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Björn Olof Lennartson Kurtén (1924-1988) |
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Finnish writer, professor of paleontology at the University Helsinki, who gained international fame as a writer with his popular science fiction books of ancient men, Den svarta tigern (1978, Dance of the Tiger) and Mammutens rådare (1982, Singletusk). Along with George Gaylord Simpson in America, Björn Kurtén was the founding father of an important scientific movement that united Darwinian theory with empirical studies of fossil vertebrates. He was also a leading student of fossil bears – and by chance his first name Björn means "bear" in his native Swedish. "The mammoth broke cover, soundlessly, at the place foreseen by the human mind. One by one they emerged from the forest, big animals at the head of the line, smaller ones next, and an immense bull bringing up the rear. As if under order, adults and young alike pointed the tips of their short trunks upward, suspiciously sniffing the lazy airs that wafted across the bog. But the wind bough no message to them other than the heady scent of labrador tea and ripening cloudberries." (from Dance of the Tiger: A Novel of the Ice Age by Björn Kurtén, introduction by Stephen Jay Gould, Berkley Books, 1983, p. 3) Björn Kurtén was born in Vaasa, the youngest son of Lennart Kurtén, a bank director, and Hjördis (Ståhlberg) Kurtén. From early on, he had a talent for writing. While in school Kurtén penned adventure stories in Swedish, his mother tongue. His first book, Det nya jaktplanet (1941, The New Fighter), was published by Schildt. It was followed by Spåret från Ultima Esperanza (1945). After graduating from the Vasa Svenska Samskola, Kurtén entered in 1943 the University of Helsinki, where he studied geology, chemistry, zoology and paleontology. His military service Kurtéd did during the later period of the continuation war (1941-44), resuming his studies in 1945. In 1950 Kurtén married Ruth Margareta Nordman; they had four children. Kurtén was editor of Studentbladet, published by Swedish-speaking university students. For Hufvudstadsbladet and
Vasabladet he wrote a number of popularized essays about paleontology. Before finishing his studies in Helsinki, where there was
only a small fossil mammal collection, Kurtén studied paleontology in
Sweden at the University of Uppsala under Birger Bohlin and received
his Ph.D. in 1954. The Chinese Hipparion fauna, Kurtén's first major scientific publication, came out in 1952.
Especially Georg Gaylord
Simpson's (1902-1984) Tempo and Mode in Evolution (1944) influenced his early works. Several
of Kurtén paleonthological studies in the 1950s and 1960s dealt with carnivorous mammals, especially the family of Ursidae, Sex Dimorphism and Size Trends in the Cave Bear (1955), Life and Death of the Pleistocene Cave Bear (1958), On the bears of the Holsteinian interglacial (1959), The Evolution of the Polar Bear, Ursus maritimus Phipps (1964), Pleistocene Bears of North America
(1966-1967). "Perhaps the last cave bears fell victims to the raids of
late Magdalenian man with his evolved weapons and hunting methods. . .
. There are several possible causes and combinations of causes, and no
good clues to the real solution." (Life and Death of the Pleistocene Cave Bear, Geological Institute of Helsingfors Universtiy, p. 56) During the decades, Kurtén learned to know almost every collection of bears in Europe. He suggested that Cro-Magnons may have contributed to the extinction of the fragmented populations of the Ursus spelaeus, the Cave Bear. Also big and small cats fascinated Kurtén. His monographs on fossil cats include On the Evolution of the European Wild Cat (1965), Geographic Variation in Size in the Puma (1973), and Pleistocene Jaguars in North America (1973). From 1955 to 1972 Kurtén was lecturer at the University of Helsinki.
He was also a researcher at the University of Florida, a visiting
professor at the University of Harvard (1971-71), and Personal Professor
of Paleontology at the University of Helsinki from 1972 to 1988. In
Spain and Tunisia Kurtén participated in scientific excavations. He
died in Helsinki on December 28, 1988. Throughout his life, Kurtén
remained interested in bears. Before his death, he visited in 1987 the
Noboribetsu Bear Park, Hokkaido. Kurtén received several awards from
his popular scientific works, including the State award for Public
Information (1970 and 1980) and Unesco's Kalinga Award. Earlier it had
been given among others to George Gamow, Fred Hoyle, Julian Huxley,
Konrad Lorenz, Margaret
Mead, and Bertrand Russell.
He was also an honorary member of the Anthropological Association of
Greece (AEE). By his peers he was praised as a "paleontologists'
paleontologist." Much of his writing Kurtén did in the achipelago, where he spent his summers with his family. Among Kurtén scientific publications are his dissertation On the Variation and Population Dynamics of Fossil and Recent Mammal Populations (1953), Pleistocene Mammals of Europe (1968), published in the same year in Sweden, Great Britain, Germany, Italy, France and Holland, and Pleistocene mammals of North America (1980), with Elaine Anderson. Inte från aporna (1971, Not from the Apes) was also translated into several languages. On Evolution and Fossil Mammals, (1988) was a collection of earlier studies. "I suspect that our view of men who live in close contact with nature is colored by the romantic image of the taciturn Red Indian, the epitome of the Noble Savage. In contrast, my experience of the men of forests and lakes is that they are loquacious to a degree, with a great fund of small talk; they carry their hearts on their sleeves. Aloofness is a simply a mask put on before a stranger. A large vocabulary is characteristic of the so-called primitive languages of today, and probably has been so for millenniums. To find a really primitive language I suspect you would have to journey back in time to the beginning of the Ice Age." ('A Challenge to the Reader,' in Dance of The Tiger, p. xxiii) In the 1970s Kurtén returned to fiction with Dance of the Tiger, in which he presented a model about Neanderthal extinction. The American paleontologist, evolutionary biologist, and science writer Stephen Jay Gould has said that "Kurtén has managed to insinuate into his story . . . every fact and theory that I know (and several, undoubtedly, that I don't) about Neandertals, Cro-Magnons, human evolution during the Ice Age, glacial geology, and ecology and behavior of the great Ice Age mammals, including mammoths and saber-toothed tigers." ('Introduction' by Stephen Jay Gould, in Dance of the Tiger, 1995, p. xvi) Dance of the Tiger is set in the era of 35 000 years ago in Scandinavia, during a thaw in the
great Ice Age. It tells the story of Tiger, the
chief of a Cro-Magnon tribe, and his wife, Morsinko, a Neanderthal
woman. Kurtén's Neanderthals have nothing in common with H.G. Wells's Neanderthals featured in The Grisly Folk (1921) – they don't belong to the human species – and they differ physically and mentally from William Golding's vulnerable, childlike creatures, who encounter Homo sapiens in The Inheritors (1961), and are destroyed by the savagery of "the new comers." Neanderthals in Dance of the Tiger are white-skinned, vital for their adaptation to live in cold environments, whereas Cro-Magnons are dark; Cro-Magnon children and adults have smooth brows and small faces; the characteristic features of childhood act as "innate releasing mechanisms" for feelings of affection – a theory familiar from Konrad Lorenz's writings. "To the Whites, the Blacks were godlike, tall and eloquent, with a speech as varied and flexible as that of the birds. And there was something else. No White could look at the clear brow of a Black without feeling a mysterious tenderness, such as a child might evoke in the heart of his parents." After Tiger's natal band is wiped out by another tribe, he is rescued by Neanderthals, whom he first regards as "Trolls," but eventually overcomes his prejudices. The Neanderthals are awe of the full-toned speech of Cro-Magnons; in contrast, Neanderthal speech is slow-spoken and they address each other formally: "Would you be gracious, Mister Silverbirch, and look at the young God?" Nicholas Ruddick complained in Fire in the Stone (2009), a study of prehistoric fiction, that Kurtén "subordinates character and plot to his desire to promote his ingenious hypothesis accounting for the disappearance of the Neanderthals." Ruddick considered Singletusk a "more fluent sequel." (Fire in the Stone: Prehistoric Fiction from Charles Darwin to Jean M. Auel by Nicholas Ruddick, 2009, p. 84) Kurtén offered the explanation that the Neanderthals disappeared
because they fell fatally in love with their black and beautiful
Cro-Magnon neighbours, and brought them home to engage in sterile
matches. (However, a team of scientist led by Svante Pääbo has
discovered, that non-African humans have Neanderthal DNA: the ancestors
of modern humans and Neanderthals interbred.) The Cro-Magnon people,
who were more aggressive and practiced slavery and violence, conquered
the peace loving Neanderthal society, based on matriarchal system. For Joseph Carroll,
the motives and feelings of the characters in Dance of the Tiger are not plausible. Carroll
also argues, that "Neanderthal vocal tracts would have made them capable of only a limited
range of sounds." (Literary Darwinism: Evolution, Human Nature, and Literature by Joseph Carroll, 2004, p. 170) Singletusk, the next novel, continued the story of the family. Kurtén's picture of the early society is realistic without exaggerating the violent aspects of life. He portrayed the development, everyday life, and dreams and fears of the ancient people. Both of these prehistoric stories were mostly based on scientific theories. Kurtén's supposition that Neanderthals and ancestors of modern Homo Sapiens occupied same areas in the same time in Europe have been confirmed by fossil evidence. For further reading: 'Björn Kurtén – a memorial volume,' edited by Ann Forstén, Mikael Fortelius, Lars Werdelin, Annales Zoologici Fennici, Vol. 28, No. 3/4 (1991); 'Introduction' by Stephen Jay Gould, in Dance of the Tiger (1995); 'Björn Kurtén, scientist and writer' by Anto Leikola, in Ann. Zool. Fennici 28 (1992); 'Muinaisaikojen elävöittäjä Björn Kurtén' by Anto Leikola, in Kansallisgalleria: Suuret suomalaiset, edited by Allan Tiitta, et al. (1997); 'Neanderthals as fiction in archaeological narrative' by Abigail Hackett and Robin Dennell, Antiquity 77(298), December (2003); 'Adaptationist Criteria of Literary Value: Assessing Kurtén's Dance of the Tiger, Auel's The Clan of the Cave Bear, and Golding's The Inheritors,' in Literary Darwinism: Evolution, Human Nature, and Literature by Joseph Carroll (2004); 'Kurtén, Björn' by Anto Leikola, in Suomen kansallisbiografia 5, edited by Matti Klinge, et al. (2005); Fire in the Stone: Prehistoric Fiction from Charles Darwin to Jean M. Auel by Nicholas Ruddick (2009) - Other prehistoric fantasies: Johannes V. Jensen's Den Lange Rejse (1908-22); J.H. Rosny's La guerre de feu (1909); Edgar Rice Burrough's The Eternal Lover (1925); J. Leslie Mitchell's There Go Back (1932); William Golding's The Inheritors (1955); note also such romantic works by Jean Untinen-Auel as The Clan of the Cave Bear (1980), The Valley of Horses (1982), The Mammoth Hunters (1985), The Plains of Passage (1990) - See also: L.S.B. Leakey Selected works:
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