Human Origins in the New World? Florentino Ameghino and the Emergence of Prehistoric Archaeology in the Americas (1875–1912)

Abstract

This paper analyzes the early development of prehistoric archaeology as a scientific discipline in Argentina (1880–1910), focusing on one of its most important topics: Quaternary (Paleolithic) and Tertiary man. Around 1900, the question of proving the great antiquity of humans in South America turned into a proposal that Argentina was the cradle of the human race, where Paleolithic man became a more recent specimen than its remote ancestors in the Pampas and Patagonia. The appearance and disappearance of Argentinean forerunners of humans—widely discussed on the international scene—were deeply connected with the eventual consolidation of prehistoric archaeology and paleoanthropology as scientific disciplines.