268 



CHAPTER IX. 



t)N THE ANTIQUITY OF MAN. 



WHILE we have been straining our eyes to the East, 

 and eagerly watching excavations in Egypt and 

 Assyria, suddenly a new light has arisen in the midst of us ; 

 and the oldest relics of man yet discovered have occurred, 

 not among the ruins of Nineveh or Heliopolis, not on the 

 sandy plains of the Nile or the Euphrates, but in the pleasant 

 valleys of England and France, along the banks of the Seine 

 and the Somme, the Thames and the Waveney. 



So unexpected were these discoveries, so irrecancileable 

 with even the greatest antiquity until lately assigned to the 

 human race, that they were long regarded with neglect and 

 suspicion. M. Boucher de Perthes, to whom we are so Much 

 indebted for this great step in the history of mankind, ob- 

 served, as long ago as the year 1841, in some sand con- 

 taining mammalian remains, at Menchecourt, near Abbeville, 

 a flint, rudely fashioned into a cutting instrument. In the 

 following years other weapons were found under similar 

 circumstances, and especially during the formation of the 

 Champ de Mars at Abbeville, where a large quantity of 

 gravel was moved and many of the so-called " hatchets" were 

 discovered. In the year 1846 M. Boucher de Perthes pub- 

 lished his first work on the subject, entitled "De 1'Industrie 

 Primitive, ou les Arts et leur Origine." In this he announced, 



