Evolution (Biology); Glacial epoch; Human beings -- Origin; Human evolution
It has naturally been asked, if Man co-existed with the extinct species
of the caves, why were his remains and the works of his hands never
embedded outside the caves in ancient river-gravel containing the same
fossil fauna? Why should it be necessary for the geologist to resort
for evidence of the antiquity of our race to the dark recesses of
underground vaults and tunnels which may have served as places of refuge
or sepulture to a succession of human beings and wild animals, and where
floods may have confounded together in one breccia the memorials of
the fauna of more than one epoch? Why do we not meet with a similar
assemblage of the relics of Man, and of living and extinct quadrupeds,
in places where the strata can be thoroughly scrutinised in the light of
day?
Recent researches have at length demonstrated that such memorials, so
long sought for in vain, do in fact exist, and their recognition is
the chief cause of the more favourable reception now given to the
conclusions which MM. Tournal, Christol, Schmerling, and others, arrived
at thirty years ago respecting the fossil contents of caverns. [12]
A very important step in this new direction was made thirteen years
after the publication of Schmerling's researches, by M. Boucher de
Perthes, who found in ancient alluvium at Abbeville, in Picardy, some
flint implements, the relative antiquity of which was attested by their
geological position. The antiquarian knowledge of their discoverer
enabled him to recognise in their rude and peculiar type a character
distinct from that of the polished stone weapons of a later period,
usually called "celts." In the first volume of his "Antiquites
Celtiques," published in 1847, M. Boucher de Perthes styled these older
tools "antediluvian," because they came from the lowest beds of a series
of ancient alluvial strata bordering the valley of the Somme, which
geologists had termed "diluvium." He had begun to collect these
implements in 1841. From that time they had been annually dug out of the
drift or deposits of gravel and sand, of which fine sections were laid
open from 20 to 35 feet in depth, whenever excavations were made in
repairing the fortifications of Abbeville; or as often as flints were
wanted for the roads, or loam for making bricks. For years previously
bones of quadrupeds of the genera elephant, rhinoceros, bear, hyaena,
stag, ox, horse, and others, had been collected there, and sent from
time to time to Paris to be examined and named by Cuvier, who had
described them in his Ossements Fossiles. A correct account of the
associated flint tools and of their position was given in 1847 by M.
Boucher de Perthes in his work above cited, and they were stated to
occur at various depths, often 20 or 30 feet from the surface, in sand
and gravel, especially in those strata which were nearly in contact with
the subjacent white Chalk. But the scientific world had no faith in
the statement that works of art, however rude, had been met with in
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