Antiquity of Man

One of the most stoutly contested doctrines in geology. The traditional few you sand years a igned to man's existence became an article of belief to scientists and theologians alike. Isolated discoveries indicating a greater antiquity were ignored or impugned. But in spite of the opposition even of geologists, the facts continued to multiply. Schmerling at Liège and MacEnery at Torquay boldly a erted the contemporaneity of man with animals now extinct. But their words fell on deaf ears. Boucher de Perthes for nearly twenty years collected from the gravels at Abbeville irrefutable evidence of man's antiquity in the valley of the Somme. But, wrote Lyell, "the scientific world had no faith in his statements that works of art had been found in undisturbed beds of such antiquity with the bones of the mammoth and rhinoceros." It was not until Falconer, Prestwich, Lyell himself, Evans, Gaudry, and others, had visited the spot and seen the evidence for themselves, that they became convinced. Since that time Pengelly's researches in Kent's Cavern have placed the doctrine beyond further question. Not only was man the companion of the mammoth, mastodon, Irish elk, and other post-glacial animals now extinct, but there is little room to doubt that his origin extends into preglacial times in the Old World and must be sought in the later Pliocene fauna. It is even thought by some that his most distant pithecoid ancestor worthy of the name of man may belong to a fauna as old as the early Pliocene. Of this however there is at present no direct evidence, while Man in the Miocene is certainly a scientific myth.