174 TH E EARLIEST MEN 



been obviously shaped by intention for some pur- 

 pose. Let us proceed a stage further, and suppose 

 man shaping his stones so as to become somewhat 

 more serviceable implements than natural pebble 

 or flake. It can hardly be doubted that these first 

 attempts would be so exceedingly like the results of 

 nature's own operations as to render it a very diffi- 

 cult, perhaps an impossible, task to decide whether 

 a given object had been produced by the one 

 agency or the other. Then, however, there comes 

 a stage when the evidence of workmanship be- 

 comes clearer, and in the mind of the expert no 

 sort of doubt is left that the rude fragment of 

 stone which he is examining has been purposely 

 fabricated by the hand of man. Yet even here, 

 when these discoveries were first made, the scien- 

 tific world was exceedingly incredulous. It is not 

 necessary here to detail how Boucher des Perthes, 

 in the middle of the last century, made his classical 

 discoveries of palaeolithic implements at Abbe- 

 ville in France, of the controversy which arose 

 as to the nature of these objects, and of their final 

 acceptance by all men of science. It is as well to 

 bear this history in mind when one is considering 

 other and still unsettled controversies with regard 

 to so-called implements. 



After these preliminary remarks, we may now 

 turn our attention to some of the fragments of 

 stone which have been claimed as the work of 

 man's hands. In 1867 the Abbe Bourgeois discovered 

 at Thenay, near Orleans, broken flints which he 

 believed to be implements of human manufacture. 

 These were in beds of the Upper Oligocene Period, 



