Alois Ferdinand Hrdlička,šHrdlič after 1918 changed to Aleš Hrdlička (; March 30, 1869 – September 5, 1943), was a Czech anthropologist who lived in the United States after his family had moved there in 1881. He was born in Humpolec, Bohemia (today in the Czech Republic).
Life and career
Hrdlička was born at Humpolec house 393 on 30 March 1869 and baptized Catholic the next day at the . His mother, Karolína Hrdličková, educated her child herself; his skills and knowledge made it possible to skip the primary level of school. When he was 13, Hrdlička arrived in New York with his father Maxmilian Hrdlička on 10 September 1881 via the SS Elbe from Bremen. His mother and three younger siblings emigrated to the U.S. separately. After arrival, the promised job brought only a disappointment to his father who started working in a cigar factory along with teenaged Alois to earn a living for the family with six other children. Young Hrdlička attended evening courses to improve his English, and at the age of 18, he decided to study medicine since he had suffered from tuberculosis and experienced the treatment difficulties of those times. In 1889, Hrdlička began studies at Eclectic Medical College and then continued at Homeopathic College in New York. To finish his medical studies, Hrdlička sat for exams in Baltimore in 1894. At first, he worked in the Middletown asylum for mentally affected where he learnt of anthropometry. In 1896, Hrdlička left for Paris, where he started to work as an anthropologist with other experts of the then establishing field of science.
Between 1898 and 1903, during his scientific travel across America, Hrdlička became the first scientist to spot and document the theory of human colonization of the American continent from east Asia, which he claimed was only some 3,000 years ago. He argued that the Indians migrated across the Bering Strait from Asia, supporting this theory with detailed field research of skeletal remains as well as studies of the people in Mongolia, Tibet, Siberia, Alaska, and Aleutian Islands. The findings backed up the argument which later contributed to the theory of global origin of human species that was awarded by the Thomas Henry Huxley Award in 1927.
Aleš Hrdlička founded and became the first curator of physical anthropology of the U.S. National Museum, now the Smithsonian Institution National Museum of Natural History in 1903. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1915 and the American Philosophical Society in 1918. That same year, he founded the American Journal of Physical Anthropology. After he stepped down, the journal volume number, which had reached Volume 29 in 1942, was restarted at Volume 1 in 1943.
In January 1913, Hrdlička embarked on an expedition to Lima, Peru, during which he removed 80 trephined and "otherwise highly interesting" skulls from a grave site in the Andes mountain range. Despite the remains taken from the area, Hrdlička overall disliked the expedition and was disappointed in what he accomplished. The expedition was plagued with constant rain, inconsistent food supply, and treacherous terrain, and Hrdlička directly mentioned his disdain for the local population, claiming that archaeological sites were regularly vandalized, merchants would overcharge him for supplies, and 'ignorant, superstitious, and often drunk people' would provide him with unreliable information. Moreso than any of those factors, Hrdlička was frustrated with his inability to find any 'full-blooded' native people to serve as subjects for his research.
Hrdlička was involved in examining a skull to determine that it belonged to Adolph Ruth, who was sensationalized in the press when Ruth went missing in Arizona in 1931 searching for the legendary Lost Dutchman's Gold Mine.
He always sponsored his fellow expatriates and also donated the institution of anthropology in Prague, which was founded in 1930 by his co-explorer Jindřich Matiegka, in his native country (the institution later took his name). Between 1936 and 1938, Hrdlička led the excavation of over 50 mummies from caves on Kagamil Island. A small number of the mummies were actually studied, and Hrdlička never recorded any information on the soft tissue of the subjects. This has led to the belief that he may have disposed of the soft tissue without any research due to his focus on skeletal anthropometry.
Hrdlička's views on race are inspired by those of Georges Cuvier, who in the 19th century argued that there are "only 3 distinct racial stems: The White, The Black, and The Yellow-Brown." Hrdlička used the "Yellow-Brown" classification as a grouping for non-European and African regions.