The history of European prehistory collections in Mexico City is not easy to recount. These specimens were moved several times. They are now mainly kept at the Museo nacional de las culturas del mundo (MNCM). A few pieces are also on display in a showcase at the UNAM’s Museo de geología. At the MNCN, part of these series was displayed in a room dedicated to universal prehistory, which is now closed. They are now stored in the deposit of the museum (Fig. 1).

Figure 1 – European prehistoric tools in the storage area of the National Museum of World Cultures in Mexico City. @Photo by the author.
The journey of these objects towards their current location is full of uncertainties, as the archives are fragmentary. But several clues suggest that the earliest pieces to arrive in Mexico city are linked to the life and work of Georges Engerrand.
Georges Engerrand, anarchism and prehistory.
Born in Libourne in 1877, Georges Engerrand studied natural sciences at Bordeaux University between 1895 and 1898 (Campbell 1962). During these years, he was involved in anarchist circles, published several articles in Les Temps nouveaux and sided for Captain Dreyfus in the events that were causing deep divisions in France at the time. A pacifist and Dreyfus supporter, he refused to do his compulsory military service. Risking imprisonment, he fled to Brussels in 1898, where he joined up with Elisée Reclus, one of the leading figures in the intellectual anarchist circles of the time.
Engerrand stayed in the Belgian capital for almost 10 years, teaching geology and prehistory at several establishments, including the Université nouvelle de Bruxelles or Ecole libre d’enseignement supérieur (1894-1919), an institution founded by socialists and anarchists where Reclus taught (Elmer 2022; Mosquete 2004). During this period, he wrote a thesis in geology and numerous publications, mainly on geology and prehistory (Newcombe 1961). His book Six leçons de préhistoire (Bruxelles, Larcier, 1905), a summary intended for a broad readership, was awarded a prize by the Belgian Academy of Sciences.
A supporter of evolutionism, Engerrand was an advocate of a science-based prehistory, founded primarily on the geological (stratigraphic) study of the sites. He associated the development of this discipline with the drive to emancipate humanity through science, in essays marked by a rationalist conception that he shared with many anarchist intellectuals. The Spanish translation of his 1905 book, Nociones de la primeras edades de la humanidad (Barcelona, Publicaciones de la escuela moderna, 1905), was prefaced by E. Reclus.
During his time in Brussels, Engerrand became friends with the Belgian prehistorian Aimé Rutot (1847-1933). He endorsed his hypotheses about the existence of a very ancient human being whose crude tools, known as eoliths, would be found in geological layers dating from the Tertiary period, older than the Lower Palaeolithic (De Bont 2003).
Engerrand and the first course in global prehistory in Mexico.
The reasons for G. Engerrand’s decision to move to Mexico are not precisely known, but it is possible that he viewed this country as a new opportunity for his career and for the advancement of the international anarchist rationalist project (Graham 1961, Rutsch 2010). He arrived in 1907 to join the Instituto Geológico Nacional as a geologist, and became chief geologist of the “tertiary-quaternary” section, a position he held until 1915. In this capacity, he undertook numerous field trips, during which he also made archaeological discoveries. In 1909, for example, he found at Concepción, in the state of Campeche, a lithic industry without ceramics, the shape of which was reminiscent of the oldest knapped flints found in Europe (Engerrand & Urbina 1909). This typological comparison led him to postulate the existence of an early prehistory in Mexico, but the lack of a geological context for the Concepción discovery made him extremely cautious in his conclusions.
In 1909-1910, Engerrand was appointed professor of prehistory at the Museo Nacional (now the Museo Nacional de Antropología, named Museo Nacional de Arqueología, Historia y Etnologia in 1910), a position he held alongside his work at the Instituto de Geología until 1914. In this capacity, he gave lectures on global prehistory, placing Mexican pre-Hispanic archaeology in a broader chronological framework and in a global geographical context, while promoting the stratigraphic method. A general outline of the course kept in the archives set out a 4-year programme, with three hours per week from 1909 onwards (Archivo histórico del Museo nacional de Antropología, vol. 289, 11707 DIRcur). The first year was a general introduction to geology and its links with prehistory, outlining the history of the discipline, discussing the uses of ethnographic comparison, presenting known paleoanthropological data and the biological theories about human origins, and ending with a guide to field work. The second year focused on Tertiary and Quaternary lithic industries in Europe. One section was devoted to eoliths, using a vocabulary forged by Rutot. The third year covered the art, fauna, flora and human races of the European Quaternary era. It included a section entitled “An attempt to reconstruct the life and mentality of prehistoric man in the light of known facts”, and then focused on the Neolithic period. The fourth year dealt with the transition from prehistory to history and with extra-European prehistory, with a special focus on the American continent. The debates going on in the United-States over the existence of an American Palaeolithic were discussed, as well as the research carried out in Brazil and Argentina on the same topic. The question of the transition from prehistory to pre-Hispanic cultures concluded the course.
Engerrand was also involved in the work of the Escuela Internacional de Arqueología y Etnología Americanas, which operated in Mexico from 1910 to 1917 and in which Franz Boas played a central coordinating role (Ruiz 2003, Rutsch 2010, Taladoire 2022). Engerrand became its director in 1912-1913 and, along with others, promoted stratigraphic methods in order to establish a more precise chronological sequence for Mexican sites. The political instability of the period of the Mexican Revolution, his designation as a foreigner (although he had obtained Mexican nationality and changed his French first name “Georges” to Hispanic “Jorge”), and some interpersonal conflicts forced him to leave Mexico for the United States in 1917. He ended his career there as a professor at the University of Texas.
History of collections
The history of the European prehistoric collections in the public institutions of Mexico City is linked to the first course in global prehistory given by Engerrand. However, the archives and collections that have been found to date are incomplete, and we have clues rather than evidence on this subject.
Nevertheless, the historical archives of the National Anthropology Museum show that the matter of setting up a collection to complement Engerrand’s course was raised as early as November 1909. To this effect, the museum’s director wrote to the Secretary of Public Education asking for a collection of “general prehistory” to be purchased from a specialized dealer in Belgium, the Comptoir ethnographique de Bruxelles. The collection consisted of 730 items “que le Profesor de Prehistoria de este Museo […] juzga non solo única, por su importancia y rareza, sino indispensable para la enseñanza de su clase, que carece en absoluto de arsenal prehistórico”. The museum was notified of the Ministry’s approval a few days later (Archivo histórico del Museo nacional de Antropología, vol. 267, 10495). But the archives remain silent on the follow-up to the transaction.
However, the objects that I was able to see or that feature in the MNCM’s inventories bear significant indications. They suggest that pieces arrived from Belgium in relation to Engerrand’s teachings and ideas and strongly point at the Brussels Comptoir ethnographique as the provider.
Many of these objects come from sites that were emblematic of the research carried out by Belgian prehistorians in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, such as the Trou de Chaleux, Spiennes, Boncelles and Mesvin. However, unlike sites such as La Madeleine or Solutré in France, these Belgian sites were not subsequently considered to have played a key role in the development of the discipline. Several, such as Boncelles, present a questionable stratigraphy.
In addition to the name of the site, these objects bear an indication referring to industries whose names were coined by Belgian prehistorians and adopted by Aimé Rutot (Fig. 2). In the Spanish translation of his 1905 work, Nociones de la primeras edades de la humanidad, Engerrand endorsed this vocabulary (more clearly than in the French version, since these names were not accepted in France). He adopted the divisions proposed by his friend Rutot to designate certain ancient prehistoric cultures, based on the names of Belgian sites, for example “Mesvinian” (Mesvin site) or “Strepyen” (Strepy site) (Fig. 3).

Figure 2 – Flint tool marked “Bergerac, Strepyen”, MNCM @photo by the author.
These names associated with Rutot were also used in the outline of the prehistory course given in Mexico City. Coined by Belgian prehistorians, they were not adopted by the majority of the international scientific community. Most of them were abandoned between the two world wars.

Figure 3 – Table of prehistoric industries according to Rutot, reproduced in Engerrand’s Nociones de la primeras edades de la humanidad (1905).
Moreover, the content of the remaining series at the MNCN reveals that 53% of the stone tools came from Belgian sites, and more than 80% from sites listed in the catalogue of the Comptoir ethnographique de Belgique for 1909 (Fig. 4). This specialized shop was owned by Louis Exsteens, a dealer in Brussels who was close to the prehistorian Aimé Rutot and sold series organized according to his classification.

Figure 4 – Collections on sale at the Comptoir ethnographique de Bruxelles in 1909.
Conclusion
Although it leaves a number of questions unanswered, this paper shows that the Nacional Museum of Mexico bought a collection of European prehistoric artefacts in 1909 from a specialized dealer, in order to complete its collections and provide specimens in relation to the creation of a new course on prehistory. This story is emblematic of the reasons that may have fostered the circulation of prehistoric series from Europe to Latin America before the First World War. It underlines the importance of a flow of archaeological objects that is the reverse of the one most often studied by historians of science and collections.
These objects arriving in the Mexican collections testify of the European conception of prehistory as a global phenomenon, whose traces were likely to be discovered all over the world under similar typological forms. In the Americas, such traces had been discovered at an early stage in the United States, where they fuelled heated controversy over their dating, and in Argentina, where the ideas of Fiorentino Ameghino were debated (Meltzer 1983, Podgorny 2015). In Mexico, the assumption of the existence of lithic industries that predated ceramic cultures emerged more strongly at the beginning of the 20th century. In this context, the creation of reference collections, allowing for typological comparisons between American and European objects, was a crucial issue, as shown by the example of Georges Engerrand.
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Acknowledgements
I would like to thank the teams at the Museo Nacional de las Culturas del Mundo and the Museo de Geología de la UNAM for their support and assistance with this research.