Aris Poulianos
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Aris Poulianos (born on July 24, 1924 in Ikaria, Greece) is a Greek anthropologist. He studied biology at the City University of New York between 1948 and 1952. He studied anthropology in Moscow and earned his Ph.D in 1961. He worked at the Soviet Academy of Sciences until 1965, when he returned to Greece. He conducted research about the anthropological origins of Balkan peoples and European populations in general. During this time, he led research expeditions in Russia, Bulgaria, Romania, former Yugoslavia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. After he returned to Greece, Poulianos continued conducting anthropological research (i.e. populations in Spain; the Ainu of Japan). His research focuses on the origins of the inhabitants of the Haemus Peninsula, as well as on the origins of Europeans in general. Poulianos' best-known project was the study of the Petralona Cave in Chalcidice, a site where prehistoric human remains had been found accidentally by Philippos Chatzaridis on May 10, 1959. Poulianos also studied the excavations that occurred in the Triglia site in Chalkidiki and the prehistoric elephant site at Perdikkas-Ptolemais.
In 1969, Aris Poulianos was elected Vice-President of the 8th International Congress of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences in Tokyo. In 1971, Poulianos founded the Anthropological Association of Greece, which is now run by his son. This organization, specifically, has had a long-standing dispute with the Greek Ministry of Culture, after the latter's attempts to evict the Anthropological Association of Greece from the excavation site in the Petralona Cave, which was conceded to them after a 1981 contract. In 1976, Poulianos founded the Department of Paleoanthropology-Spelaeology, which functions within the Greek Ministry of Culture. He is a permanent member of the International Council of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences of UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization). In 1979, he was appointed President of the 3rd European Congress of Anthropology at Prague, which held its works in 1982 at Petralona.
Poulianos is more widely known for his claim that there exist "12,000,000 million years old homo erectus trigliensis" on Greek soil. This claim is still controversial among anthropologists. Aris Poulianos has published five books and numerous articles, many of them in the yearbook "Anthropos" which is published by his own association.
A biography of Poulianos was written by his wife, Daphne, and published in 2006 entitled "Aris N. Poulianos - Reflections." The book contains an historical account of Poulianos' life and contributions since 1947, as well as his activities with UNESCO and the various anti-racist organizations to which he belongs.
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[edit] Archanthropus of Petralona
Poulianos hypothesizes that the first proof of native human presence in Europe was to be found with the discovery of the Archanthropus skull in Chalcidice, Greece in 1960. The skull has been dated to be at least 700,000 years old by two German scientists, anthropologist E. Breitinger and palaeontologist O. Sickenberg[citation needed]. According to Poulianos, this dating renders the Indo-European theory obsolete. However, an article in Nature (292, 533-536, August 6, 1981) coauthored by three German scientists dates the skull to between 160,000 and 240,000 years old[citation needed].
[edit] Published works
- 1960 - "The Origin of Greeks"; Ph.D Thesis at Moscow Institute of Anthropology; Reprinted in Athens in 1962, 1965, 1968, and 1988.
- 1961 - "Discovery of a Skull of Palaeolithic Man in Greece"; Voprossi Anthropologhii, 8:162.
- 1963 - "New Palaeolithic Finds of Greece"; Sov. Arheologhia, 2: 227-229.
- 1965 - "On the Position of the Petralona Man within Palaeoanthropi"; Sov. Ethnografia, 2: 91-99.
- 1967 - "The Place of the Petralonian Man among Palaeoanthropi"; Anthropos C 19, (N.S.11): 216-221. in Akten Anthropologischen Kongresses Brno.
- 1971 - "Petralona: A Middle Pleistocene Cave in Greece"; Archaeology, 24: 6-11.
- 1975 - "Palaeoanthropological excavations at Petralona. Prakt. Archaeol.; Et.: 131-136. Athens.
- 1977 - "Stratigraphy and Age of the Petralonian Archanthropus"; Anthropos, 4: 37-46. Athens.
- 1980 - "The Petralona Finds"; Thessaloniki. Yearbook of the Society of Macedonian Studies: 65-76.
- 1981 - "Pre-sapiens Man in Greece"; Current Anthropology, 22 (3): 287 - 288.
- 1981 - "Climatic Fluctuations at Petralona Cave"; Terra Cognita.
[edit] Further reading
- "Neanderthal Man and Homo sapiens in Central and Eastern Europe." Current Anthropology, Vol. 10, No. 5 (December 1969): 475-503.
- "Reviewed Work(s) Anthropos." Man, New Series, Vol. 9, No. 4 (December 1974): 630-631.
