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Article ID: CBB001420413

Inventing Homo gardarensis: Prestige, Pressure, and Human Evolution in Interwar Scandinavia (2014)

Science in Context
Volume: 27, no. 2
Issue: 2
Pages: 359-383

Publication Date: 2014
Edition Details: Article in a special issue, “Science, Technology, Medicine -- and the State: The Science-State Nexus in Scandinavia, 1850--1980”
Language: English

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Fossils Human paleontology Paleoanthropology Human evolution Cross-national interaction Collectors and collecting Physical anthropology 20th century Scandinavia; Nordic countries

In the 1920s there were still very few fossil human remains to support an evolutionary explanation of human origins. Nonetheless, evolution as an explanatory framework was widely accepted. This led to a search for ancestors in several continents with fierce international competition. With so little fossil evidence available and the idea of a Missing Link as a crucial piece of evidence in human evolution still intact, many actors participated in the scientific race to identify the human ancestor. The curious case of Homo gardarensis serves as an example of how personal ambitions and national pride were deeply interconnected as scientific concerns were sometimes slighted in interwar palaeoanthropology.

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Article Asdal, Kristin; Gradmann, Christoph (2014) Introduction: Science, Technology, Medicine---and the State: The Science-State Nexus in Scandinavia, 1850--1980. Science in Context (pp. 177-186). unapi

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