Sir H. H. Howorth—The Earliest Traces of Man. 339 



size. The objects in question were found twelve feet deep in the 

 ground, and Frere, who clearly discriminated them as of human 

 workmanship, says of them, " I think they are evidently weapons of 

 wai", fabricated and used by a people who had not the use of the 

 metals" (Archaologia, xiii, 103). This statement was the first one 

 in which the position was maintained by a scientific person that man 

 had passed through a stage of culture in which he used stone only for 

 his tools and weapons, and when he was still ignorant of the use of 

 metals. Beyond this Frere coukl not of course go. The key to the 

 whole position was not yet available. What it is very important 

 to remember is, that long before the question was sophisticated by 

 discussions about the antiquity or origin of man, and when it was a 

 mere question of discriminating early specimens of human workman- 

 ship, these flint objects from the gravels of the Thames and the 

 so-called diluvial beds of Suffolk were distinctly recognized as 

 having been made by human hands. 



The key necessary to unlock the next difticulty in the progress 

 of discovery was produced by Cuvier in 1813, when he showed that 

 the remains of elephants and other great beasts found in the 

 superficial beds belong to species no longer living. 



This conclusion ought to have been followed by its natural 

 corollary, namely, its application to the discoveries already 

 mentioned, and the admission that man was contemporaneous with 

 the extinct animals ; but the geology of the surface beds (since 

 known as Post-Tertiary and Pleistocene) was still an unexplored 

 pi-ovince of that science ; the discoveries in question were buried and 

 forgotten, and Cuvier, whose researches had been almost entirely 

 confined to the Tertiary beds, where he had chiefly to do with a fauna 

 all of which had passed away, not unnaturally adopted a sceptical 

 attitude in regard to man having lived with animals now extinct. 

 He had met with no examples of the kind himself, and naturally 

 appealed to other explanations when evidence to the contrary which 

 seemed ambiguous was produced. 



Such evidence was, in fact, forthcoming in 1823, when Ami Bou^ 

 brought before the same great anatomist the discovery of some 

 human bones found in the widespread loamy deposit of the Rhine 

 Valley known as loess or lehm. This discovery was made near 

 Lahr. (See Annales cles Sciences Naturelles, 1829-50.) 



When this discovery was brought before Cuvier he refused to 

 accept its testimony. Discussing it in 1831 ("Discours sur les 

 revolutions du globe," p. 29), he says, " Toute porte a croire, que 

 I'espece humaine n'existait point dans les pays ou se decouvrent les 

 ossemens fossiles, a I'epoque des revolutions qui ont enfoui oes os." It 

 can well be believed that such a pronouncement from such a source 

 largely dominated European opinion on the subject, for Cuvier's 

 authority was naturally paramount. 



Tournal, in a communication addressed to the Annales des Sciences 

 Naturelles in October, 1828, says of the caverns at Bize, near 

 Narbonne, " human bones occur in the same beds as the bones of 

 extinct animals, and both exhibit the same chemical and organic 



