Paul Kirchhoff (Hörste, August 17, 1900 - Mexico City, 1972) was a German anthropologist. He was especially known as a researcher for the cultures of Meso-America, a concept introduced by Kirchhoff.
Kirchhoff studied comparative religion and ethnology at the Humboldt University of Berlin and specialized in the indigenous cultures of Mexico. As a communist, he fled Nazi Germany to Mexico in 1936, where he co-founded two years later at the National School of Anthropology and History (ENAH). Kirchhoff developed into one of the most important anthropologists, and introduced the concept of Meso-America in 1943 to identify the cohesion between the cultures of ancient Mexico and the neighboring area of Central America, inspired by it mainly in the United States popular concept of cultural area.
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