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| title | chunk | source | category | tags | date_saved | instance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pierre Teilhard de Chardin | 2/14 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Teilhard_de_Chardin | reference | science, encyclopedia | 2026-05-05T04:34:12.127004+00:00 | kb-cron |
=== Geology === His father's strong interest in natural science and geology instilled the same in Teilhard from an early age, and would continue throughout his lifetime. As a child, Teilhard was intensely interested in the stones and rocks on his family's land and the neighboring regions. His father helped him develop his skills of observation. At the University of Paris, he studied geology, botany and zoology. After the French government banned all religious orders from France and the Jesuits were exiled to the island of Jersey in the UK, Teilhard deepened his geology knowledge by studying the rocks and landscape of the island. In 1920, he became a lecturer in geology at the Catholic University of Paris, and later a professor. He earned his doctorate in 1922. In 1923 he was hired to do geological research on expeditions in China by the Jesuit scientist and priest Emile Licent. In 1914, Licent with the sponsorship of the Jesuits founded one of the first museums in China and the first museum of natural science: the Musée Hoangho Paiho. In its first eight years, the museum was housed in the Chongde Hall of the Jesuits. In 1922, with the support of the Catholic Church and the French Concession, Licent built a special building for the museum on the land adjacent to the Tsin Ku University, which was founded by the Jesuits in China. With help from Teilhard and others, Licent collected over 200,000 paleontology, animal, plant, ancient human, and rock specimens for the museum, which still make up more than half of its 380,000 specimens. Many of the publications and writings of the museum and its related institute were included in the world's database of zoological, botanical, and paleontological literature, which is still an important basis for examining the early scientific records of the various disciplines of biology in northern China. Teilhard and Licent were the first to discover and examine the Shuidonggou (水洞沟) (Ordos Upland, Inner Mongolia) archaeological site in northern China. Recent analysis of flaked stone artifacts from the most recent (1980) excavation at this site has identified an assemblage which constitutes the southernmost occurrence of an Initial Upper Paleolithic blade technology proposed to have originated in the Altai region of Southern Siberia. The lowest levels of the site are now dated from 40,000 to 25,000 years ago. Teilhard spent the periods between 1926-1935 and 1939-1945 studying and researching the geology and paleontology of the region. Among other accomplishments, he improved understanding of China’s sedimentary deposits and established approximate ages for various layers. He also produced a geological map of China. It was during the period 1926-1935 that he joined the excavation that discovered Peking Man.
=== Paleontology === From 1912 to 1914, Teilhard began his paleontology education by working in the laboratory of the French National Museum of Natural History, studying the mammals of the middle Tertiary. Later he studied elsewhere in Europe. This included spending 5 days over the course of a 3-month period in the middle of 1913 as a volunteer assistant helping to dig with Arthur Smith Woodward and Charles Dawson at the Piltdown site. Teilhard’s brief time assisting with digging there occurred many months after the discovery of the first fragments of the fraudulent "Piltdown Man". Stephen Jay Gould judged that Pierre Teilhard de Chardin conspired with Dawson in the Piltdown forgery. Most Teilhard experts (including all three Teilhard biographers) and many scientists (including the scientists who uncovered the hoax and investigated it) have rejected the suggestion that he participated in the hoax. Anthropologist H. James Birx wrote that Teilhard "had questioned the validity of this fossil evidence from the very beginning, one positive result was that the young geologist and seminarian now became particularly interested in paleoanthropology as the science of fossil hominids.“ Marcellin Boule, a paleontologist and anthropologist, who as early as 1915 had recognized the non-hominid origins of the Piltdown finds, gradually guided Teilhard towards human paleontology. Boule was the editor of the journal L’Anthropologie and the founder of two other scientific journals. He was also a professor at the Parisian Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle for 34 years, and for many years director of the museum's Institute of Human Paleontology. It was there that Teilhard became a friend of Henri Breuil, a Catholic priest, archaeologist, anthropologist, ethnologist and geologist. In 1913, Teilhard and Breuil did excavations at the prehistoric painted Cave of El Castillo in Spain. The cave contains the oldest known cave painting in the world. The site is divided into about 19 archeological layers in a sequence beginning in the Proto-Aurignacian and ending in the Bronze Age. Later after his return to China in 1926, Teilhard was hired by the Cenozoic Laboratory at the Peking Union Medical College. Starting in 1928, he joined other geologists and paleontologists to excavate the sedimentary layers in the Western Hills near Zhoukoudian. At this site, the scientists discovered the so-called Peking man (Sinanthropus pekinensis), a fossil hominid dating back at least 350,000 years, which is part of the Homo erectus phase of human evolution. Teilhard became well-known as a result of his accessible explanations of the Sinanthropus discovery. He also made major contributions to the geology of this site. Teilhard's long stay in China gave him more time to think and write about evolution, as well as continue his scientific research. After the Peking Man discoveries, Breuil joined Teilhard at the site in 1931 and confirmed the presence of stone tools.