Prof. Dr. Adriaan Kortlandt (25 January 1918,

Rotterdam Rotterdam ( , , , lit. ''The Dam on the River Rotte'') is the second largest city and municipality in the Netherlands. It is in the province of South Holland, part of the North Sea mouth of the Rhine–Meuse–Scheldt delta, via the ''"N ...

- 18 October 2009,

Amsterdam Amsterdam ( , , , lit. ''The Dam on the River Amstel'') is the Capital of the Netherlands, capital and Municipalities of the Netherlands, most populous city of the Netherlands, with The Hague being the seat of government. It has a population ...

) was a Dutch

ethologist Ethology is the scientific study of animal behaviour, usually with a focus on behaviour under natural conditions, and viewing behaviour as an evolutionarily adaptive trait. Behaviourism as a term also describes the scientific and objective ...

. He was famous for his work on displacement activities (Dutch: ''overspronggedrag)'' and the hierarchy of instincts. Already in the thirties he realised the common characteristics between instincts in humans and other animals. In one of his experiments in Western Africa he exposed a stuffed panther with an electronic moving head to chimpanzees, who attacked it with sticks, thus illustrating to which extent early man could have kept wild animals at bay even before spears and other weapons were invented. He also was the author of the "

Rift Valley theory In geology, a rift is a linear zone where the lithosphere is being pulled apart and is an example of extensional tectonics. Typical rift features are a central linear downfaulted depression, called a graben, or more commonly a half-graben wi ...

",Kortlandt, A. (1972) - ''New perspectives on ape and human evolution'', Amsterdam, Stichting voor Psychobiologie. better known under the name given by French

paleoanthropologist Paleoanthropology or paleo-anthropology is a branch of paleontology and anthropology which seeks to understand the early development of anatomically modern humans, a process known as hominization, through the reconstruction of evolutionary kinship ...

Yves Coppens Yves Coppens (9 August 1934 – 22 June 2022) was a French anthropologist. A graduate from the University of Rennes and Sorbonne, he studied ancient hominids and had multiple published works on this topic, and also produced a film. In October 2 ...

: " East Side Story".

References

Select publications

Kleindienst, M. R., Burton, F. D., & Kortlandt, A. (1975). On new perspectives on ape and human evolution. ''Current Anthropology, 16''(4), 644-651.

External links

{{DEFAULTSORT:Kortlandt, Adriaan 1918 births 2009 deaths 20th-century Dutch zoologists Human evolution theorists Ethologists Scientists from Rotterdam Dutch anthropologists 20th-century anthropologists