Rivet, Paul

Paul Rivet (7 May 1876, Wasigny, Ardennes – 25 March 1958) was a French ethnologist, who founded the Musée de l'Homme in 1937. He was also one of the founders of the Comité de vigilance des intellectuels antifascistes, an antifascist organization created in the wake of the February 6, 1934 far right riots.
Rivet proposed a theory according to which South America was populated by settlers from Australia and Melanesia. Trained as a physician, he took part in the Second French Geodesic Mission for survey measurements of the length of a meridian arc　to Ecuador in 1901. He remained for five years in South America where he was mentored by Ecuadorian bishop, historian and archaeologist Federico González Suárez and began an ethnographic study of the Huaorani people of the Ecuadorian Amazon, then known as the Jívaro. When he returned to France, he was active with the Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle, directed by René Verneau.
He published several papers on his Ecuadorian research during and immediately following the trip, culminating in an extended volume co-authored with René Verneau between 1921 and 1922 under the title Ancient Ethnography of Ecuador. In 1926, Paul Rivet participated in the establishment of the Institut d'Ethnologie in Paris, where he taught many French ethnologists. In 1928, he succeeded René Verneau as director of the National Museum of Natural History.
Rivet's theory asserts that Asia was the cradle of the American man, but also that migrations took place from Australia some 6,000 years before, and from Melanesia somewhat later. Les Origines de l'Homme Américain ("The Origins of the American Man") was published in 1943, and contains linguistic and anthropological arguments which support his thesis.
In 1942, Paul Rivet went to Colombia, where he founded the Anthropological Institute and Museum. Returning to Paris in 1945, he continued teaching while carrying on his research. His linguistic research introduced several new perspectives on the Aymara and Quechua languages. (Wikipedia 2013-12-18) {1}