 His 1886 thesis, "Evolução da linguagem" (Evolution of Language) demonstrated an early interest that would come to occupy all his long life.His scientific training had imparted a rigorous and exhaustive investigative discipline to his work, whether in philology, archaeology or ethnography.He began the journals "Revista Lusitana" (1889) and "Arqueólogo Português" (1895), and founded the Museu Etnológico de Belém in 1893.