CORPI researcher Carlos Cañete conducted research throughout October 2013 at the Clark Library

CORPI researcher Carlos Cañete conducted research throughout October at the Clark Library (Center for 17th-and 18th-Century Studies/UCLA). While there, Cañete examined the legacy of Professor Richard Popkin, which is currently kept in that library. Specifically, he analyzed the material related to the emergence of pre-Adamite theories in the seventeenth century, to which Professor Popkin devoted much of his work. This topic is part of the proposal raised by Cañete regarding the role of alternative accounts of the origin of humanity in early modern religious controversies, as one of the objectives of CORPI.

Also, he gave a talk on: “Early Modern Cultural Contacts and the Pre-Adamite Theory”, on Friday, 15 November, 2013, at the Columbia University. Pre-Adamism has been considered as “the real spectre haunting Western thought”. The idea that there were humans before Adam had a great impact on all branches of knowledge and experience after it was suggested by Isaac la Peyrère in mid-seventeenth century. But that theory itself was the result of a previous impact produced by the cultural contacts which took place in the preceding period. This paper will address those cultural contacts, exploring the mechanisms that ultimately led to the paradigm shift of the pre-adamite theory.