Marcel Otte (born 5 October 1948) is a professor of

Prehistory Prehistory, also known as pre-literary history, is the period of human history between the use of the first stone tools by hominins 3.3 million years ago and the beginning of recorded history with the invention of writing systems. The use of ...

at the Université de Liège,

Belgium Belgium, ; french: Belgique ; german: Belgien officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a country in Northwestern Europe. The country is bordered by the Netherlands to the north, Germany to the east, Luxembourg to the southeast, France to th ...

. He is a specialist in

Religion Religion is usually defined as a social- cultural system of designated behaviors and practices, morals, beliefs, worldviews, texts, sanctified places, prophecies, ethics, or organizations, that generally relates humanity to supernatural, ...

Arts The arts are a very wide range of human practices of creative expression, storytelling and cultural participation. They encompass multiple diverse and plural modes of thinking, doing and being, in an extremely broad range of media. Both hi ...

Sociobiology Sociobiology is a field of biology that aims to examine and explain social behavior in terms of evolution. It draws from disciplines including psychology, ethology, anthropology, evolution, zoology, archaeology, and population genetics. Within t ...

, and the

Upper Palaeolithic The Upper Paleolithic (or Upper Palaeolithic) is the third and last subdivision of the Paleolithic or Old Stone Age. Very broadly, it dates to between 50,000 and 12,000 years ago (the beginning of the Holocene), according to some theories coin ...

times of

Europe Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a Continent#Subcontinents, subcontinent of Eurasia ...

and

Central Asia Central Asia, also known as Middle Asia, is a subregion, region of Asia that stretches from the Caspian Sea in the west to western China and Mongolia in the east, and from Afghanistan and Iran in the south to Russia in the north. It includes t ...

. In the book ''Speaking Australopithecus'' (written together with the philologist

Francesco Benozzo Francesco Benozzo (born 22 February 1969) is an Italian poet, musician and philologist. He works as a Research Fellow in Philology at the University of Bologna, Italy. Biographical notes *''Poetry'' Author of long epic poems about natural lan ...

) he argues from the archaeological point of view Benozzo's hypothesis that human language appeared with Australopithecus, between 4 and 3 million years ago. Otte is one of the only advocates of the

Paleolithic continuity theory The Proto-Indo-European homeland (or Indo-European homeland) was the prehistoric linguistic homeland of the Proto-Indo-European language (PIE). From this region, its speakers migrated east and west, and went on to form the proto-communities of ...

, which states that

Indo-European languages The Indo-European languages are a language family native to the overwhelming majority of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and the northern Indian subcontinent. Some European languages of this family, English, French, Portuguese, Russian, Dutc ...

originated in Europe and have existed there since

Paleolithic The Paleolithic or Palaeolithic (), also called the Old Stone Age (from Greek: παλαιός ''palaios'', "old" and λίθος ''lithos'', "stone"), is a period in human prehistory that is distinguished by the original development of stone too ...

times. He first advocated that theory in work published in 1995.Otte, Marcel (1995), "Diffusion des langues modernes en Eurasie préhistorique", ''C. R. Acad. Sc. Paris'' 321, série IIa, pp. 1219-1226.

Written works

He has published a number of works, including: * ''Étude Archéologique et Historique sur le Château Médièval de Saive'' Centre belge d'histoire rurale Liege 1973 * ''Les Pointes à Retouches Plates du Paléolithique Supérieur Initial de Belgique'' Centre Interdisciplinaire de Recherches Archéologiques Liege 1974 * ''La préhistoire à Travers les Collections du Musée Curtius de Liège'' Wahle Liege 1978 * ''Le Paléolithique Supérieur Ancien en Belgique'' Musées Royaux d'art et d'histoire Brussels 1979 * ''Le Gravettien en Europe Centrale'' De Tempel Brugge 1981 * ''Sondages à Marche-les-Dames : Grotte de la Princesse, 1976'' with J.M. Degbomont, University of Liege 1981 * ''Les Fouilles de la place Saint-Lambert à Liège'' Le Centre Liège 1983 * ''Préhistoire des Religions'' Masson Paris 1993 2-225-84068-7 * ''Le Paléolithique Inférieur et Moyen en Europe'' A Colin Paris 1996 * ''La Grotte du Bois Laiterie : Recolonisation Magdalénienne de la Belgique'' with Lawrence Straus, University of Liege 1997 * ''La Préhistoire'' with Denis Vialou and Patrick Plumet De Boeck Université, Paris 1999 * ''Approches du Comportement au Mousterien'', British Archaeological Reports Oxford 2000 * ''Les Origines de la Pensée'' Sprimont Mardaga 2001 * ''La Protohistoire'' with Mireille David-Elbiali,

Christiane Eluère Christiane is a given name, a form of the Latin ''Christiana'', feminine form of ''Christianuis'' (see Christian), or a Latinized form of Middle English '' Christin'' 'Christian' (Old English ''christen'', from Latin).. A short form is Chris. Alte ...

and Jean-Pierre Mohen De Boeck Université Brussels 2002 * ''Recherches sur le Paléolithique Supérieur'' J and E Hedges Oxford 2003

References

External links

"Marcel Otte, Préhistorien, Paléoanthropologue"
personal site
Works at ResearchGate
(registration needed)

1948 births Living people Walloon people Prehistorians Belgian archaeologists {{archaeologist-stub

Written works

See also

References

External links