. Bulletin of the British Museum (Natural History), Geology. 112 THE PROBLEM OF MAN'S ANTIQUITY removing its sandy matrix, Boucher de Perthes found that the " fossil bone " was actually a human tooth. Five days later he was called to the same gravel pit, where he was shown a fragment of bone projecting from a black seam of sandy gravel (couche noire), about 15 feet below the surface, close to the base of the section. On removing this fragment with his own hands, he found it was the left half of a human jawbone, or mandible, with the second molar still in place. The discovery was anno
. Bulletin of the British Museum (Natural History), Geology. 112 THE PROBLEM OF MAN'S ANTIQUITY removing its sandy matrix, Boucher de Perthes found that the " fossil bone " was actually a human tooth. Five days later he was called to the same gravel pit, where he was shown a fragment of bone projecting from a black seam of sandy gravel (couche noire), about 15 feet below the surface, close to the base of the section. On removing this fragment with his own hands, he found it was the left half of a human jawbone, or mandible, with the second molar still in place. The discovery was announced in a local newspaper on April 9th, and Prestwich, Falconer and Evans who happened to be in France at the time decided to visit the site in the following week. Evans and Prestwich arrived first, and their suspicions were immediately aroused. They were convinced that the haches from the black seam of gravel which had yielded the jawbone were modern forgeries. Falconer went later, and his first impression of the jaw was favourable to its being of fossil antiquity, but after returning to London, as soon as he had had an opportunity to scrutinize the material he had taken back with him, doubts arose in his mind. The axes looked spurious, and the isolated molar tooth which he had been allowed to borrow and to saw in half evidently contained a great deal of gelatine. On April 21st, he wrote to Edouard Lartet, who had possession of the jaw, saying that Evans, Prestwich, Busk, and he were opposed to the authenticity of the isolated molar and the haches. Meanwhile news of the discovery of the jaw, assumed to be authentic, had been communicated to the Royal Society in London, and the Academy of Sciences in Paris. On April 25th The Times published a letter from Falconer strongly questioning the authenticity of the haches and the jawbone. This cleavage of opinion resulted in the French savants promptly inviting their English challengers to meet them at a conference in Paris, beginning
Size: 2106px × 1186px
Photo credit: © Book Worm / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No
Keywords: ., bookauthorbritishmuseumnaturalhistory, bookcentury1900, bookcoll
