which all eyes were turned; for there McEnery had found, under a layer
of stalagmite, the remains of men and extinct animals. This remarkable
discovery was followed, in the same year, by the appearance of a work
by Boucher de Perthes, of Abbeville, in which he described the flint
tools, etc., found in the excavations made there and in the Somme
valley as far as Amiens. In 1857 the celebrated Neanderthal skull was
discovered; and in 1858 Prestwich, Falconer, and Pengelly (Englishmen)
found more flint implements in the lower strata of the Baumann cave,
in the Hartz mountains, at the same time that Gosse _fils_ obtained
from the sand-pits of Grenelle various flint implements and bones of
the mammoth; while in the following year Fontan discovered in the cave
of Massat (Ariége) utensils, human teeth, and bones of the cave-bear,
hyæna, and cave-lion. Near Bedford, about the same time, Wyatt found,
in the gravel-beds, flints similar to those found at Abbeville, and
bones of the mammoth, rhinoceros, hippopotamus, ox, horse, and deer;
which discovery was soon followed by that of the celebrated human
burial place at Aurignac, by Lartet, in 1860, in which were found human
remains, together with bones of the bear, reindeer, bison, hyæna, wolf,
mammoth, and rhinoceros, a number of flint and horn implements, and
the remaining ashes of fires. The world was at last induced to give
some heed to the new cry of man’s extreme antiquity when Boucher de
Perthes, of Abbeville, in 1863, discovered at Moulin-Quignon, at a
depth of fifteen feet, in a virgin argilo-ferruginous bed belonging to
the later Pleiocene or early Pleistocene period, the half of a human
lower jaw-bone (which had belonged to an aged person of small stature),
covered with an earthy crust, by the side of which lay a flint hatchet,
covered with the same kind of crust; and not far from which were also
buried, in the same bed, two mammoths’ teeth. After this discovery
scientific men generally subscribed to the new theory of the antiquity
of man, and all seemed eager to pursue their investigations without
delay, the result being that we are now receiving, almost day by day,
fresh evidence on the subject, and hope soon to arrive at a tolerably
accurate conclusion as to the earliest date of man’s appearance upon
earth.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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