Louis Bolk

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File:LBolk.jpg
Louis Bolk.

Lodewijk 'Louis' Bolk (10 December 1866, Overschie – 17 June 1930, Amsterdam) was a Dutch anatomist who created the fetalization theory about the human body.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> It states that when a human being is born, it is still a fetus, as can be seen by its (proportionally) big head, lack of coordination, and helplessness. Furthermore, this "prematuration" is specifically human.

Gavin de Beer and Stephen Jay Gould wrote about him and further developed this theory of neoteny in humans.<ref name="Gould 1977">Template:Cite book)</ref>

Also Jacques Lacan took Bolk's fetalization theory into account in order to introduce his own thesis on the mirror stage.Template:Citation needed

Bolk wrote in Origin of Racial Characteristics in Man, “White skin...started from an ancestor with a black skin, in whose offspring hair and iris color were suppressed more and more.”<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>

File:Louis Bolk's Hand Meassurements.jpg
Hand measurements based on the Louis Bolk's fetalization theory

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