Jean-Pierre Bocquet-Appel was one of the very few French anthropologists to make, in the 1980s, a critical retrospective analysis of his discipline, at a time when "physical" anthropology had suddenly become "biological". And this in the specific French context where, with the school of Henri-Victor Vallois, French research has continued much longer than in other countries, the paradigm of raciology and craniometry. We will therefore discuss the role of Jean-Pierre Bocquet-Appel, particularly within the Society of Anthropology of Paris, his argument and his testimony. In a second part we will examine the current mutations of the discipline towards paleogenetics, which, at the same time as undeniable advances in the field of ancient migrations but also kinship relations, sometimes continue to convey old models, with in particular the temptation to identify "culture", "people" and "biology".