Copenhagen, where he concentrated on reorganizing and presenting the ethnographic collections along the line of a progression of cultures, from the simplest to the more complex technologically, not dissimilar to the way his three-age system worked. In 1841, he opened the collection to the public and thus became responsible for the first public ethnographic museum. He returned to the Museum of National Antiquities, where he had started thirty years earlier, in 1849 as its director.

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Christian Thomsen

(Science Photo)

Tim Murray