HUMAN JAW, ETC., OP MOULIN-QUIGNON. 



601 



XXV. ON THE EVIDENCE IN THE CASE OF THE 

 CONTEOVEETED HUMAN JAW AND FLINT- 

 IMPLEMENTS OF MOULIN-QUIGNON. 1 



The published proces-verbaux embody the leading points of 

 the evidence brought out during the investigation by the 

 late Conference, 2 held in Paris and at Abbeville, on the cir- 



1 The MS. of this essay was found 

 among Dr. Falconer's papers. — [Ed.] 



2 It may be useful to give here a brief 

 resume of the circumstances which led to 

 the meeting of the Conference. Fash- 

 ioned flint-weapons, unquestionably of 

 very remote antiquity and as certain 

 proofs of human agency as the watch in 

 the illustration of Paley, had turned 

 up in surprising abundance in the old 

 gravel-beds of Amiens and Abbeville, 

 but not a vestige of the bones of the men 

 who shaped them into form. Why it 

 should be so was a mystery, for human 

 bones are as enduring as those of deer, 

 horse, sheep, or oxen, and fossil bones of 

 extinct animals were not unfrequent in 

 the Somme Valley deposits. At last it 

 was thought that the objects so long 

 sought for in vain had been discovered. 

 To pass over minor incidents, on 

 March 23, 1863, a terrassier brought to 

 M. de Perthes, from the bottom of the 

 gravel-pit of Moulin-Quignon, two flint 

 haches and a fragment of bone, which, 

 on detaching the dark matrix enveloping 

 it, he found to be a human tooth. On 

 March 28, M. de Perthes was summoned 

 to the same gravel-pit (described by Mr. 

 Prestwich in his memoir in the ' Philo- 

 sophical Transactions') to examine in 

 situ what appeared to be a portion of 

 bone projecting from the section, close 

 to its base. The specimen was carefully 

 detached with his own hands by M. de 

 Perthes, and proved to be the entire half 

 of an adult human lower jaw, quite per- 

 fect, and containing one back tooth — 

 namely, the penultimate, or last but one. 

 The sockets of the other teeth were all 

 present, and filled with matrix, with the 

 exception of the antepenultimate, the 

 socket of which was effaced, the tooth 

 having been lost during life. The soli- 



tary molar present was hollow from 

 caries, and this hollow was also filled 

 with the matrix. 



The deposit from which the jaw was 

 extracted was the ' black seam flinty 

 gravel,' so called from its intensely dark 

 (blueish-black) colour, arising from ox- 

 ides of iron and manganese. It rested 

 immediately upon the chalk, and be- 

 longed to what Mr. Prestwich calls the 

 'high level' series, being the oldest of 

 the Somme Valley beds. A thin layer 

 of black mangano-ferruginous clayey 

 matter was interposed betwepn the chalk 

 and the gravel. If the jaw had proved 

 to be an authentic fossil, and had come 

 out of the alleged position, it indicated 

 the existence of man, by an actual bone, 

 at a period of extremely remote anti- 

 quity. A single detached human molar 

 was found at the same time, correspond- 

 ing exactly in appearance and in the 

 matrix with which it was covered ; and, 

 to complete the case, a flint hatchet, co- 

 vered with black matrix, was extracted 

 from the same spot by M. Oswald Dim- 

 pre, who accompanied M. de Perthes. 

 The details were all given by M. de 

 Perthes in the ' Abbevillois' of April 9, 

 1863, and in a note communicated to 

 the Academy of Sciences on April 20. 



Mr. Prestwich, Mr. Evans, and Dr. 

 Falconer were in France at the time, and 

 hearing of the asserted discovery, they 

 determined to visit Abbeville. The two 

 former proceeded there on April 13, 

 when their suspicions were instantly 

 aroused. They pronounced the haches 

 said to have been yielded by the ' couche 

 noire ' to be modern fabrications. Dr. 

 Falconer followed a day later, when they 

 had left, and also got several haches from 

 the 'black-seam gravel,' which, upon 

 closely examining them upon his return 



