#history The study of human origins and development, Human Paleontology, crystallized in the 1860s with the contributions of different branches of natural and social science: comparative and phylogenetic anatomy, anthropology, archaeology and geology, among others.
Three scientific events brought new perspectives to the study of human origins, and to the existence of “fossil man”: the discovery of Neanderthal man in 1856, the formulation of Darwin's theory of evolution in 1859, and the general acceptance of Boucher de Perthes's thesis on the great antiquity of man, based in the identification of Paleolithic tools.

Prehistory