Brixham.
The turning point was reached in 1858. During that year a new cave had been discovered while excavating for building foundations at Brixham, on the shores of Torbay, Mr. Pengelly persuaded the owner to grant him a refusal of the lease of the virgin site, and it was submitted to a most careful examination. Thirty-six rude flint implements were discovered in association with the remains of hyænas, cave, brown and grizzly bears, woolly rhinoceros and mammoth, in undisturbed red loam beneath a layer of stalagmite.
This was conclusive evidence. A paper read by Mr. Pengelly at the meeting of the British Association at Leeds, 1858, and supported by such authorities as Charles Lyell, Ramsey, Prestwich,[[93]] Owen, and others, clinched the argument, and the contemporary existence of man with Pleistocene fauna was firmly established.
[93]. “It was not until I had myself witnessed the conditions under which these flint implements had been found at Brixham that I became fully impressed with the validity of the doubts thrown upon the previously prevailing opinions with respect to such remains in caves.”—Prestwich, Phil. Trans. Roy. Soc., 1860.
It was not long before the same concession of the antiquity of man was reached on the Continent.
Boucher de Perthes.
Boucher de Perthes, the son of a distinguished botanist, was early attracted to the work of cave-exploration, and in 1805 and again in 1810 made discoveries of animal bones and of flint implements which he recognised as the work of man. Later on, when extensive excavations for fortifications and railroads were being carried on at Abbeville, he found the same type of implement in situ, and in 1838 submitted some of his discoveries and deductions to the Society of Emulation of Abbeville, of which he was president. The next year he brought the same evidence to Paris and showed his flints to several members of the Institute. In 1847 he published a description of his finds. In 1855 Rigollot,[[94]] by his finds at Amiens, had confirmed the evidence produced by Boucher de Perthes.
[94]. Mémoire sur des Instruments en silex trouvés à St. Acheul près Amiens.
In 1858 Hugh Falconer, the palæontologist, visited Abbeville to see the collection of implements made by Boucher de Perthes, and “became satisfied that there was a great deal of fair presumptive evidence in favour of many of his speculations regarding the remote antiquity of these industrial objects, and their association with animals now extinct.”[[95]] Acting on Falconer’s suggestion, numerous geologists visited Abbeville in the following year, including Sir Joseph Prestwich, Sir John Evans, and Sir Charles Lyell; and Arthur J. Evans, then a boy accompanying his father, had the good fortune to find one of the chipped flints in situ. This established the horizon of the flints beyond question, though there were still some who disputed the human workmanship. The English archæologists and geologists however, had already been convinced by the evidence of the Devonshire caves, and the acceptance of “palæolithic man” on the Continent dates from their visit.
[95]. Palæont. Mem., ii., p. 597.