The soil of childhood
Theodore Monod was born in Rouen in April 1902, the youngest of 4 boys, in a long line of Protestant pastors. His father was the founder of the Spiritual Brotherhood of the Watchers, and gave him a religious education. When Theodore was 5 years old, his father was appointed to the parish of the Oratory of the Louvre: the whole family moved to Paris, in the5th arrondissement, and Theodore learned by heart the names of the great naturalists, walking around the Jardin des Plantes. Of all the people to whom he gives thanks, his father figure remains in mind, inspiring both in faith and in thought. In an interview, Theodore confided that he regretted that there was no longer a Monod pastor. But if he did not devote himself to the spiritual life, he is a pilgrim, he never stopped walking, proof that the family soil forged his personality.
At 16, he created his own natural history society! Two years later, he entered the Sorbonne to deepen his knowledge, and graduated in geology, zoology and botany. As an intern in the laboratory of fisheries and colonial productions of animal origin at the Museum of Natural History, he went to Port-Étienne, today Nouadhibou, to carry out a study on monk seals, residing in the Cap-Blanc peninsula. At the age of 24, he is a doctor of science.
The "madman of the desert
Nicknamed by journalists, Théodore Monod only became known to the general public at the age of 87, with the release of a film directed by Karel Prokop, The Old Man and the Desert. We then discover the bearded explorer, his skin burned by the Sahara sun, his eyes still full of mischief even if he has become almost blind. No less than 124 trips are listed in his career as a scientist, including the last one in the Adrar in December 1998, at 96 years old! During his expeditions through the desert, Monod leaves accompanied by 2 persons and 5 camels: 3 mounts, and 2 dromedaries carrying 2 tons of material, and 45 liters of water! Sometimes, it is 3 weeks of walking from one well to another, in the sun, in full wind, all day long... His meharées are realized in frugal conditions, even ascetic. Imagine what such expeditions represent in the 1950s, without means of communication nor satellite system! Théodore Monod, however, became a desert man by chance. He arrived very young in Port-Étienne, to study fish. An initiation to the camel life, from Port-Etienne to Saint-Louis (Senegal), is enough for his passion for the Sahara to be born. This initiatory journey is the first of an impressive series. In 1934 and 1935, Théodore Monod embarked on a very large expedition in the Western Sahara, with a fixed point: the region of Chinguetti. He is then in search of a giant meteorite (100 m long and 40 m high!), described by a certain Ripert. A meteorite which turns out to be a fantasy, but which the naturalist uses as a pretext to circulate almost freely in the Sahara! The exploration of the Guelb er Richat, in the Adrar, is made on this occasion: Théodore Monod ventures there the first, and brings a precise description of the geological formation. He then moved on to the Tichit cliff in the Akouer, then near Mali, narrating all this in a book, Le Fer de Dieu.
A versatile scientist
Endurance and a passion for the desert were not the explorer's only qualities... Théodore's discoveries shed new light on Saharan prehistory: in 1927, in Mali, he unearthed the skeleton of Asselar Man, dating from 10,000 to 7,500 years ago! One day, as he was leaving the Adrar for the Tagant, he was attracted by a hill whose shape and color caught his eye: he approached it and discovered kentrolites (minerals composed of manganese and lead), which enabled him to shed light on the stratigraphy of the entire Adrar. In fact, these limestone masses imprison the oldest living organisms in the world! Théodore Monod devoted a thesis to them, which served as the basis for all his subsequent work on West African geology. Through his camel treks, he helped to fill in the gaps in the maps published by the colonists, exploring areas that no white man had visited before him.
In 1938, Théodore founded and ran IFAN in Dakar, the French Institute for Black Africa, until 1965. With some 30,000 samples brought back from his missions (plants, rocks, fossils, crustaceans, insects, etc.), IFAN soon became the largest scientific center in West Africa. His botanical expertise led to the creation of a herbarium containing 5,000 references, and the discovery of 35 plant species! In 1940, he discovered a plant of the gentian family in Tibesti (Chad), named Monodiella Hexuosa. A true botanical Holy Grail!
In 1942, he was appointed Director of the Overseas Fisheries Laboratory at the Museum of Natural History, where he later became a professor. He is even considered the world's greatest ichthyologist, thanks to hundreds of Indian ink drawings! At over 90, he was still detailing the muscular system of parrotfish, and didn't stop working until the end of his life. Several marine species even bear his name, a tribute paid by the scientific world! Examples include the crustaceans Monodanthurea Wägele and Monodaeus Guinot, the fish Monodichthys Chabanaud, the fungus Monodia Breton & Faurel, and the mammal Monodia Heim de Balsac.
A great humanist
In the Courrier de l'Unesco, in 1994, Théodore Monod defended the Tuareg people, whose traditions he feared would disappear: "It is up to the nomads to decide their future. If they want to preserve, as they certainly have the right to do, their historical, cultural or linguistic autonomy, since the Tuareg have a language and even a script He was the witness of a civilization of the desert, today for the most part sedentary. Great scientist, professor, explorer, the man is above all deeply committed and takes position in humanist fights. He was one of the signatories of the Manifesto of 121 on the right to insubordination during the Algerian war, denounced apartheid in South Africa, and defended the animal condition... Irreducible, he even went on a 3-day hunger strike in the Val-d'Oise, at the age of 97, to ask for the abolition of atomic weapons! According to him, "the little we can do, we must do". Involved on all fronts, he nevertheless says he has no illusions.
A lonely writer
From the age of 16, Théodore Monod scribbled in notebooks, later collected by his son Cyrille and published by the Pré aux Clercs. "There is an age when a man feels the need to express his thoughts and feelings; this is the object of this modest journal, a faithful mirror of my mind": Monod spent his life writing, by necessity. Of a profoundly solitary temperament, oral communication is not his forte, nor is sociability. It is not surprising that the desert found him, and that their story was so intense. On the back of a camel, he wrote melancholic poems about the flight of time. Among his numerous works, Méharées is an unclassifiable for those who wish to have an initiatory approach of the Sahara. Lighter, Un thé au clair de lune is an illustrated tale that Théodore sends to his daughter, then aged 4. Poetic and spontaneous, innocent by aspect, this story is an invitation to discover the animals of the desert, and an opening to the other, to all the others.
Saharan memories of an old amateur geologist
This is how Théodore Monod defines himself, in 1986, during a speech to the French Committee of History of Geology. He evokes some memories, modestly as always, and recalls the discoveries made in Mauritania. He then returned to the Adrar, here is a small excerpt: "There is in Aouelloul, a small crater of 250 m in diameter, very clear, on a sandstone plateau ("Oujeft sandstone"), with a transverse structure resembling a little fossil wood. I had first glimpsed it from the air and then looked for it on the ground; I had a lot of trouble finding it, because a crater seen in profile on a plain or on a plateau, it is not a crater that one sees, but a small guelb, a small hill. When I arrived at the crater itself with the Bedouins, they said to me: "If this is what you wanted, you should have told us that you wanted to go to Hofrat Aouelloul, if you had told us the name of this place, we would have taken you there directly". But I did not know the name of this accident. It's a small drop-off point, associated with an impactite, a natural glass in which spherules of kamacite, a meteorite mineral, were eventually found. Aouelloul is therefore a small meteorite fall point, probably not very old because it is still very fresh." One can read, through the words, his frantic desire to know, to find, and the attempt (or temptation?) to understand the world around him. Obviously there are things that he did not see, others that he may have seen wrongly, but the density of his work, his work, his journey, has influenced the entire history of West African geology. "To have spent one's life doing what one wanted to do is extraordinary; and to be paid for it is insolent. It should be forbidden! One can only smile when reading his words, and admire the man, from child to old man, that Theodore Monod was.
