(Buenos Aires) 12 (1969–1970): 199–245. For a comparison
of these elements with those contained in the anthropogonies
of the Gran Chaco, see Edgardo J. Cordeu’s and my “En
torno a algunas coherencias formales de las antropogonías del
Chaco y Patagonia,” Relaciones de la Sociedad Argentina de
Antropología 5 (1970): 3–10. An interesting literary analysis
that excerpts an episode from the cycle of Elal and reformu-
lates it in its context was done by Juan Adolfo Vázquez in
“Nacimiento e infancia de Elal: Mitoanalisis de un texto Te-
huelche meridional,” Revista iberoamericana (Pittsburgh) 95
(April–June 1976): 201–216. For a typological-comparative
analysis of the deities and hierophanies and a summary expo-
sition of the rites of passage and shamanistic and witchcraft
conceptions and practices, see my “Hierofanias y concep-
ciones mítico-religiosas de los Tehuelches meridionales,”
Runa: Archivo para las ciencias del hombre 12 (1969–1970):
247–271. Carlos J. Gradin makes many valid suggestions on
the magico-religious meaning of southern Patagonian ru-
pestrian art in “A propósito del arte rupertre en Patagonia
meridional,” Anales de arqueología y etnología (Cuyo, Argenti-
na) 26 (1971): 111–116. A reconstruction of the mythico-
religious components of the Aónikenk habitat can be found
in my own “Aspectos mítico-religiosos de los Tehuelches me-
ridionales (Aonik’enk): El Habitat,” Boletín del Centro Argen-
tino de Estudios Americanos (Buenos Aires) 1 (January–April
1968): 49–54.New Sources
Aguerre, Ana M. Las Vidas de Panti: En la Tolderia Tehuelche del
Rió Pinturas y el Despues, Provincia de Santa Cruz, Argentina.
Buenos Aires, 2000.
Bernal, Irma, and Mario Sánchez Proaño. Los Tehuelches y otros
cazadores australes. Buenos Aires, 1988.
Casamiquela, Rodolfo M. En pos del Gaulicho. Rio Negros, 1988.
McEwan, Colin, Luis A. Borrero, and Alfredo Prieto. Patagonia:
Natural History, Prehistory, and Ethnography at the Uttermost
End of the Earth. London, 1997.
Nacuzzi, Lidia R. Identidades impuestas: Telhuelches, Aucas y Pam-
pas en el norte de la Patagonia. Buenos Aires, 1998.
Pérez Bugallo, Rubén. Pillantun, estudios de etno-organología pata-
gónica y pampeano. Buenos Aires, 1993.
ALEJANDRA SIFFREDI (1987)
Translated from Spanish by Erica Meltzer
Revised Bibliography
TEILHARD DE CHARDIN, PIERRE. Pierre
Teilhard de Chardin (1881–1955), a French Jesuit, was a
distinguished scientist of human origins, a Christian mystic,
and a prolific religious writer. Prohibited by his church from
publishing any nonscientific works, his philosophical and
theological writings were printed only after his death, though
they circulated clandestinely before. His major opus, Le
Phénomène humain, appeared in 1955 and was an immediate
best-seller. The English translation, introduced by Julian
Huxley, was titled The Phenomenon of Man (1959), later
more accurately retranslated as The Human Phenomenon
(1999). Throughout his life, Teilhard de Chardin reflected
on the meaning of Christianity in the light of modern sci-
ence, especially in relation to evolution. He was concerned
with the social, cultural, and spiritual evolution of human-
kind, as well as the place of religion, spirituality, and mysti-
cism in an increasingly global society marked by pluralism
and convergence. Some of his thoughts parallel those of the
Hindu evolutionary thinker Sri Aurobindo.
BIOGRAPHY. Born on May 1, 1881, in Sarcenat near Cler-
mont-Ferrand, France, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin was the
fourth of eleven children of an ancient aristocratic family of
the Auvergne. His father was a gentleman farmer with scien-
tific and literary interests; his mother was a great-grandniece
of Voltaire. Brought up in a traditional Catholic milieu
marked by a vibrant faith, Teilhard’s pantheistic and mysti-
cal leanings were already evident in childhood. His devout
mother shared his interest in mysticism, whereas his father
encouraged the collection of fossils, stones, and other speci-
mens, laying the foundations for his son’s future scientific
career.After an excellent education at a Jesuit boarding school,
Teilhard entered the Jesuit novitiate at the age of eighteen.
Deeply torn between an equally passionate love for God and
the natural world, he resolved his crisis of faith by realizing
that the search for spiritual perfection could be combined
with that for scientific understanding. When the Jesuits were
exiled from France, he continued his theological studies at
Hastings in the South of England (1902–1905; 1908–1912),
where he was ordained in 1911. From 1905 to 1908 he
taught physics and chemistry to mainly Muslim pupils at a
Jesuit school in Cairo. There he first discovered his great at-
traction to the desert and the East, leading him later to write
with great lyrical beauty about cosmic and mystical life, cul-
minating in his spiritual classics “Mass on the World” (1923)
and The Divine Milieu (1927).
Henri Bergson’s Creative Evolution (1907), which saw
the world immersed in an immense stream of evolutionary
creation, revealed to Teilhard the meaning of evolution for
the Christian faith. Overflowing with the presence of the di-
vine, the living world was experienced by Teilhard as an all-
encompassing cosmic, mystical, and “divine milieu.” These
deeply mystical experiences were followed by scientific
studies in Paris, interrupted by World War I, during which
Teilhard served as a stretcher-bearer in a North African regi-
ment at the Western Front. Living through the fiercest bat-
tles, miraculously never wounded, he found himself part of
a pluralistic “human milieu,” which led him to speculate
about the growing oneness of humanity. These reflections
grew later into the new idea of the “noosphere” (sphere of
mind), an immense web of inter-thinking and interaction
that connects people around the globe, hailing a new stage
in human evolution. Almost daily encounters with death
moved Teilhard to leave an “intellectual testament,” com-
municating his vision of the world, which in spite of its tur-
moil he saw as animated by and drawn towards God. He
began to write a series of stirring essays, published posthu-9032 TEILHARD DE CHARDIN, PIERRE