ANTIQUITY AND ORIGIN OF MAN.
Even after the great antiquity of the earth and its origin and development by a natural process were generally accepted, still man was believed, even by the most competent geologists, to have appeared only a few thousand years ago. The change from this old view took place in the last half of the present century—viz., about 1859—and, coming almost simultaneously with the publication of Darwin's Origin of Species, prepared the scientific mind for entertaining, at least, the idea of man's origin by a natural process of evolution.
Evidences of the work of man—flint implements, associated with the bones of extinct animals and therefore showing much greater age than usually accepted—had been reported from time to time, notably those found in the river Somme by Boucher de Perthes. But the prejudice against such antiquity was so strong that geologists with one accord, and without examination, pooh-poohed all such evidence as incredible. It was Sir Joseph Prestwich who, in 1859, first examined them carefully, and published the proofs that convinced the geological world that early man was indeed contemporaneous with the extinct animals of the Quaternary period, and that the time must have been many times greater than usually allowed.[5]
Since that time confirmatory evidence has accumulated, and the earliest appearance of man has been pushed back first to the late glacial, then to the middle glacial, and finally, in Mr. Prestwich's Plateau Gravels, to the early glacial or possibly preglacial times.
Still, however, in every case earliest man was unmistakably man. No links connecting him with other anthropoids had been found. Very recently, however, have been found, by Du Bois, in Java, the skull, teeth, and thigh bone of what seems to be a veritable missing link, named by the discoverer Pithecanthropus erectus. The only question that seems to remain is whether it should be regarded as an ape more manlike than any known ape, or a man more apelike than any yet discovered. The age of this creature was either latest Pliocene or earliest Quaternary.