Bone Tales

Abstract

This chapter focuses on visions of Patagonia as the origin of the world in the work of the renowned Argentine scientist Florentino Ameghino (1854–1911), and particularly on his recourse to indigenous myth in the development of his (later discredited) theories of biological evolution. In the fin-de-siècle ‘bone rush’ in Patagonia, fossils became monuments of national wealth and a staging-ground for the battles of evolution between fossilized tribes. This scientific re-reading of the landscape questioned dominant narratives of prehistory, placing Patagonia not at the end of the world but at its origin. Ameghino’s fossils, often bigger and more complete than those of North America or Europe, provide the foundation for a strategic inversion of such narratives, constructing Patagonia as the site of the monumental ruins of a glorious past of biological supremacy. His theories of racial evolution were later disproved, but his work demonstrates the power of the paleontological imagination in constructing discourses on race in South America and beyond. Moreover, Ameghino’s hybrid brand of naturalism, which combines indigenous mythologies with Western knowledge, represents a fascinating example of how histories of local geographical and archaeological discourses developed at the dawn of the twentieth century.