Roger Saban (1920–2011), un anatomiste visionnaire

Abstract

Roger Saban, palaeontologist and palaeoanthropologist trained by J. Piveteau, leaves us with more than 200 publications, including Aux origines du langage articulé. He studies the temporal bone as a bone of balance, hearing, and language. He defines the Neuro-Ophthalmic Plane (NOP) with E. Cabanis to define the “primary gaze”; He studies the cranio-vertebral junction to discover the pro-atlas. He focuses on the meningeal circulation and the casts of the endocranial surfaces to examine the emergence of language. For him, the processes of hominization stem from verticalization (strict bipedalism) and craniofacial contraction in a corollary manner, from relationships between the meningeal vessels, from the interhemispheric junction (corpus callosum), and from laryngeal differentiation. These processes are recapitulated during the development of the child within their social group. Roger Saban includes psychological processes in the evolution of language, defined as processes of communication, internalization, and introspection.