From the outset, research into human evolution and prehistory has served a dual function. On the one hand, they developed as new scientific disciplines, at the frontier between biology and the humanities. On the other hand, in the West at least, they provided the substance for a new account of origins that could replace the one the Bible had delivered for centuries.
This mythological and narrative dimension no doubt partly explains the fascination that this field of knowledge has always held for the public. Literature and the visual arts were quick to seize on the "prehistoric" theme, even though scientific knowledge was still in its infancy. A fantasized prehistory always rubbed shoulders with the one that archaeologists and paleontologists were trying to reconstruct. The boundary between the two remained porous and, in their attempts to fill in the gaps in the fossil record, the researchers themselves were never free from subjectivity.
The story of our origins is probably too close to us to escape religious, philosophical and sometimes even political presuppositions. Each historical period has produced its own prehistory and human evolution, in keeping with the spirit of the times.
In the course of this conference, paleoanthropologists and historians of science will discuss the representations of fossil man and Paleolithic societies as produced by scientific research and then made available to the public.
