Franz Weidenreich

Franz Weidenreich (7 June 1873, Edenkoben, Germany- 11 July 1948, New York City U.S.) was a Jewish German anatomist and physical anthropologist who studied human evolution. He studied at the University of Strasbourg where he earned a medical degree in 1899, he was a professor there from 1904 to 1918 and at the University of Heidelberg from 1921 to 1924, he was a visiting professor at the University of Chicago in 1934.

In many ways, Franz Weidenreich was one of the most important and influential scientists studying human evolution in the Twentieth Century. For first half of the Twentieth Century almost all anthropolgists believed that Piltdown Man was the ancestor of modern man. Piltdown Man had the characteristics that many scientists had predicted for a missing link, a large cranial capacity and ape-like teeth. In the 1920's, thirty years before fluoride analyses proved that Piltdown Man was a hoax in 1953, Weidenreich examined the remains and correctly reported that they consisted of a modern human cranium and a orangutan jaw with filed-down teeth. Weidenreich, being an anatomist, easily exposed the hoax for what it was. However, it took thirty years for the scientific community to conceed that Weidenreich was correct.

He also studied the Peking Man which was then known as Sinanthropus pekinensis. Weidenreich originated the "Weidenreich Theory of Human Evolution" based on his examination of Peking Man. Being an anatomist, Weidenreich observed numerous anatomical characteristics that Peking Man had in common with modern Asians. The Weidenreich Theory states that human races have evolved independently in the Old World from Homo erectus to Homo sapiens sapiens, while at the same time there was gene flow between the various populations. According to the Weidenreich Theory, genes that were generally adaptive (such as those for intelligence and communication) would flow relatively rapidly from one part of the world to the other, while those that were locally adaptive, would not. This is contrary to popular theories of human evolution that have one superior race displacing other races. A vocal proponent of the Weidenreich theory was Carleton Coon. Ironically, Coon was labeled a racist while the theory in fact proposed that no one race was superior and displacing others.

Today in the popular press, it is often stated as fact that a race of modern humans evolved in Africa and displaced the inferior neanderthals from Europe. The fossil record does not support this view in that neanderthaloids have been encountered in all parts of the world, not just Europe. It would seem that similar to the case of Peking Man, humans are again rejecting their true ancestors and inventing more appealing ones.