1892.] Importance of Prehistoric Anthropology. 681 
IMPORTANCE OF THE SCIENCE AND OF THE 
DEPARTMENT OF PREHISTORIC 
ANTHROPOLOGY. 
By THomas WILsoN. 
Prehistoric Anthropology is a new science. During the past 
eighteen hundred years the Christian, and consequently the 
civilized world, has, until the beginning of the nineteenth 
century, lived on in the belief that man’s appearance upon 
earth dated no more than 4,000 years before the commencement 
of our era, and it was without knowledge of the prehistoric 
man, nor did it have a suspicion of his existence. 
The wise men of Denmark in the early part of the nineteenth 
century, while studying the characters engraved on their runic 
stones and the legends in their sagas, discovered evidences of 
a human occupation of their country earlier than any of which 
they had heretofore known or suspected. This occurred about 
1806, and in 1836 Mr. Thompson, the renowned Danish arch- 
eeologist (who founded and for fifty years directed the prehis- 
toric museums at Copenhagen), published his first memoir in 
regard to prehistoric civilizations, which he named after the 
material principally employed for cutting implements, “The 
Ages of Stone, Bronze and Iron.” These divisions have ever 
since been universally accepted. : 
In 1854 Dr. Ferdinand Keller recognized at Meilen, on Lake 
Zürich, Switzerland, certain evidences which developed into 
our present knowledge of the Swiss Lake Dwellers, although 
it has since been proved that lake-dwellings existed in many 
other countries in Europe. 
Beginning with 1841 M. Boucher de Perthes, residing at 
Abbeville on the river Somme, discovered certain flint imple- 
ments rudely chipped in the shape of an almond or peach 
stone with the cutting-edge at the point. He had found them 
deep in the gravelly terraces of the river Somme, and in such 
position and association as to force the conclusion that they 
