Human Evolution and the Discovery of Human Antiquity: The Search for Human Ancestry

Read about attempts throughout history to identify human ancestry, from the earliest explorations represented in the Linda Hall Library History of Science Collection to the most recent chronicles of the ongoing search for fossil and genetic evidence of human evolution searchable in the Linda Hall Library Catalog and in Linda Hall Library Databases.

"It is an oft-repeated truism that the knowledge of each succeeding period is built upon the foundations which have been laid in previous ages. The thoughts of today are merely the thoughts of yesterday purged of fallacies and added to by later experience. To understand the position of any science at any particular time, it is therefore necessary in the first instance to glance backwards into the recesses of preceding ages."

 -D. J. Cunningham, "Anthropology in the Eighteenth Century," The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland Vol. 38, 1908

Du Chaillu, Paul. Explorations in Africa. 1861. Page 232, text and fig.

Blade and Bone: Discovery of Human Antiquity. An Exhibition of Original Publications from the Collections of the Linda Hall Library

Discovering Human Antiquity | Linda Hall Library Digital Collections