318 REPORT OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1889. 



collections) which have heretofore been so much crowded as to do them 

 injustice. The main aisles among the cases are slightly narrower than 

 before, but by the substitution of single for double cases, as heretofore 

 employed, the lateral aisles have been widened so as to afford ample 

 relief against any crowd, however large. I am satisfied that we could 

 manage without crowding the 29,000 persons who visited the museum 

 on the 5th day of March 1889, and that this arrangement of cases is an 

 improvement. 



IMPORTANCE OF THE SCIENCE OF PREHISTORIC ANTHROPOLOGY. 



Prehistoric anthropology is a new science. During the past eighteen 

 hundred years the Christian, and, consequently, the civilized world, has, 

 untilthe beginning of the nineteenth century, lived on in the belief that 

 man's appearauce upon earth dated no more than 4,000 years before the 

 commencement of our era, and was without knowledge of prehistoric 

 man, nor did it have a suspicion of his existence. 



The wise men of Denmark in the early part of the nineteenth century, 

 while investigating and studying the Runic characters and legends 

 engraved upon their ruined stones, and in their sagas, discovered evi- 

 dences of a human occupation of their country earlier than any of which 

 they had heretofore known or suspected. This occurred about 180G, 

 and in 183G Mr. Thompson the renowned Danish archaeologist (who 

 founded, and for fifty years directed, the prehistoric museums at 

 Copenhagen) published his first memoir in regard to prehistoric civili- 

 zation, which he named after the material principally employed for cut- 

 ting implements, "The Ages of Stone, Bronze, and Iron." These divis- 

 ions have ever since been universally accepted. 



In 1854 Dr. Ferdinand Keller recognized at Meilen on Lake Zurich, 

 Switzerland, certain evidences which developed into our present knowl- 

 edge of the Swiss Lake-dwellers, although it has since been proved 

 that lake-dwellings existed in many other countries of Europe. 



Beginning with 1841, M. Boucher de Perthes, residing at Abbeville, 

 on the river Somme, discovered certain flint implements rudely chipped 

 in the shape of an almond or peach-stone, with the cutting edge at the 

 point. He found them deep in the gravelly terraces of the river Somme, 

 and in such position and association as to force the conclusion that fchey 

 were the handiwork of man and of an antiquity before unsuspected. 

 His labors were continued with varying success in the gaining of con- 

 verts until the year 1859, when, by agreement, a committee of fifteen 

 gentlemen, supposed to be best qualified for the task, and in their 

 departments certainly the most learned men of France and England, 

 met on the ground for the purpose of making personal investigations. 

 After discussion, dispute, and difference of opinion, of which I need not 

 speak here, it was finally decided that M. Boucher de Perthes was cor- 

 rect in his theory, and that these implements were the work of man 

 and of an antiquity heretofore unknown. 



