ABSTRACT
Humankind has been deliberating rationally about its place in nature for more than two thousand years, but when paleoanthropology, the study of human prehistory, began to explore this as a scientific endeavor is a matter of legitimate debate. Richard Delisle’s decision to begin his survey in 1860 will make sense to many because it begins the year after the publication of the first edition of Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species. Darwin was not the first person to suggest that humans are both part of the natural world and the product of evolution, but he was the first person to provide a comprehensive exposition of a plausible mechanism for human evolution.
