In 1730 Mahudel presented a paper to the French Academy of Inscriptions on the so-called "thunder-stones," and also presented a series of plates which showed that these were stone implements, which must have been used at an early period in human history.
In 1778 Buffon, in his Epoques de la Nature, intimated his belief that "thunder-stones" were made by early races of men; but he did not press this view, and the reason for his reserve was obvious enough: he had already one quarrel with the theologians on his hands, which had cost him dear—public retraction and humiliation. His declaration, therefore, attracted little notice.
In the year 1800 another fact came into the minds of thinking men in England. In that year John Frere presented to the London Society of Antiquaries sundry flint implements found in the clay beds near Hoxne: that they were of human make was certain, and, in view of the undisturbed depths in which they were found, the theory was suggested that the men who made them must have lived at a very ancient geological epoch; yet even this discovery and theory passed like a troublesome dream, and soon seemed to be forgotten.
About twenty years later Dr. Buckland published a discussion of the subject, in the light of various discoveries in the drift and in caves. It received wide attention, but theology was soothed by his temporary concession that these striking relics of human handiwork, associated with the remains of various extinct animals, were proofs of the Deluge of Noah.
In 1823 Boue, of the Vienna Academy of Sciences, showed to Cuvier sundry human bones found deep in the alluvial deposits of the upper Rhine, and suggested that they were of an early geological period; this Cuvier virtually, if not explicitly, denied. Great as he was in his own field, he was not a great geologist; he, in fact, led geology astray for many years. Moreover, he lived in a time of reaction; it was the period of the restored Bourbons, of the Voltairean King Louis XVIII, governing to please orthodoxy. Boue's discovery was, therefore, at first opposed, then enveloped in studied silence.
Cuvier evidently thought, as Voltaire had felt under similar circumstances, that "among wolves one must howl a little"; and his leading disciple, Elie de Beaumont, who succeeded, him in the sway over geological science in France, was even more opposed to the new view than his great master had been. Boue's discoveries were, therefore, apparently laid to rest forever.(185)
(185) For the general history of early views regarding stone implements,
see the first chapters in Cartailhac, La France Prehistorique; also
Jolie, L'Homme avant les Metaux; also Lyell, Lubbock, and Evans. For
lightning-stones in China and elsewhere, see citation from a Chinese
encyclopedia of 1662, in Tylor, Early History of Mankind, p. 209. On the
universality of this belief, on the surviving use of stone implements
even into civilized times, and on their manufacture to-day, see ibid.,
chapter viii. For the treatment of Boue's discovery, see especially
Morillet, Le Prehistorique, Paris, 1885, p. 11. For the suppression of
the passage in Montesquieu's Persian Letters, see Letter 113, cited in
Schlosser's History of the Eighteenth Century (English translation),
vol. i, p. 135.
In 1825 Kent's Cavern, near Torquay, was explored by the Rev. Mr. McEnery, a Roman Catholic clergyman, who seems to have been completely overawed by orthodox opinion in England and elsewhere; for, though he found human bones and implements mingled with remains of extinct animals, he kept his notes in manuscript, and they were only brought to light more than thirty years later by Mr. Vivian.
The coming of Charles X, the last of the French Bourbons, to the throne, made the orthodox pressure even greater. It was the culmination of the reactionary period—the time in France when a clerical committee, sitting at the Tuileries, took such measures as were necessary to hold in check all science that was not perfectly "safe"; the time in Austria when Kaiser Franz made his famous declaration to sundry professors, that what he wanted of them was simply to train obedient subjects, and that those who did not make this their purpose would be dismissed; the time in Germany when Nicholas of Russia and the princelings and ministers under his control, from the King of Prussia downward, put forth all their might in behalf of "scriptural science"; the time in Italy when a scientific investigator, arriving at any conclusion distrusted by the Church, was sure of losing his place and in danger of losing his liberty; the time in England when what little science was taught was held in due submission to Archdeacon Paley; the time in the United States when the first thing essential in science was, that it be adjusted to the ideas of revival exhorters.
Yet men devoted to scientific truth laboured on; and in 1828 Tournal, of Narbonne, discovered in the cavern of Bize specimens of human industry, with a fragment of a human skeleton, among bones of extinct animals. In the following year Christol published accounts of his excavations in the caverns of Gard; he had found in position, and under conditions which forbade the idea of after-disturbance, human remains mixed with bones of the extinct hyena of the early Quaternary period. Little general notice was taken of this, for the reactionary orthodox atmosphere involved such discoveries in darkness.