The whole question was hotly debated at the Second Congress of Archæology and Prehistoric Anthropology at Paris, in 1867, where l’Abbé Bourgeois (1819-1878), Professor of Philosophy at Blois, exhibited his famous flint implements from Miocene beds at Thenay, near Tours, Loir-et-Cher. These were undoubtedly Miocene beds, but it was open to doubt if the implements were of human origin, and, if so, if they were found in undisturbed positions. At the _Congrès International d’Anthropologie_ at Brussels in 1872 a committee of fifteen was formed to discuss the problem, and opinions were divided. Nine authorities recognised human workmanship (one changed his opinion later); four denied it; one was favourable, but with reserve; and one was unable to decide at all. De Mortillet believed that they had not been made by man himself, but by a semi-human precursor of man, which he named _Homosimius Bourgeoisii_. Other finds of Tertiary man, those of the Upper Miocene, by C. Ribeiro, at Otta, in the Tagus Valley, 1860; of Tardy in the same year, and of Rames in 1877, in beds of the same horizon at Puy-courny, Auvergne; of Capellini, in Pliocene beds of Monte Aperto, near Siena, and of Fritz Noetling in lower Pliocene beds in Burma, 1894, have none of them been received without question, and are still classed by most authorities, as by Sir John Evans in 1870, and again in 1897, as “Not proven.” [Sidenote: =Eoliths.=] Closely connected with the question of Tertiary Man is the “raging vortex of the eolith controversy,” as Sollas describes it. Benjamin Harrison, of Ightham, Kent, first drew attention to these rude chipped flints, which he found in the chalk plateau, and claimed to be of pre-glacial age, and of human origin. Prestwich accepted this view; Evans rejected it, and anthropologists are still divided into opposite camps on the question. Eoliths have since been discovered in various parts of the world, and have merely served to confirm the respective points of view of the partisans on either side. Sollas, after summing up all the evidence, says: “When experts are thus at variance nothing remains for the layman but to preserve an open mind.” These discussions as to the existence of quaternary and Tertiary man would have been settled once for all had actual undoubted human bones been found in any of the beds, but this was rarely the case, and disputants had to rely almost entirely on questionable artifacts. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CHAPTER IX. TECHNOLOGY