Paul RivetBorn 7 May 1876; died 25 Mar 1958 at age 81.French ethnologist who was an authority on South American Indian cultures. In his book Les Origènes de l'Homme Americain (1943), he proposed that South American Indians originated from Australia and Melanesia. At the time of the International Exhibition of 1937, he founded in Paris the Musée de l'Homme (Museum of Man) devoted anthropology, not only to house collections, but also as a research centre with a mission to document man's biological anthropology, palaeontology and ethnology. In his early career, starting in 1901, he had participated in the Second French Geodetic Survey in Equador, and remained in South America after its conclusion for another six years, observing the inhabitants of the inter-Andean valleys.« |
