C. Loring Brace (born 1930) is an
anthropologistAnthropology is the study of human beings, everywhere and throughout time....
at the
University of MichiganThe University of Michigan, Ann Arbor is a public research university located in the state of Michigan in the United States. It is the state's oldest university, the flagship campus of the University of Michigan, and one of the top public universities in the world...
. He considers the attempt "to introduce a Darwinian outlook into biological anthropology" to be his greatest contribution to the field of anthropology.
http://www.mnsu.edu/emuseum/information/biography/abcde/brace_c_loring.html
Life and work
Charles Loring Brace IV was born in
HanoverHanover is a town along the Connecticut River in Grafton County, New Hampshire, United States. The population was 10,850 at the 2000 census. In 2007, CNN and Money magazine rated Hanover the second best place to live in America....
,
New HampshireNew Hampshire is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. The state was named after the southern English county of Hampshire. It borders Massachusetts to the south, Vermont to the west, Maine and the Atlantic Ocean to the east, and the Canadian province of...
in 1930, a son of the writer, sailor, boat builder and teacher,
Gerald Warner BraceGerald Warner Brace was an American novelist, writer, educator, sailor and boat builder. His work frequently employed settings from rural life in New England.-Early life and ancestors:...
and Hulda Potter Laird. His ancestors were New England schoolteachers and clergymen including, John P. Brace,
Sarah PierceSarah Pierce was a teacher, educator and founder of one the earliest schools for girls in the United States, the Litchfield Female Academy in Litchfield, Connecticut. The school having been established in her house in 1792 with one student became known as the Litchfield Female Academy in 1827...
, and the Rev.
Blackleach BurrittBlackleach Burritt was a well-known patriot preacher during the American Revolutionary War who used to take his musket into the pulpit for defense, and for joining in offensive warfare...
. Brace's paternal great-grandfather,
Charles Loring BraceCharles Loring Brace was a contributing philanthropist in the field of social reform...
, had worked to introduce evolution theory to America and had even corresponded with
Charles DarwinCharles Robert Darwin FRS was an English naturalist who realised and presented compelling evidence that all species of life have evolved over time from common ancestors, through the process he called natural selection...
. C. Loring Brace developed an early interest in biology and human evolution as a child in part by reading
Roy Chapman AndrewsRoy Chapman Andrews was an American explorer, adventurer and naturalist who became the director of the American Museum of Natural History. He is primarily known for leading a series of expeditions through the fragmented China of the early 20th century into the Gobi Desert and Mongolia...
's popular book
Meet your Ancestors, A Biography of Primitive Man (1945). He entered Williams College in
WilliamstownWilliamstown is a town in Berkshire County, in the northwest corner of Massachusetts. It shares a border with Vermont to the north and New York to the west. It is part of the Pittsfield, Massachusetts Metropolitan Statistical Area. The population was 8,424 at the 2000 census...
,
MassachusettsThe Commonwealth of Massachusetts is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States. It is bordered by Rhode Island and Connecticut to the south, New York to the west, and Vermont and New Hampshire to the north; at its east lies the Atlantic Ocean. Most of its population of...
, but the college did not offer a degree in
anthropologyAnthropology is the study of human beings, everywhere and throughout time....
, so Brace constructed his own major from
geologyGeology is the science and study of the solid and liquid matter that constitutes the Earth. The field of geology encompasses the study of the composition, structure, physical properties, dynamics, and history of Earth materials, and the processes by which they are formed, moved, and changed...
,
paleontologyPaleontology
[from Greek: παλαιός "old, ancient", ὄν, ὀντ- "being, creature", and λόγος "speech, thought"] is the study of prehistoric life, including organisms' evolution and interactions with each other and their environments...
, and
biologyBiology is the natural science concerned with the study of life and living organisms, including their structure, function, growth, origin, evolution, distribution, and taxonomy...
courses.
Brace entered
Harvard UniversityHarvard University is a private university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts and a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1636 by the colonial Massachusetts legislature, Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and currently comprises ten separate academic units...
in 1952 and studied
physical anthropologyBiological anthropology, or physical anthropology is a branch of anthropology that studies the mechanisms of biological evolution, genetic inheritance, human adaptability and variation, primatology, primate morphology, and the fossil record of human evolution.Physical anthropology was developed in...
with Ernest Hooton and later with William Howells, who introduced Brace to the new
evolutionary synthesisThe modern evolutionary synthesis is a union of ideas from several biological specialties which forms a logical account of evolution. This synthesis has been accepted by nearly all working biologists...
of
Darwinian evolutionDarwinism is a term used for various movements or concepts related to ideas of transmutation of species or evolution, including ideas with no connection to the work of Charles Darwin. The meaning of Darwinism has changed over time, and varies depending on who is using the term...
and
population geneticsPopulation genetics is the study of the allele frequency distribution and change under the influence of the four evolutionary processes: natural selection, genetic drift, mutation and gene flow. It also takes account of population subdivision and population structure in space. As such, it attempts...
. During this time he was also able to travel to
EuropeEurope is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally divided from Asia to its east by the water divide of the Ural Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian Sea, the Caucasus Mountains , and the Black Sea to the southeast...
where he spent 1959-1960 at Oxford University, in the
animal behaviorEthology is the scientific study of animal behavior, and a sub-topic of zoology....
laboratory of Niko Tinbergen, and traveled to
ZagrebZagreb is the capital and the largest city of Croatia. Zagreb is the cultural, scientific, economic and governmental center of Croatia, and a global city. According to the city government, the population of Zagreb in 2008 was 804,200...
,
YugoslaviaYugoslavia is a term that describes three political entities that existed successively on the Balkan Peninsula in Europe, during most of the 20th century.The first country to be known by this...
, where he inspected the collection of
Neanderthal fossilsThe Neanderthal , or ), also spelled Neandertal, is an extinct member of the Homo genus that is known from Pleistocene specimens found in Europe and parts of western and central Asia. Neanderthals are either classified as a subspecies of humans or as a separate species...
collected by Dragutin Gorjanovic-Kramberger at
KrapinaKrapina is a town in northern Croatia and the administrative centre of Krapina-Zagorje county with a population of 4,647 and a total municipality population of 12,950...
.
Brace completed his Ph.D. in 1962. He taught briefly at the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee and then at the
University of California, Santa BarbaraThe University of California, Santa Barbara, commonly known as UCSB or UC Santa Barbara, is a public research university and one of the 10 general campuses of the University of California system. The main campus is located on a site in Santa Barbara, California, northwest of Los Angeles...
. He has spent much of his career as Professor of Anthropology at the University of Michigan and as Curator of Biological Anthropology at the university's Museum of Anthropology.
Neanderthal studies
In 1962, Brace published a paper in
American Anthropologist titled "Refocusing on the Neanderthal Problem" where he argued, in opposition to French anthropologist
Henri ValloisHenri Victor Vallois was a French anthropologist and paleontologist.He was one of the editor in chief of the Revue d'Anthropologie from 1932 to 1970, and director of the Musée de l'Homme in 1950.- Bibliography :...
, that the archeological and fossil evidence did not necessarily support the idea that the
NeanderthalThe Neanderthal , or ), also spelled Neandertal, is an extinct member of the Homo genus that is known from Pleistocene specimens found in Europe and parts of western and central Asia. Neanderthals are either classified as a subspecies of humans or as a separate species...
s were replaced by
Cro-MagnonThe term Cro-Magnon refers to one of the main types of early modern humans of the European Upper Paleolithic. Current dating of Cro-Magnon bones point to more recent date 17,000 years. The earliest known remains of Cro-Magnon like humans are dated to 30,000 radiocarbon years...
populations migrating into
EuropeEurope is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally divided from Asia to its east by the water divide of the Ural Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian Sea, the Caucasus Mountains , and the Black Sea to the southeast...
, rather than being ancestral to early
Homo sapiens.
Brace continued his reappraisal of the Neanderthal problem in 1964 in "The Fate of the 'Classic' Neanderthals: a consideration of hominid catastrophism" published in
Current Anthropology. Here Brace traced the history of research on the Neanderthals in order to show how interpretations established early in the century by Marcellin Boule and notions such as
Arthur Keith'sSir Arthur Keith was a Scottish anatomist and anthropologist, who became a fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons of England and Hunterian Professor and conservator of the Hunterian Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons in London...
pre-sapiens theory had convinced many anthropologists that the Neanderthals played little or no role in the evolution of modern humans. Brace argued that cultural factors, especially the increased use of tools by Neanderthals, produced morphological changes that led the classic Neanderthals to evolve into modern humans.
Brace has remained a vigorous proponent of the idea that
NeanderthalThe Neanderthal , or ), also spelled Neandertal, is an extinct member of the Homo genus that is known from Pleistocene specimens found in Europe and parts of western and central Asia. Neanderthals are either classified as a subspecies of humans or as a separate species...
s are ancestral to modern humans. He also argued that the fossil record suggests a simple evolutionary scheme whereby humans have evolved through four stages (
AustralopithecineThe term australopithecine refers to two very closely related genera within the Hominina subtribe of the Hominini tribe. They appeared in the Pliocene:* Australopithecus, appeared about 4 million years ago;...
, Pithecanthropine,
NeanderthalThe Neanderthal , or ), also spelled Neandertal, is an extinct member of the Homo genus that is known from Pleistocene specimens found in Europe and parts of western and central Asia. Neanderthals are either classified as a subspecies of humans or as a separate species...
, and
Modern humansHumans are bipedal primates belonging to the species Homo sapiens in Hominidae, the great ape family. They are the only surviving member of the genus Homo. Humans have a highly developed brain, capable of abstract reasoning, language, introspection, and problem solving...
), and that these stages are somewhat arbitrary and reflect our limited knowledge of the fossil record. Brace has emphasized the need to integrate the ideas of Darwinian evolution into palaeoanthropology. Much earlier research into human origins relied on non-Darwinian models of evolution; Brace's presented his advocacy of the Darwinian approach in
The Stages Of Human Evolution, first published in 1967.
Brace's ideas have generated considerable controversy, as much for his brash criticism of his colleagues as for their content, but they have also influenced a generation of anthropological research into human evolution and the interpretation of the Neanderthals.
Other studies
In the publication "Clines and clusters versus Race: a test in ancient Egypt and the case of a death on the Nile", Brace discusses the the controversy concerning the race of the Ancient Egyptians. Brace argues that the "Egyptians have been in place since back in the Pleistocene and have been largely unaffected by either invasions or migrations".
In a 2006 publication "The questionable contribution of the Neolithic and the Bronze Age to European craniofacial form", Brace argues that Natufian peoples, who are thought to be the source of the European Neolithic, had
Sub-Saharan African admixtureAfrican admixture in Europe refers to the European presence of human genetic polymorphisms, which are considered to be evidence for movements of people from Africa to Europe in both the prehistoric and historic past.-Geographical influences:...
.
Works
- Man's Evolution: An Introduction to Physical Anthropology (1965.)
- The Stages Of Human Evolution: Human And Cultural Origins (1967)
- Atlas of Fossil Man. C. Loring Brace, Harry Nelson, and Noel Korn (1971)
- Race and Intelligence. Edited by C. Loring Brace, George R. Gamble, and James T. Bond. Washington: American Anthropological Association, 1971.
- Man In Evolutionary Perspective. Compiled by C. Loring Brace and James Metress (1973)
- Human Evolution: An Introduction to Biological Anthropology. C. L. Brace and Ashley Montagu (1977)
- Atlas of Human Evolution (1979)
- The Stages Of Human Evolution: Human And Cultural Origins (1979)
- Evolution in an anthropological view (2000)
Past PhD Students (Alphabetical order)
- Patricia S. Bridges (1985)
- Dean Falk
Dean Falk is an American academic anthropologist who specializes in the evolution of the brain and cognition in higher primates...
(1976)
- Sonia E. Guillen (1992)
- Margaret E. Hamilton (1975)
- Robert J. Hinton (1979)
- Kevin D. Hunt (1989)
- Carol J. Lauer (1976)
- Paul E. Mahler (1973)
- Stephen Molnar (1968)
- A. Russell Nelson (1998)
- Conrad B. Quintyn (1999)
- Karen R. Rosenberg (1986)
- Alan S. Ryan (1980)
- Margaret J. Schoeninger (1980)
- Noriko Seguchi (2000)
- B. Holly Smith (1983)
- Frank Spencer (1979)
- Kenneth M. Weiss (1972)
- Richard G. Wilkinson (1970)
- Lucia Allen Yaroch (1994)
External links