Lake. He has explored the social geography of boreal forest hunter-gatherers, especially the annual or biannual ingatherings. Of special interest has been the articulation of archival, ethnographic, and archaeological data in the identification and understanding of particular ingathering locales.

At present, Meyer is involved in a large, multi-year and multi-university research project involving the collaboration of nine researchers in four provinces and one state. His portion of the project involves the investigation of archaeological sites in the region of the confluence of the North and South Saskatchewan Rivers. Here, he has been directing the excavation of a 6000 b.p. occupation, and excavating sites dating from the last 2000 years. This work involves geoarchaeological and paleoenvironmental studies, as well as archival research and consultation with Cree elders in this region.

Charles R. Darwin  (1809–1882)

Grandson of Erasmus Darwin (a physician, scientist, poet, and originator of a theory of evolution himself), Charles Darwin began the study of medicine at the University of Edinburgh. Finding himself unfitted for this profession, he then went to Christ’s College, Cambridge, to study theology. Upon completion of his studies there, he took the position of naturalist and companion to Captain Fitzroy on the HMS Beagle, which was about to embark on an expedition to various poorly mapped parts of the world. The voyage lasted for close to five years, taking Darwin along the coasts of South America, over to the Galapagos Islands, across the Pacific to Australia, and then across the Indian and Atlantic oceans back to South America before returning to England. The observations he made on this voyage, his readings of Sir Charles Lyell’s Principles of Geology, and the arguments he had with the orthodox and dogmatic Fitzroy had a powerful influence on the development of the ideas culminating in Darwin’s most famous book, On the Origin of Species, which was published in 1859.

Contrary to what many people seem to think, Darwin did not “discover” or “invent” evolution. The general idea of evolution had been put forward by a number of writers, including his grandfather, long before Darwin’s time. Nor is evolution a theory, as some people seem to believe, any more than gravity is a theory. To be sure, there are competing theories of gravity—the Newtonian and Einsteinian—that seek to explain its workings, but the evidence in favour of gravity is overwhelming. Similarly, the evidence in favour of evolution is overwhelming, so much so that evolution is now understood in biology as the organizing principle at all levels of life. But, as with gravity, there have been competing theories that seek to explain how evolution works.

Darwin’s contribution was one such theory—that of evolution through natural selection. His was the theory that was best able to account both for change within species and for the emergence of new species in purely naturalistic terms. As is usually the case with pioneering ventures, there were weaknesses in Darwin’s original theory. Ultimately, however, his basic ideas were vindicated, and modern biology has not only confirmed but (as with all good theories) extended and amplified those ideas. Today, we can say that the evidence in favour of natural selection is about as good as we had for the theory that the earth is spherical, until we were able to put up an astronaut who could see with his own eyes that this indeed is the case.

Gregor Mendel  (1822–1884)

Johann Mendel, as he was christened, was raised on a farm in Moravia and attended the local grammar school. Having done well as a student, he became an Augustine monk in order to further his education. As Brother Gregor, he went on to serve as a parish priest but without much success. Since he had previously studied science at the University of Vienna, he thought of becoming a science teacher but failed the examination. So it was that he retreated to the monastery in Brno, in what is now the Czech Republic. There, he put to work two talents: a flair for mathematics and a passion for gardening.

As with all farmers of his time, Mendel had an intuitive understanding of biological inheritance. He went a step further, though, in that he recognized the need for a more systematic understanding. Thus, at age 34, he began carefully thought-out breeding experiments in the monastery garden, first with pea plants, then with others.

For eight years, Mendel worked, planting over 30000 plants, controlling their pollination, observing the results, and figuring out the mathematics behind it all. This allowed him to predict the outcome of hybridization over successive generations. His findings were published in 1866 in a respected scientific journal found in all the best libraries of Europe. But despite Mendel’s straightforward presentation, no one else picked up on the importance of his work until 1900. By then, understanding of cell biology had advanced to the point where rediscovery of Mendel’s laws was inevitable, and in that year three European botanists, working independently of one another, rediscovered not only the laws but also Mendel’s original paper.  With this rediscovery, the science of genetics took off. Still, it would be another 53 years before science understood the true nature of genes, the discreet units of inheritance, the existence of which Mendel had deduced from his experiments.

Esteban Parra

Esteban Parra is a molecular anthropologist at the University of Toronto. His Ph.D. is from the University of Santiago de Compostela, Spain. His research spans the subjects of genetic markers, human evolution, epidemiology, and forensic science. Topics he is pursuing include admixture, high altitude adaptation, and the underlying mechanisms of human pigmentation. A main goal of his research is to characterize genetic variation within and between human populations. He is also interested in evaluating new technologies for DNA genotyping.

Parra’s most recent study was the estimation of the European genetic contribution to 10 African-descent populations in the United States (Parra et al. 1998). Parra and his team discovered a sex-biased gene flow from Europeans to African Americans, the male contribution being substantially greater than the female contribution. There was no evidence of a significant maternal Amerindian contribution to any of the 10 populations (Parra et al. 1998). What makes this work of value from an anthropological perspective is the attempt to explore the social and political background of the patterns that they discovered. Parra is also concerned with developing methods to make the analysis of large samples of DNA more efficient. He believes that by developing more efficient analytical techniques we will be able to explore human genetic variation more effectively. The human genome project results are currently based on only a few people  (five individuals in one project and 24 in another) so it is essential that we develop methods that will enable much larger samples of the genome to be obtained, or we will have little understanding of variation within the genome (HGMIS 2001, 4).

Linda Fedigan and Biruté Galdikas

One of the foremost primatologists in Canadian anthropology is Linda Fedigan. During her 30-year career, she has played a pivotal role in putting primatology on the academic map. Fedigan has focused on three international projects: the Arashiyama Texas-Japan project; the Santa Rosa primate project in Costa Rica; and a gender and science study.

One of Fedigan’s most significant contributions to the science of primatology is bringing female primates into the limelight. She examines the biological and social nature of primates from the female’s perspective, and asks questions such as, How and why do male and female primates (including humans) live together year-round? What makes some females more reproductively successful than others? Using primates as biological models, Fedigan and colleagues have explored the puzzling question of how and why menopause evolved in humans.

Fedigan has documented the life histories of primates, in particular the Arashiyama Japanese macaques and Costa Rican capuchins, howlers, and spider monkeys. Her book Primate Paradigms: Sex Roles and Social Bonds (1982) has been influential in the study of female primates, and a compilation of primate life histories, The Monkeys of Arashiyama. Thirty-Five Years of Research in Japan and the West (1991) is considered the best data set in primatology.

Fedigan has directed her conservation efforts to the recovery of primate habitats, and has conducted biennial censuses of monkeys in the Santa Rosa National Park in Costa Rica. Unlike many conservation studies that focus on the loss of plant and animal species, Fedigan has concentrated on the natural return of animals to regenerating tropical forests. Fedigan believes that if primatologists can determine how female reproductive and life history variables (e.g., age at first and last birth) are affected by ecological variables, and demographic trends, then scientists can recommend the types of environments humans must maintain or restore to save primate populations. Fedigan’s conservation efforts in Costa Rica have been highlighted in the 1998 film Champions of the Wild, produced by OMNI Productions, a Canadian film company.

Fedigan has also studied the role of gender in anthropology, primatology, and biological sciences. She has collaborated with other scientists to analyze the role of theory, method, and gender in the scientific community’s changing ideas about sociality, and how the gender of a scientist affects research on sex differences. Among her many research contributions, Fedigan has addressed questions such as what determines how often females produce infants, and what factors enable females to live longer.

In 1974, Fedigan began teaching at the University of Alberta; in 2001 she assumed the Canada Research Chair at the University of Calgary.  Organizations such as National Geographic, Nature, and Survival Anglia regularly consult Fedigan regarding the accuracy of their scripts for films on primates. Ultimately, Fedigan is endeavouring to understand the social and biological nature of primates and, thus, our human place in nature.

Known as one of “Leakey’s Angels,” (Dian Fossey and Jane Goodall being the other two), Biruté Galdikas is considered the world’s foremost authority on wild orangutans (Lessem 1995). Galdikas received her master’s degree in primatology from UCLA in 1969, followed by a doctorate in anthropology in 1978. Since 1971, she has lived and worked in the rain forests of Borneo (Kalimantan), at the Orangutan Research and Conservation Centre in the Tanjung Puting National Park. At the park, Galdikas studies orangutans in their natural habitat, also developing conservation programs and caring for orangutan infants that have been orphaned by poachers. She hopes that studying orangutan subsistence, sociality, reproduction, cognitive potentials, communications, and tool use will shed some light on the development of early hominids. Galdikas says, “I’ve always wanted to study the one primate who never left the Garden of Eden. I want to know what we left behind” (GCS Research Society 1996). She strongly believes we must reach back to our evolutionary roots, to a more stable lifestyle, for the sake of humankind’s social, environmental, and mental well-being.

When Galdikas began her research, she developed close mothering relationships with the orphaned orangutans, even raising her oldest son, Binti, with the orangutans. Today, she maintains a degree of distance between her private life and the orangutans. Nonetheless, Galdikas continues to act as an advocate for the conservation and protection of the rain forest ecosystem and orangutans who live there by establishing a nonprofit organization, the Orangutan Foundation International. She actively campaigns for the creation of a large wildlife preserve in Borneo and was instrumental in the Taiwan government banning the import of primates.

Galdikas has received numerous awards that recognize her contributions to primate studies: Indonesia’s “Hero for the Earth,” the Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement, the Mini-Nobel Science Award, and the United Nations Global 500 Environmental Award, to name a few (Orangutan Foundation International 1999). In 1995 Galdikas received the Order of Canada for her work with endangered orangutans in the rain forests of Borneo. Earlier that year, her much anticipated autobiography, Reflections of Eden: My Years with the Orangutans in Borneo, was released. Galdikas currently teaches human origins and primate behaviour at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia for several months of the year. The rest of the time, she lives with her husband and two children at Camp Leakey, Borneo.

David R. Begun

David Begun is a paleoanthropologist and professor of anthropology at the University of Toronto. His Ph.D. is in biological anthropology from the University of Pennsylvania. He and his students are investigating Miocene hominoid evolution and its implications for human origins. In collaboration with colleagues in Europe and western Asia, Begun has been systematically examining a number of significant hominoid fossils dating to the Miocene in Eurasia. His fieldwork takes him mainly to Turkey of late, where there is a rich record of several lineages of fossil great apes. He has also done fieldwork in Spain, Hungary, and Kenya.  In 1998 he described a Miocene ape called Ankarapithecus and concluded that Sivapithecus and the gorilla are closely related¹ and that Ankarapithecus is probably a common ancestor to both. The relationships of Ankarapithecus to Sivapithecus and the gorilla, as well as the evidence that it lived in Turkey, point to a migration of a Sivapithecus ancestor back to western Asia from the east. Anatolia appears to have been a migration route of early hominoids between South Asia and Africa. Since this discovery, Begun has come to the view that the birthplace of the common human and ape ancestor is Eurasia, not Africa as has been the prevailing view.

The ancestors of great apes did spread out of Africa to what is now Europe and Asia as far east as China between 17 and 16.5 million years ago, some 5 million years after the first appearance of apes.² Miocene apes were extraordinarily diverse compared with today’s. Begun and his colleagues estimate that there were about 40 genera compared with eight now. The apes that migrated from Africa were eventually isolated by rising sea levels until about 15 million years ago when sea levels dropped. By 13 million years ago, the first great apes are recognized in Eurasia, but not in Africa. Drastic environmental changes in Europe wiped out all but two of the early great apes, Sivapithecus and Dryopithecus, at the end of the Miocene. They managed to survive by migrating to Africa and Southeast Asia where suitable habitats for them existed. Sivapithecus is the ancestor of the orangutan while Dryopithecus is ancestral to African great apes. Begun’s analysis of a Dryopithecus specimen from Hungary places it squarely in the evolutionary line to African apes and humans. The specimen is the first nearly complete Dryopithecus cranium and has a long, low brain case and an enlarged face that tilts downward. These characteristics are common to early hominines.

¹Begun, D.R., & Güleç, E. (1998). Restoration of the type and palate of Ankarapithecus meteai: Taxonomic, phylogenetic, and functional implications. American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 105, 279–314.

²Begun, D.R. (2003). Planet of the apes. Scientific American, 289 (2), 74–83.

Louis S.B. Leakey  (1903–1972)

Mary Leakey  (1913–1996)

Few figures in the history of paleoanthropology discovered so many key fossils, received so much public acclaim, or stirred up as much controversy as Louis Leakey and his second wife, Mary Leakey. Born in Kenya of missionary parents, Louis received his early education from an English governess and subsequently was sent to England for a university education. He returned to Kenya in the 1920s to begin his career there.

It was in 1931 that Louis and his research assistant from England, Mary Nicol (whom he married in 1936), began working in their spare time at Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania, searching patiently and persistently for remains of early hominines. It seemed a good place to look, for there were numerous animal fossils, as well as crude stone tools lying scattered on the ground and eroding out of the walls of the gorge. Their patience and persistence were not rewarded until 1959, when Mary found the first hominine fossil. A year later, another skull was found, and Olduvai was on its way to being recognized as one of the most important sources of hominine fossils in all of Africa. While Louis reconstructed, described, and interpreted the fossil material, Mary made the definitive study of the Oldowan tools.

The Leakeys’ important discoveries were not limited to those at Olduvai. In the early 1930s, they found the first fossils of Miocene apes in Africa at Rusinga Island in Lake Victoria. Also in the 1930s, Louis found a number of skulls at Kanjera, Kenya, that show a mixture of modern and more primitive features. In 1961, at Fort Ternan, Kenya, the Leakeys found the remains of a late Miocene ape with features that seemed appropriate for a hominine ancestor. After Louis’ death, a member of an expedition led by Mary Leakey found the first footprints of Australopithecus at Laetoli, Tanzania.

In addition to their own work, Louis Leakey promoted a good deal of important work on the part of others. He made it possible for Jane Goodall to begin her landmark field studies of chimpanzees; later on, he was instrumental in setting up similar studies among gorillas (by Dian Fossey) and orangutans (by Biruté Galdikas). Last but not least, the Leakey tradition has been continued by son Richard and his wife, Maeve.

Louis Leakey had a flamboyant personality and a way of making  interpretations of fossil materials that frequently did not stand up well to careful scrutiny, but this did not stop him from publicly presenting his views as if they were the gospel truth. It was this aspect of the Leakeys’ work that generated controversy. Nonetheless, the Leakeys accomplished and promoted more work that resulted in the accumulation of knowledge about human origins than anyone before them. Anthropology clearly owes them a great deal.

Dr. Becky Sigmon

Becky Sigmon has dedicated her career to the study of human evolution, in particular the origin of erect bipedal posture and locomotion in hominids. Sigmon approaches this research by examining human and nonhuman primate anatomy and comparative morphology of the lower limb. She has studied fossil hominids, from Australopithecines to Homo erectus and Homo sapiens neanderthalensis, again to understand the development of their locomotion, and variations in morphological patterns.

Among Sigmon’s many contributions, she has assembled an impressive collection of nonhuman primate skeletal material, including great apes, New and Old World monkeys, and prosimians, now located at the University of Toronto where she is a professor. She organized the first Special Symposium for biological anthropologists in Prague in September 1989.

Although Sigmon has mainly studied human evolution and the processes that led to the development of the human condition, she has also branched into other areas. She has expanded her research interests to examine the effects of mating and reproductive patterns on posture and locomotion, and recently she has focused her research on the role of cognition and narrative and its effects on “humanizing” early Homo sapiens populations. Sigmon’s undergraduate and graduate students have worked with her as she examined the link between cognition, language, and verbal and pictorial narrative. This research culminated in a paper entitled “Language without Words: A Monumental Early Human Adaptation,” which was presented at the Australasian Society for Human Biology in 2000.

Adrienne Zihlman  (b. 1940)

Up until the 1970s, the study of human evolution, from its very beginnings, was permeated by a deep-seated bias reflecting the privileged status enjoyed by men in Western society. Beyond the obvious labelling of fossils as particular types of “men,” irrespective of the sex of the individual represented, it took the form of portraying males as the active players in human evolution. Thus, it was males who were seen as providers and innovators, using their wits to become ever more effective providers of food and protection for passive females. The latter were seen as spending their time getting pregnant and caring for offspring, while the men were getting ahead by becoming ever smarter. Central to such thinking was the idea of “man the hunter,” constantly honing his wits through the pursuit and killing of animals. Thus, hunting by men was seen as the pivotal humanizing activity in evolution.

We now know, of course, that such ideas are culture-bound, reflecting the hopes and expectations of late-19th- and early-20th-century European and European American culture. This recognition came in the 1970s and was a direct consequence of the entry of a number of highly capable women into the profession of paleoanthropology. Up until the 1960s, there were few women in any field of biological anthropology, but with the expansion of graduate programs and changing attitudes toward the role of women in society, increasing numbers of them went on to earn a Ph.D. One of these was Adrienne Zihlman, who earned her doctorate at the University of California at Berkeley in 1967. Subsequently, she authored a number of important papers critical of “man the hunter” scenarios. She was not the first to do so; as early as 1971, Sally Linton had published a preliminary paper on “Woman the Gatherer,” but it was Zihlman from 1976 on who especially elaborated on the importance of female activities for human evolution. Others have joined in the effort, including Zihlman’s companion in graduate school and later colleague, Nancy Tanner, who collaborated with Zihlman on some of her papers and has produced important works of her own.

The work of Zihlman and her coworkers was crucial in forcing a reexamination of existing “man the hunter” scenarios, out of which came recognition of the importance of scavenging in early human evolution as well as the importance of female gathering and other activities. Although there is still plenty to learn about human evolution, thanks to these women we now know that it wasn’t a case of women being “uplifted” as a consequence of their association with progressively evolving men. Rather, the two sexes evolved together with each making its own important contribution to the process.

Davidson Black  (1884–1934)

Davidson Black, a graduate of the University of Toronto, was one of the most prominent researchers in the early days of human origins research. In an all too familiar story to many Canadians, Black was first recognized outside Canada as among the most respected paleoanthropologists in the world. His impact on our thinking about early hominid fossils and how to study them ranks among the most influential of his day. In some ways, his upbringing was typically Canadian. As a young man he was captivated by the Kawartha Lakes in Ontario, and he became an accomplished outdoorsman who was fascinated with natural history.¹ This fascination influenced a critical life choice. He studied medicine at the University of Toronto (U of T), but somehow the idea of actually practising medicine didn’t interest him. Through the influence of colleagues and summer work opportunities it was clear that there were other things of interest to Black, so he went back to U of T and completed a biology degree in 1909. He apparently wasn’t interested in human evolution until a fateful trip to Europe. In 1914 he went to Europe to broaden his experience in neuroanatomy with a prominent Dutch specialist, Ariens Kappers, and an English specialist, Grafton Elliot Smith. Grafton Elliot Smith encouraged Black to explore the evolution of the human brain.² Coincidentally, Smith was embroiled in the Piltdown Man controversy at the time. While Black was supposed to be immersed in neurology, Smith was studying the endocranial cast of the Piltdown skull. Black obviously developed an interest in this aspect of Smith’s research and went on to learn cast-making in Manchester from the best talent available.

One final piece to the puzzle that explains why Black found himself in China in 1919 is the influence of William Matthew, a Canadian paleontologist whose writings³ convinced Black that China was the place to look for human ancestors. First he needed to get to China, so when he was offered a job teaching neuroanatomy at Peking Union Medical College, soon to become the best medical school in the world at the time, he jumped at the chance. Black used his spare time to look for fossils. He collaborated with J.G. Andersson, a Swedish engineer working in China as a mining consultant⁴ but who also was interested in Chinese prehistory. The two men worked together on Neolithic sites and Black published the first physical anthropological study of Neolithic skeletal remains in China. Coincidentally, excavations were under way at the Zhoukoudian site by a Swedish team including Andersson. They were unable to find any obvious evidence for early humans and gave up in 1923 as their money dwindled. They had, however, found two teeth that Black confirmed were hominid. This was all they needed to propose continuing the Zhoukoudian excavations. Black took up where the Swedish team left off after he persuaded the Rockefeller Foundation to support the continued research. His assistant, Birger Bohlin, discovered a tooth during the 1927 field season and brought it to Black in Beijing. While on leave from Peking Union Medical College in 1928, he made his way to Europe, touring with the tooth and visiting every archaeological project he could in order to be prepared for his work in China. Skepticism greeted Black’s interpretations that the tooth was not from a modern human but from Sinanthropus, a closely related genus. However, by 1929 Black was proven correct when two crania of what we now know to be Homo erectus were recovered from Zhoukoudian. Eugene Dubois had discovered a similar fossil in Java in 1891. Most scientists did not consider the evidence from Java sufficient to demonstrate the existence of a new type of early human, and Dubois stopped insisting they were. The Javanese material was all but forgotten for decades. The evidence from China confirmed that an early human relative existed in the fossil record and had lived at Zhoukoudian. In 1932, Black was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in recognition of his research. Unfortunately, Davidson Black died in 1934 when he was 49, the same age as his father and from the same congenital heart problem, so he did not live to see the full implications of his research realized. Black’s contributions have left an indelible imprint on the field of human origins research. Black did not directly supervise the development of students who would eventually come to teach human origins, but his publications and impact on research in China are, to this day, a credit to a young Canadian scholar.

¹Hood, D. (1964). Davidson Black: A biography. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

²Shapiro, H.L. (1981). Davidson Black, an appreciation, In B.A. Sigmon & J.S. Cybulski (Eds.), Homo erectus: Papers in honor of Davidson Black (pp. 21–26). Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

³Matthew, W.D. (1915). Climate and evolution. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 24, 171–318.

⁴Cormack, J.L. (2003). Davidson Black and his role in Chinese palaeo-anthropology. In C. Shen & S.G. Keates (Eds.),Current research in Chinese palaeoanthropology (pp. 9–19). British Archaeological Reports 11.

Ariane Burke

Anatomically modern humans are frequently associated with the development of a “modern” way of life, including specialized hunting skills, and a seasonal pattern of site occupation and resource use. Ariane Burke’s research into the Middle Paleolithic of the Crimea (Ukraine) poses a challenge to such generalizations. Most of the human skeletal remains associated with Middle Paleolithic sites in the Crimea are Neandertal. Burke has discovered that these people were more sophisticated in their pattern of land use and their resource exploitation strategies than previously suspected.

Burke is currently co-excavating a site in the Crimean highlands with Ukrainian archaeologists. The site, Karabi Tamchin, is one of only a few stratified, mid-altitude Middle Paleolithic sites excavated to date in Europe. This site is important because paleoanthropologists know hardly anything about Neandertal occupations at mid-altitudes. It is hoped Karabi Tamchin will help complete the picture of regional patterns of land use at the close of the Middle Paleolithic. The broader implications of this research are important because they have an effect on our understanding of what it means to be truly “modern,” as well as helping paleoanthropologists understand the nature of Neandertal/anatomically modern human interactions at the beginning of the Upper Paleolithic.

In addition to her Crimean research, Burke maintains a variety of other research interests. She has a continuing interest in bone and tooth growth, focusing on the function of mineralized tissues as recording structures (recording life histories of individual organisms) and their use as a means of estimating an individual’s age and season of death. Burke has also conducted collaborative research into the mechanism controlling bone growth during development. Burke recently completed an archaeozoological study of a Late Classical/Byzantine site at Lepitminus, Tunisia, which encouraged her to undertake an ethnozooarchaeological study of halal butchery, conducted while in the field in Tunisia.  Ariane Burke is an associate professor at the University of Manitoba.

Knut Fladmark and Chen Shen

Knut Fladmark is a professor in the Department of Archaeology at Simon Fraser University.   His interests lie in the archaeology of northern and northwestern North America, from its initial peopling to the early fur-trade period.   He has paid special attention to (1) the effects of Late Quaternary paleoenvironments and paleo-ecology on precontact aboriginal cultures; (2) the general prehistory of the northern Northwest Coast, especially the Queen Charlotte Islands, and Western Subarctic, especially northern interior British Columbia; and (3) the archaeology of early European visitors to the Northwest Coast and Western Subarctic.   Fladmark considers one of his major research contributions to have been proposing a theoretical perspective on Northwest Coast prehistory, centred on the cultural ecological effects of changing sea levels.   He has also determined that a chain of small unglaciated “biotic refugia” that existed along the Northwest Coast during part or all of the last Pleistocene glaciation could have been used by early people moving south from the Bering Strait region.   Fladmark has demonstrated the potential significance of microdebitage and other “micro-artifacts” for archaeology, and discovered and investigated Charlie Lake Cave, the first excavated Early Paleoindian “fluted point” site in British Columbia, which is still the oldest radiocarbon-dated site in the province.   Fladmark published the first general synthesis of British Columbia prehistory in 1982 and later worked the material into a book, entitled British Columbia Prehistory, for a popular audience.

Chen Shen is the Bishop White Curator of Far Eastern Archaeology at the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM). He began his archaeological career in China but moved to the United States to begin his graduate work. After graduating from Wuhan University he decided to study with one of the leading authorities on use-wear analysis at the University of Tulsa. He applied what he learned in Tulsa to his Ph.D. research at the University of Toronto. His doctoral dissertation was written on stone tool technology and function during the shift to agriculture in Ontario. Shen’s expertise lies in the analysis of stone tools, particularly their function, by analyzing the scratches and polishes on tools and understanding what processes resulted in the wear patterns.

Shen’s research is designed to investigate the development of microblades during the Upper Paleolithic of north-central China from 30000 to 8000 b.c. Microblade technology in its cultural and archaeological context has never been studied adequately in north China. By investigating the wedge-shaped core microblade tradition in north-central China, Shen hopes not only to gain insight into events in China during the Upper Paleolithic, but also to investigate the technological connections to northwestern North America. The project is in its initial stages, so much remains to be accomplished.

Shen is also a member of a team exploring human evolution in China. In recent years he has developed an interest in the Bronze Age in China, and he has curated an excellent Chinese bronze collection at the ROM.

Jean-Luc Pilon

Jean-Luc Pilon is Curator of Ontario Archaeology at the Canadian Museum of Civilization. His work has involved putting together exhibits at the CMC (“Kitchi Sibi”—Ottawa Valley ancient history; “Gather Around this Pot”—ancient Canadian ceramics) or participating in teams developing larger permanent exhibits (the First People’s Hall). Pilon is also a member of the archaeology committee of the Pan-American Institute of Geography and History, thereby establishing links with the archaeological community of Central and South America. His research takes place in the north, well away from the crowded archaeological fields of southern Ontario. Instead, he is investigating early sites near Sioux Lookout in northwestern Ontario, Late Archaic sites in eastern Ontario, and Laurel sites near Thunder Bay. He is also beginning fascinating research into a North West Company fur-trade post in the Mackenzie Valley where an ancestor of Pilon’s died of starvation in the winter of 1810–11.

Jean-Luc Pilon first began his archaeological career in the Ungava Peninsula. He continued to work in various parts of northern Quebec and eventually to pursue his Ph.D. research near the shores of Hudson Bay in northern Ontario. Since then, he has been working on a long-term project aimed at obtaining baseline data on the prehistory of the lower Mackenzie Valley, that elusive area, he explains, so evocative of the archaeological Holy Grail, the Mackenzie Corridor region. Pilon is unique in having firsthand experience in the Eastern, Central, and Western Subarctic. This vast region holds more landmass than any other physiographic/culture area in North America, yet is still poorly understood. Acidic soils, frequent forest fires, and a high reliance on perishable raw materials by the inhabitants makes this a challenging region to conduct archaeological research.

Louise I. Paradis

Louise I. Paradis has been a member of the Department of Anthropology, University of Montreal, since 1972, and has had the opportunity to be a visiting professor at McGill, Yale, and the Université de Paris. She became interested in Mesoamerican archaeology as a graduate student in Montreal and then at Yale where she was awarded her Ph.D. (1974). Her first research was in the Basin of Mexico, where she explored the Preclassic period. She then turned to another area, Guerrero, to do more or less the same thing, which was to document, contextualize, and understand the presence of Olmec-styled artifacts in the area.

Paradis has dedicated most of the last 20 years to a regional study of the pre-Hispanic history of the Mezcala area, still in Guerrero. Paradis and her students were able to document the history of the occupation of the area, from 800 b.c. to the Conquest, to learn about their lapidary tradition, and to understand their local economics and politics as well as their relationships with the rest of Mesoamerica. She has also been researching other topics such as symbolic systems, religion, and politics (human sacrifice).

Sources: Paradis, L.I., & Tolstoy, P. (1970). Early and middle Preclassic
cultures in the Basin of Mexico. Science, 167, 344–351.

Paradis, L.I. (2000). Guerrero region. In S.T. Evans & D.L. Webster (Eds.), The archaeology of ancient Mexico and Central America: An encyclopedia. New York: Garland.

Paradis, L.I. (2000). La mort blanche. Actes du Colloque 5. Montréal: Département d’anthropologie, Université de Montréal.

Paradis, L.I. (1999). Le soleil Aztèque était-il un vampire? Frontières, 11, 25–30.

Paradis, L.I. (1998). Tollan et les Toltèques, chacun sa vérité. Anthropologie et Histoire, Actes du Colloque 4 (pp. 19–26). Montréal: Département d’anthropologie, Université de Montréal.

Paradis, L.I. (1981). Guerrero and the Olmec. In E. Benson (Ed.), The Olmec and their neighbors (pp. 195–208). Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks.

Ashley Montagu  (1905–1999)

Born Israel Ehrenberg to a working-class immigrant Jewish family living in London’s East End, Ashley Montagu (a name he adopted in the 1920s) went on to become a pioneering critic of the race concept and one of the best-known anthropologists of his time. An avid reader as a child, in 1922 he attended University College of London, where he studied anthropology and psychology. Among his professors were founders of the eugenics movement—a proposal to improve humanity by identifying those with supposedly undesirable hereditary characteristics and removing them from the breeding population. It was also at this time that he changed his name in response to the strong ethnic and class prejudice he experienced.

Also, in the 1920s, Montagu studied under the founders of British social anthropology at the London School of Economics. In 1927, however, he left for the United States, where he considered the society to be more congenial to social justice. At Columbia University, he studied under Franz Boas and other pioneers of North American anthropology, earning his doctorate in 1937 with a dissertation on knowledge of paternity among Australian aborigines.

Having felt the sting early on of ethnic and class prejudice himself, it is not surprising that Montagu became a strong critic of eugenics and other racist doctrines. As early as 1926, he focused on the mistake of viewing races as typological, bounded categories. This put him at odds with many of his old professors and colleagues but, as he put it, he learned early on “not to let the shadows of great men block out the light.”^* All his life, Montagu fought racism in his writing, in academic and public lectures, and in the courts.

Ashley Montagu wrote over 60 books and hundreds of articles, including a series in Ladies Home Journal. These ranged over subjects from primate anatomy to the importance of nurturance in human development, and even the history of human swearing. Of all his works, none is more important than his book Man’s Most Dangerous Myth: The Fallacy of Race. Published in 1942, it took the lead in exposing, on purely scientific grounds, the fallacy of human races as biological entities. The book has since gone through six editions, the last in 1999. Although Montagu’s once controversial ideas have since become mainstream, the book remains the most comprehensive treatment of its subject.

Source: Sperling, S. (2000). Ashley Montagu (1905–1999). American Anthropologist, 102, 584.

Emoke J.E. Szathmáry

Biological anthropologist Emoke J.E. Szathmáry is the 10th President and Vice-Chancellor of The University of Manitoba and a Member of the Order of Canada. She specializes in the genetics of aboriginal North Americans. Her work has addressed the causes of type-2 diabetes in aboriginal North Americans, the genetic relationships within and between peoples of North America and Asia, and microevolution of the peoples of the subarctic and arctic. Her field research was conducted among Ottawa, Ojibwa, and Dogrib peoples in Ontario and the Northwest Territories. Szathmáry, like many of us, started on a different academic path than the one she now finds herself on.  As a medical student at the University of Toronto, an encounter with anthropology provided her with a “defining moment.” She learned that all people share intrinsic needs but that different societies have different ways of meeting those needs. The obvious conclusion from this, that no group was inferior to any other, motivated her to register in the honours anthropology program. Her interest in human genetics, particularly the genetics of aboriginal North Americans, led to her doctoral research on gene flow from Europeans into aboriginal North Americans. Szathmáry remains deeply concerned about what she calls the “European hegemony” in human genome research. Biological anthropologists with their concerns for investigating diversity should be at the forefront of the study of the genetics of indigenous peoples.

Source: Szathmáry, E.J.E. (2001). A comment on the series “A view on the science: Physical anthropology at the millennium.” American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 114 1–3.