Luis Montané Dardé

Cuban physician and anthropologist, introducer of physical anthropology in Cuba.

He was born in La Habana and died in Chatou, France. Moved to France at the age of two, he pursued his studies in that country. He completed his Bachelor of Arts at the Liceo de Toulouse, and later obtained his Bachelor of Sciences degree in the French capital.

While still a student, he was appointed full member of the Société d´Anthropologie de París. He graduated in 1874 as a Doctor of Medicine from the University of Paris, with the thesis "Etúde anatomique du cráne chez les microcphales" —the starting point of his anthropological studies—, awarded by the aforementioned society. This work was of great significance for the history of craniology.

He was a student of the distinguished French anthropologists Paul Broca, Ernest-Theodore Hamy and Jean Louis de Quatrefages, and was also connected with the equally renowned Pablo Topinard, Charles Letourneau and Roger Verneaux. He served as senior assistant physician in the Franco-Prussian War. He practiced as an otolaryngologist, and was one of the first physicians to practice this specialty on the Island.

Upon his return to Cuba in 1874, he joined the Royal Academy of Medical, Physical and Natural Sciences of La Habana, following the presentation of his work "The Skull from the Anthropological Point of View". He was a regular member of the institution between 1877 and 1883, as well as a Member of Merit, from 1895 onward.

He contributed with other Cuban scientists to the creation of the Anthropology Section of the aforementioned academy, and to the founding, on October 7, 1877, of the Anthropological Society of the Island of Cuba, where he came to hold the position of president. In this society he presented his work "A Cuban Carib. Craniological Study", in the session of April 19, 1885.

He also held the positions of vice president of the Society of Clinical Studies of Havana and director of the Anthropological Section of the Cuban Society of Natural History Felipe Poey.

He devoted much of his life to teaching at the University of La Habana, created the first Chair of Anthropology in 1900 and founded the Laboratory and Anthropological Museum that, by agreement of the then Faculty of Letters and Sciences, has borne his name since 1903. He participated in the organization of lectures at the faculty; among them, those called "In the Sierra de Banao" and "The Infancy of Mankind". He also collaborated in the publication of the Journal of the Faculty of Letters and Sciences.

He published memoirs on various pathologies and medico-legal reports, although his main work was dedicated to anthropology. On this science he wrote works comprising comparative studies of races, but mainly descriptions and measurements of aboriginal skulls, microcephalic, hydrocephalic and fossil bones; as well as other works, from travel narratives to biographies.

As a result of his expeditions to different regions of the Island, he collected a good number of archaeological and anthropological pieces, which he sent to France for study and, later, became part of the collections of the Academy and University of La Habana museums. Among these expeditions are his exploration of the Cueva del Purial, in Sancti Spíritus, in the central region of the Island; the investigations carried out in Oriente, and his work on the indigenous people of the Ciénaga de Zapata. Some of the remains found by Montané were mistakenly considered as belonging to a fossil man, native to America, which Hamy called "Man of Sancti Spíritus", and Florentino Ameghino, Homo cubensis, although Montané himself did not agree with such a criterion.

Lesser attention was given to his discovery of teeth proving the existence of a fossil ape, the first known in the Antilles—which was conclusively corroborated in 1987—, named by Ameghino as of the genus Montaneia, in honor of the Cuban anthropologist, also one of the first to make known the groups descended from aborigines, already very mixed, that have endured in the eastern region of Cuba.

He attended, representing Cuba, the Congress of Anthropology and Prehistoric Archaeology of Mónaco (1906), where he presented his work "L´Homme de Sancti Spíritus"; the International Scientific Congress of Buenos Aires (1911), and the Second Pan-American Scientific Congress (1915), in which he participated with his contribution "L´Homme Fossile Cubain".

He took retirement in 1920, and traveled to France to settle permanently in Villa Carmen de Chatou, near Paris, where he remained connected with anthropological, ethnological and americanist societies.

He attended the Annual Broca Conference in 1921, with the work "Les Hommes préhistoriques de Cuba", illustrated with projections. He was elected president of the Société d´Anthropologie de París in 1922. At his death he held the rank of Knight of the Legion of Honor and was an Officer of Public Instruction of France.