Antoine Balzeau

Biography

Researcher at the CNRS and the Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle, Antoine Balzeau works at the Musée de l’Homme. He devotes most of his research to studying the morphological transformations of mankind and other primates over the last few million years. A specialist in the skulls of prehistoric man, he uses 3D imaging to study everything that’s hidden inside, including the shape of the brain. He is also deputy director of the UMS 2700 2AD housed at MNHN, and scientific collaborator at the Royal Museum for Central Africa in Tervuren, Belgium. In 2019, he published volume 27 of La petite Bédéthèque des Savoirs, entitled Homo sapiens, Histoire(s) de notre humanité, with Pierre Bailly as illustrator.

Conference: Can we appreciate the time of human evolution?

A little over 7 million years old and almost thirty human species – that’s a lot of diversity for a small timescale. To study all this, the paleoanthropologist has a few fossils scattered around the world and through time. So, when it comes to discussing the extension, spread and succession of human species, how much of what researchers say is based on the interpretation of scientific data, and how much on supposition? The image we have of human evolution thus mixes science and imagination.