Julien-Joseph Virey

After becoming a protégé of Antoine Parmentier (1737-1813), he wrote a major work quickly in the field of anthropology, in which he promoted the theory of polygeny.

The 20th-century scientists Paul Broca and Armand de Quatrefages rank him among the precursors of a style of anthropological questioning, without agreeing with all his ideas.

He was highly critical of the ideas of Jean-Baptiste Lamarck such as spontaneous generation but supported an evolutionary history of life on earth.

[2][3] Virey commented that "It is thus plausible that, thanks to such evolution, nature has arisen from the most tenuous mould to the majestic cedar, to the gigantic pine, just as it has advanced from microscopic animals up to man, king and dominator of all beings.

Georges Cuvier, Jean Baptiste Bory de Saint-Vincent, Louis Antoine Desmoulins and Virey all struggled to determine the origin and age of man.