René Emile Belloq was born in Marseilles, France to a wealthy wine making family at Forteresse Malevil, and claimed to be a relative of Jean Lafitte. He had at least one sibling, a brother named Claude. Belloq grew up admiring France's most acclaimed archaeologists and made it his mission to become one himself by enrolling at the Sorbonne where a fellow student named Indiana Jones was studying linguistics.