Le meilleur ami de l’Homme / les astronomes de l’Antiquity

Question

I tend to get tangled up with possessive "de" but wanted to query why the two capitalised nouns above take de l’ rather than d’? The dog is best friend of "Man" not "a man", and capitalising both nouns implies to me a generalisation or personification: despite that, they don’t seem to be treated as proper nouns in French.

Accepted Answer

Anne, 
the use of the capitals, as proper nouns, confirms the words are used with specific meanings -  ‘ mankind ‘ or similar for ‘ l’Homme ‘, and the ‘ ancient period of gréco -romaine history ‘ for ‘ l’Antiquité ‘. 
See wordreference links below.
https://www.wordreference.com/enfr/man
 https://www.wordreference.com/fren/antiquit%C3%A9

Answer

Bonjour Anne,
To answer your last query, yes, the capitalised H is a key difference:
A dog is Man's best friend = Le chien est le meilleur ami de l'Homme
-> referring to humanity
A dog is the man's best friend = Le chien est le meilleur ami de l'homme
-> referring to a specific man (although this specific turn of phrase is not common - here, you would tend to use a descriptive clause as well, i.e. de l'homme qui vient de passer)
I hope this is helpful.
Bonne journée !

Answer

English and French just don't go in parallel on this matter. Just the way it is, I'm afraid.

Answer

Thanks both. So the capitalised H is the only difference between the French for "A dog is Man's best friend" and  "A dog is the man's best friend"?