Henri Breuil
Henri Édouard Prosper Breuil ( born February 28, 1877 in Mortain, Manche, † August 14 1961 in L' Isle- Adam, Val- d'Oise ) was a French pre-historian and a Catholic priest. He founded the research of rock and cave paintings and created the basis for the chronology of the Paleolithic.
Life
Henri Breuil entered the seminary of St. Sulpice in 1895 in Paris. It was introduced there in the then novel idea of evolution by his teacher Jean Guibert. He was ordained on June 9, 1900 a Catholic priest, which is why it is commonly known as Abbé Breuil in France. A parish he never took true, but occasionally led by Kasualien and also commented on issues of the relationship between science and religion. His main job was devoted to scientific work, from 1905 taught history at the University of Fribourg ( Switzerland ), from 1910 at the Institut de Paleontology Humaine in Paris, and from 1929 to 1947 at the Collège de France. In 1938 he became a member of the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres.
Exploration of Paleolithic Art
Together with Louis Capitan (1854-1929) and Denis Peyrony (1869-1954) discovered Breuil 1901 in the caves Combarelles Font de Gaume and in the Dordogne murals of the Cro- Magnon era. These show that there was a highly developed art already 40,000 years ago. 1902 invited him Émile Cartailhac to study the paintings of Altamira and Marsoulas. After that he took part in the investigation of various sites in France, Spain and South Africa. In particular, he is the first prehistorians, who visited the cave of Lascaux and described. Many petroglyphs were named by Abbé Breuil and were renowned for his studies. He copied the drawings colored by hand. These were then published in the scientific literature - as well as the " cornu Dieu " or " Wizard of Les Trois- Frères " ( Three Brothers Cave ), a man -animal hybrids (see also: Horned God).
In 1912, Abbé Breuil inspected the cave paintings in the Cueva de la Pileta the village Benaoaján in Andalusia; In 1913 he described the Cova de les Calaveres the Valencian Benidoleig. In 1918, he dug into a cave near La Chapelle -aux -Saints from the nearly complete skeleton of a Neanderthal. The grave goods confirmed his theory, which must have been already developed the stone-age man than previously thought.
The prehistoric art led him in the 1940s and 1950s several times also to southern Africa and into what is now Namibia, where he examined the discovered already in 1918 rock paintings in the Brandberg Massif and one of the images interpreted as the " White Lady ". Today, research is certain that it is the representation of a hunter or warrior, but the name " Dame blanche " or "White Lady" remained to this day. Another misconception Henri Breuil was formulated by him connection between the black African rock art with the old Cretan painting of the early Greek period.
Publications
During his life, Abbé Breuil published over 800 short articles in various journals. With his main work Quatre cents siècles d'art parietal (1952 ), a compilation of known at the time Palaeolithic wall paintings from France, he gained worldwide notoriety. This book is the result of more than 700 days of underground research. Breuil target is to primarily an accurate representation and description of the Paleolithic art and its dating.