History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom

by Andrew Dickson White

This heavy, sluggish opposition seemed immovable: nothing that Boucher could do or say appeared to lighten the pressure of the orthodox theological opinion behind it; not even his belief that these fossils were remains of men drowned at the Deluge of Noah, and that they were proofs of the literal exactness of Genesis seemed to help the matter. His opponents felt instinctively that such discoveries boded danger to the accepted view, and they were right: Boucher himself soon saw the folly of trying to account for them by the orthodox theory.

And it must be confessed that not a little force was added to the opposition by certain characteristics of Boucher de Perthes himself. Gifted, far-sighted, and vigorous as he was, he was his own worst enemy. Carried away by his own discoveries, he jumped to the most astounding conclusions. The engravings in the later volume of his great work, showing what he thought to be human features and inscriptions upon some of the flint implements, are worthy of a comic almanac; and at the National Museum of Archaeology at St. Germain, beneath the shelves bearing the remains which he discovered, which mark the beginning of a new epoch in science, are drawers containing specimens hardly worthy of a penny museum, but from which he drew the most unwarranted inferences as to the language, religion, and usages of prehistoric man.

Boucher triumphed none the less. Among his bitter opponents at first was Dr. Rigollot, who in 1855, searching earnestly for materials to refute the innovator, dug into the deposits of St. Acheul—and was converted: for he found implements similar to those of Abbeville, making still more certain the existence of man during the Drift period. So, too, Gaudry a year later made similar discoveries.

But most important was the evidence of the truth which now came from other parts of France and from other countries. The French leaders in geological science had been held back not only by awe of Cuvier but by recollections of Scheuchzer. Ridicule has always been a serious weapon in France, and the ridicule which finally overtook the supporters of the attempt of Scheuchzer, Mazurier, and others, to square geology with Genesis, was still remembered. From the great body of French geologists, therefore, Boucher secured at first no aid. His support came from the other side of the Channel. The most eminent English geologists, such as Falconer, Prestwich, and Lyell, visited the beds at Abbeville and St. Acheul, convinced themselves that the discoveries of Boucher, Rigollot, and their colleagues were real, and then quietly but firmly told England the truth.

And now there appeared a most effective ally in France. The arguments used against Boucher de Perthes and some of the other early investigators of bone caves had been that the implements found might have been washed about and turned over by great floods, and therefore that they might be of a recent period; but in 1861 Edward Lartet published an account of his own excavations at the Grotto of Aurignac, and the proof that man had existed in the time of the Quaternary animals was complete. This grotto had been carefully sealed in prehistoric times by a stone at its entrance; no interference from disturbing currents of water had been possible; and Lartet found, in place, bones of eight out of nine of the main species of animals which characterize the Quaternary period in Europe; and upon them marks of cutting implements, and in the midst of them coals and ashes.

Close upon these came the excavations at Eyzies by Lartet and his English colleague, Christy. In both these men there was a carefulness in making researches and a sobriety in stating results which converted many of those who had been repelled by the enthusiasm of Boucher de Perthes. The two colleagues found in the stony deposits made by the water dropping from the roof of the cave at Eyzies the bones of numerous animals extinct or departed to arctic regions—one of these a vertebra of a reindeer with a flint lance-head still fast in it, and with these were found evidences of fire.

Discoveries like these were thoroughly convincing; yet there still remained here and there gainsayers in the supposed interest of Scripture, and these, in spite of the convincing array of facts, insisted that in some way, by some combination of circumstances, these bones of extinct animals of vastly remote periods might have been brought into connection with all these human bones and implements of human make in all these different places, refusing to admit that these ancient relics of men and animals were of the same period. Such gainsayers virtually adopted the reasoning of quaint old Persons, who, having maintained that God created the world "about five thousand sixe hundred and odde yeares agoe," added, "And if they aske what God was doing before this short number of yeares, we answere with St. Augustine replying to such curious questioners, that He was framing Hell for them." But a new class of discoveries came to silence this opposition. At La Madeleine in France, at the Kessler cave in Switzerland, and at various other places, were found rude but striking carvings and engravings on bone and stone representing sundry specimens of those long-vanished species; and these specimens, or casts of them, were soon to be seen in all the principal museums. They showed the hairy mammoth, the cave bear, and various other animals of the Quaternary period, carved rudely but vigorously by contemporary men; and, to complete the significance of these discoveries, travellers returning from the icy regions of North America brought similar carvings of animals now existing in those regions, made by the Eskimos during their long arctic winters to-day.(186)

(186) For the explorations in Belgium, see Dupont, Le Temps
Prehistorique en Belgique. For the discoveries by McEnery and Godwin
Austin, see Lubbock, Prehistoric Times, London, 1869, chap. x; also
Cartailhac, Joly, and others above cited. For Boucher de Perthes, see
his Antiquites Celtiques et Antediluviennes, Paris, 1847-'64, vol. iii,
pp. 526 et seq. For sundry extravagances of Boucher de Perthes, see
Reinach, Description raisonne du Musee de St.-Germain-en-Laye, Paris,
1889, vol. i, pp. 16 et seq. For the mixture of sound and absurd results
in Boucher's work, see Cartailhac as above, p. 19. Boucher had published
in 1838 a work entitled De la Creation, but it seems to have dropped
dead from the press. For the attempts of Scheuchzer to reconcile geology
and Genesis by means of the Homo diluvii testis, and similar "diluvian
fossils," see the chapter on Geology in this series. The original
specimens of these prehistoric engravings upon bone and stone may best
be seen at the Archaeological Museum of St.-Germain and the British
Museum. For engravings of some of the most recent, see especially
Dawkin's Early Man in Britain, chap. vii, and the Description du Musee
de St.-Germain. As to the Kessler etchings and their antiquity, see
D. G. Brinton, in Science, August 12, 1892. For comparison of this
prehistoric work with that produced to-day by the Eskimos and others,
see Lubbock, Prehistoric Times, chapters x and xiv. For very striking
exhibitions of this same artistic gift in a higher field to-day by
descendants of the barbarian tribes of northern America, see the very
remarkable illustrations in Rink, Danish Greenland, London, 1877,
especially those in chap. xiv.

As a result of these discoveries and others like them, showing that man was not only contemporary with long-extinct animals of past geological epochs, but that he had already developed into a stage of culture above pure savagery, the tide of thought began to turn. Especially was this seen in 1863, when Lyell published the first edition of his Geological Evidence of the Antiquity of Man; and the fact that he had so long opposed the new ideas gave force to the clear and conclusive argument which led him to renounce his early scientific beliefs.

Research among the evidences of man's existence in the early Quaternary, and possibly in the Tertiary period, was now pressed forward along the whole line. In 1864 Gabriel Mortillet founded his review devoted to this subject; and in 1865 the first of a series of scientific congresses devoted to such researches was held in Italy. These investigations went on vigorously in all parts of France and spread rapidly to other countries. The explorations which Dupont began in 1864, in the caves of Belgium, gave to the museum at Brussels eighty thousand flint implements, forty thousand bones of animals of the Quaternary period, and a number of human skulls and bones found mingled with these remains. From Germany, Italy, Spain, America, India, and Egypt similar results were reported.