Agustín Stahl: Natural History and the Prehistoric Human in Puerto Rico

Abstract

Agustín Stahl was a Puerto Rican intellectual of the second half of the nineteenth century. His membership in Puerto Rico‘s intelligentsia is an example of the efforts of a group of lettered men and thinkers that managed to develop scientific institutions and the study of natural history in an adverse colonial setting. Through the analysis of the life and written works of Stahl, this article examines the contributions to the natural sciences of his thirty years of fieldwork collecting and studying Puerto Rican flora, fauna, and archeological specimens. Stahl‘s ambitious goals included the creation of Natural History Museum for didactic and learning purposes and an explanation of the origins of the prehistoric human in Puerto Rico using evolutionary theory.