178 



CHAPTEE VII. 



1863-1870. 



HUMAN JAW OF ABBEVILLE EOYAL COAL COMMISSION KOYAL 



WATER COMMISSION PRESIDENCY OF THE GEOLOGICAL 



SOCIETY. 



HITHERTO the excavations in the valley of the Somme 

 had yielded a rich harvest of worked flint implements, 

 yet no vestiges of man himself had ever come to light. 

 But on the 9th April 1863 a startling announcement 

 was made by M. Boucher de Perthes in the ' Abbevil- 

 lois,' the local paper of that date. In this he asserted 

 that a workman had found a " human jaw " with flint 

 haches in the Couche noire of the gravel-pit of Moulin 

 Quignon. In a letter of the 14th, from the late Dr 

 W. B. Carpenter, F.R.S., which appeared in the 'Athen- 

 aeum' of the 18th, he remarked: "I may add that 

 the gravel -bed of Moulin Quignon is about 100 feet 

 above the present level of the river, and therefore 

 corresponds in position with the upper Gravels of St 

 Acheul, not with the lower Gravels of Menchecourt, so 

 that if we accept the conclusions of Mr Prestwich as to 

 the relative ages of these Gravels, this human jaw was 

 buried in the deepest, and therefore the oldest, portion 

 of the earliest of those fluviatile deposits." 



