6o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



DIFFICULTIES OF DEVELOPMENT AS APPLIED TO 



MAN. 1 



By ALFEED EUSSEL WALLACE, F. E. S. 



AS my own knowledge of and interest in anthropology are con- 

 fined to the great outlines, rather than to the special details 

 of the science, I propose to give a very brief and general sketch of the 

 modern doctrine as to the Antiquity and Origin of Man, and to sug- 

 gest certain points of difficulty which have not, I think, yet received 

 sufficient attention. 



Many now present remember the time (for it is little more than 

 twenty years ago) when the antiquity of man, as now understood, was 

 universally discredited. Not only theologians, but even geologists, 

 then taught us that man belonged altogether to the existing state of 

 things ; that the extinct animals of the Tertiary period had finally dis- 

 appeared, and that the earth's surface had assumed its present con- 

 dition, before the human race first came into existence. So prepos- 

 sessed were even scientific men with this idea which yet rested on 

 purely negative evidence, and could not be supported by any argu- 

 ments of scientific value that numerous facts which had been pre- 

 sented at intervals for half a century, all tending to prove the exist- 

 ence of man at very remote epochs, were silently ignored ; and, more 

 than this, the detailed statements of three distinct and careful observ- 

 ers were rejected by a great scientific society as too improbable for 

 publication, only because they proved (if they were true) the coexist- 

 ence of man with extinct animals ! 2 



But this state of belief in opposition to facts could not long con- 

 tinue. In 1859 a few of our most eminent geologists examined for 

 themselves into the alleged occurrence of flint implements in the 

 gravels of the north of France, which had been made public fourteen 

 years before, and found them strictly correct. The caverns of Devon- 

 shire were about the same time carefully examined by equally eminent 

 observers, and were found fully to bear out the statements of those 

 who had published their results eighteen years before. Flint imple- 

 ments began to be found in all suitable localities in the south of Enej- 

 land, when carefully searched for, often in gravels of equal antiquity 

 with those of France. Caverns, giving evidence of human occupation 



1 From the opening address of Mr. Wallace, as President of the Biological Section of 

 the British Association for the Advancement of Science, given at its recent meeting in 

 Glasgow. 



8 In 1854 (?) a communication from the Torquay Natural History Society, confirming 

 previous accounts by Mr. Godwin-Austen, Mr. Vivian, and the Eev. Mr. McEnery, that 

 worked flints occurred in Kent's Hole, with remains of extinct species, was rejected as 

 too improbable for publication.- 



