CHAPTER EIGHT

FLORENTINO AMEGHINO (1854–1911)

The son of Genovese immigrants, Florentino Ameghino would claim to have been born in Luján, in the Province of Buenos Aires, in 1854–76 years after the discovery there of the fijirst Megatherium specimen.1 Late in life he became a national treasure, but he had his share of rivals and detractors, some of whom cast aspersions on his patriotism by accusing him of having been born in Italy. Unlike his close contemporary Francisco Moreno, Ameghino did not belong to a distinguished Creole lineage and thus lacked the former’s entitlement to the status of quasi-offfijicial patri- otic naturalist, charged with classifying and organizing the nation’s past. In a world in which the naturalists were almost all part of an elite that controlled politics and culture, Ameghino was largely alienated from his colleagues, with whom he would have very difffijicult relationships all his life. Not even the issue of his birthplace has been completely resolved; some historians think that we was born in Monegalia, Italy, and brought to Argentina as an infant. There is some documentation that seems to support this claim, but others think that a birth certifijicate issued in Italy may well be that of an older brother emigrating with his parents. Regardless of his birth nationality, it is clear that he lived in Argentina since infancy, and that he was educated entirely there. By all accounts2 his youth was nothing short of prodigious. Shortly after completing his studies at the Luján municipal primary school at 13, he was appointed Assistant Teacher. A year later he attended Normal School [Escuela Nor- mal de Preceptores] in Buenos Aires, racing through the program and gain- ing a position as Assistant Principal for Primary Education in Mercedes, becoming Principal at the age of 16. By 1871 he had read Charles Lyell and Hermann Burmeister, and probably Charles Darwin as well. Ameghino’s interest in paleontology and paleoanthropology dates back to his childhood in fossiliferous Luján, and abided throughout his stud- ies and early career in education. By 1875 he had completed the manu- script of La antigüedad del hombre en el Plata [On the Antiquity of Man in

1 See Frenguelli 1934; Farro and Podgorny 1998; Cabrera 1944, Mercante 1911. 2 See e.g. Cabrera 1944, 12fff. 196 chapter eight the Plata Region],3 and begun his Diario de un naturalista [A Naturalist’s Journal], inspired by Darwin. That same year he also penned his “Nota sobre algunos fósiles nuevos de la formación pampeana” [Notes on Some New Fossils of the Pampan Formation]. Notoriously, in this paper as in La antigüedad del hombre en el Plata, he argued for the Pampas as the site of earliest human evolution. Burmeister, whose opposition to any such thesis is unmistakable even in the short excerpt of his History of Creation reproduced here (see above, p. 106), sought to block its publication. But Ameghino had begun his correspondence with Paul Gervais, who placed the article in his Journal de Zoologie. Ameghino’s relationship with Paul Gervais and his son Henri, with whom Ameghino later collaborated, would prove his point of entry into the world of European scientifijic respectabil- ity. The claim that humans had lived in the Pampas during the Quaternary Age, however, never gained wider acceptance. Even at home, Ameghino was opposed on this score by fellow Darwinians Francisco P. Moreno and Estanislao Zeballos, in addition to Burmeister. In 1878 he traveled to Europe, bringing an extensive fossil collection with him for display at the Paris Exposition, for which he won the atten- tion of the European naturalist community. Ameghino’s principal col- laboration with the younger Gervais, Los mamíferos fósiles de la América del Sud [The Fossil Mammals of South America], appeared in 1880.4 The following year he returned to Buenos Aires, fijinancing the trip by the sale of part of his collection, to discover that his position as Principal of the Mercedes Municipal School had been fijilled in his absence. He began sup- porting himself as a bookseller, an occupation to which he returned, peri- odically, until the last decade of his life. In the 1880s and 1890s, while he was occasionally appointed to positions in the Argentine scientifijic establishment—including the Assistant Directorship, under Moreno, of the Museo de la Plata—he was never able to hold them for long. Angel Cabrera quotes North American paleontologist William B. Scott as saying of Ameghino’s relentless dedication, “I know of no greater example in all the history of science of such bravery and sacrifijice under such adverse circumstances.”5 1884 saw the publication of Filogenia [Phylogeny], Ameghino’s most important contribution to evolutionary theory, of which an excerpt

3 Ameghino 1880. 4 Gervais and Ameghino 1880. 5 Cabrera 1944, 20.