Entre ciencia y religión: evolución, paleoantropología y el ‘origen del hombre’ en España

Abstract

Between the years 1939 and 1959, extensive changes took place in the objectives, practices and context of Paleoanthropology as well as fundamental changes to the development of this discipline. The most important was the consensus on the synthetic theory of evolution which became the new framework of research in studies on human evolution. These changes and transformations were received in Spain in a political context dominated by a national-catholic ideology, which advocated harmony between science and religion and rejected materialist theories such as the modern evolutionary synthesis. In this scenario, the «Origin of Man» in addition to being approached by prehistorians, naturalists, archaeologists and anthropologists, all of them catholics and supporters of Franco, was the subject of interest and discussion among theologians, largely motivated by the publication in 1950 of the encyclical Humani generis.