Discovery of human antiquity
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The discovery of human antiquity was a major achievement of science in the middle of the 19th century, and the foundation of scientific
Controversy was very active in this area in parts of the 19th century, with some dormant periods also. A key date was the 1859 re-evaluation of archaeological evidence that had been published 12 years earlier by
In 1863
Contemporary formulations
Modern science has no single answer to the question of how old humanity is. What the question now means indeed depends on choosing
The genus Homo is now estimated to be about 2.3 to 2.4 million years old, with the appearance of H. habilis;[1] meaning that the existence of all types of humans has been within the Quaternary.
Once the question is reformulated as dating the transition of the evolution of
Historical debates
Discovering the age of the first human is one facet of
The first strong scientific arguments for the antiquity of man as very different from accepted
For a period, once the scale of
Theological debates
The Biblical account included
- the story of the Garden of Eden and the descent of humans from a single couple;
- the story of the universal biblical Flood, after which all humans descended from Noah and his wife, and all animals from those saved in the Ark;
- genealogies providing in theory a way of dating events in the Old Testament (see Genealogy of the Bible).
These points were debated by scholars as well as theologians. Biblical literalism was not a given in the medieval and early modern periods, for Christians or Jews.
Human origins and the "universal deluge" debated
The Flood could explain extinctions of species at that date, on the hypothesis that the Ark had not contained all species of animal. A Flood that was not universal, on the other hand, had implications for the biblical theory of races and Noah's sons. The theory of catastrophism, which was as much secular as theological in attitude, could be used in analogous ways.
There was interest in matters arising from modification of the biblical narrative, therefore, and it was fuelled by the new knowledge of the world in early modern Europe, and then by the growth of the sciences. One hypothesis was of people not descended from Adam. This hypothesis of polygenism (no unique origin of humans) implied nothing on the antiquity of man, but the issue was implicated in counter-arguments, for monogenism.
La Peyrère and the completeness of the Biblical account
Debate on race
The biblical narrative had implications for
Already in the 18th century polygenism was applied as a theory of race (see
Incompatible views of chronology
The
One of the considerations detected in La Peyrère by
Creation of man in a world not ready
While extinction of species came with the development of geology to be widely accepted in the early 19th century, there was resistance on theological grounds to extinctions after the creation of man. It was argued, in particular in the 1820s and 1830s, that man would not be created into an "imperfect" world as far as design of its collection of species was concerned. This reasoning cut across that which was conclusive for the science of the antiquity of man, a generation later.[20]
Archaeological context
The late 18th century was a period in which French and German caves were explored, and remains taken for study:
The three-age system was in place from about 1820, in the form given to it by Christian Jürgensen Thomsen in his work on the collections that became the National Museum of Denmark. He published his ideas in 1836.[13] Postulating cultural change, in itself and without explaining a rate of change, did not generate reasons to revise traditional chronology.[23] But the concept of Stone Age artifacts became current. Thomsen's book in Danish, Ledetraad til Nordisk Oldkyndighed, was translated into German (Leitfaden zur Nordischen Alterthumskunde, 1837), and English (Guide to Northern Archæology, 1848).[24][25]
The debate moved on only in the context of
- further stone toolsthat were admitted to be made by Stone Age man, found
- on sites where the stratigraphy could be argued to be clear and undisturbed, with
- remains of animals that were (in the consensus of palaeontologists) now extinct.
It was this combination, "extinct faunal remains" + "human artifacts", that provided the evidence that came to be seen as crucial. A sudden acceleration of research was seen from mid-1858, when the
Debate on uniformity and change
On the one hand, lack of uniformity in prehistory is what gave science traction on the question of the antiquity of man; and, on the other hand, there were at the time theories that tended to rule out certain types of lack of regularity. John Lubbock outlined in 1890 the way the antiquity of man had in his time been established as derived from change in prehistory: in fauna, geography and climate.[31] The hypotheses required to establish that these changes were facts of prehistory were themselves in tension with the uniformitarianism that was held to by some scientists; therefore the protean concept "uniformitarianism" was adjusted to accommodate the past changes that could be established.
Zoological uniformity on earth was debated already in the early eighteenth century.
Uniformitarianism held the field against the competitor theories of
Glacial conditions
The identification of ice ages was important context for the antiquity of man because it was accepted that certain mammals had died out with the last of the ice ages which were clearly marked in the geological record. Georges Cuvier's Recherches sur les ossements fossiles de quadrupèdes (1812) had accepted facts of the extinctions of mammals that were to be relevant to human antiquity. The concept of an ice age was proposed in 1837 by Louis Agassiz, and it opened the way to the study of glacial history of the Quaternary. William Buckland came to see evidence of glaciers in what he had taken to be remains of the biblical Flood. It seemed adequately proved that the woolly mammoth and woolly rhinoceros were mammals of the ice ages, and had ceased to exist with the ice ages: they inhabited Europe when it was tundra, and not afterwards. In fact such extinct mammals were typically found in diluvium as it was then called (distinctive gravel or boulder clay).
Given that the animals were associated with these strata, establishing the date of the strata could be by geological arguments, based on uniformity of stratigraphy; and so the animals' extinction was dated. An extinction can still strictly only be dated on assumptions, as evidence of absence; for a particular site, however, the argument can be from local extinction.
Neither Agassiz nor Buckland adopted the new views on the antiquity of man.
Acceptance of human association with extinct animal species
Boucher de Perthes had written up discoveries in the
This debate was concurrent with that over the book
List of key sites for the 19th century debate
Site | Date(s) | Investigators | Findings and contemporary view | Image |
---|---|---|---|---|
Kingsbridge, London, England | 1671 | John Conyers | Gray's Inn Lane Hand Axe, mammoth teeth; theories about Roman elephants, not accepted by Conyers | |
Hoxne, Suffolk, England | 1797 | John Frere | Handaxes. Published by the Society of Antiquaries, but the bones and shells remained unidentified.[26][40] | |
Goat's Hole Cave, Gower Peninsula, Wales | 1823 | William Buckland | "Red Lady of Paviland", mammoth remains | |
Kents Cavern, Devon, England | 1824 | Thomas Northmore; John MacEnery; William Pengelly | ||
Bize-Minervois, France | 1827 | Paul Tournal | Paul Tournal (1805–1872), who became a pharmacist, investigated cave deposits in the Narbonne area. He used the neologism anté-historique.[41] He found human remains with those of extinct animals, communicated with Georges Cuvier, and was met with incomprehension.[42] | |
Pondres, Gard, France | 1828 | Jules de Christol[43] | Jules de Christol (1802–1861) found caves filled with mud and gravel, containing bones of hyaena, rhinoceros and humans. The contemporary deposition of bones was not accepted, by a commission under Cuvier; and pottery was found lower.[44] | |
Engis, Belgium | 1829 | Philippe-Charles Schmerling | ||
Saint-Acheul, Amiens, France | 1847 | Boucher de Perthes
|
Acheulean handaxes
|
|
Brixham Cave, Devon , England
|
1858 | William Pengelly | ||
Aurignac, France | 1860 | Édouard Lartet | ||
Vézère valley, Dordogne, France | 1863 | Édouard Lartet, Henry Christy |
Further issues
Antiquity of man in the New World
Tertiary Man
When the science was considered reasonably settled as to the existence of "Quaternary Man" (humans of the Pleistocene), there remained the issue as to whether man had existed in the Tertiary, a now obsolete term used for the preceding geological period. The debate on the antiquity of man resonated in the later debate over eoliths, which were supposed proof of the existence of man in the Pliocene (during the Neogene). In this case the sceptical view won out.[45]
Publications
Publications of the central years of the debate
- Édouard Lartet, The Antiquity of Man in Western Europe (1860)
- ——, New Researches on the Coexistence of Man and of the Great Fossil Mammifers characteristic of the Last Geological Period (1861)
- Charles Lyell, Geological Evidences of the Antiquity of Man (1863). It was a major synthesis that discussed the issue of human antiquity, in parallel with the further issues of the Ice Ages and human evolution that promised to throw light on the origins of man.
- Evidence as to Man's Place in Nature(1863)
- Alfred Russel Wallace, The Origin of Human Races and the Antiquity of Man Deduced from the Theory of 'Natural Selection' (1864)
- James Geikie, The Great Ice Age and its Relation to the Antiquity of Man (1874).
Publications of the latter stages of the debate
- John Patterson MacLean, A Manual of the Antiquity of Man (1877)
- James Cocke Southall,[46] The Epoch of the Mammoth and the Apparition of man upon the Earth (1878)
- William Boyd Dawkins, Early Man in Britain and His Place in the Tertiary Period (1880)
- Richard Owen, Antiquity of Man as deduced from the Discovery of a Human Skeleton during Excavations of the Docks at Tilbury (1884)
- George Frederick Wright, The Ice Age in North America, and its Bearings upon the Antiquity of Man (1889)
- George Grant MacCurdy, Recent Discoveries Bearing on the Antiquity of Man in Europe (1910)
- George Frederick Wright, Origin and Antiquity of Man (1912)
- Arthur Keith, The Antiquity of Man (1915)
See also
- Tool use by animals
- List of first human settlements
References and sources
- References
- ^ James C. Kaufman, Robert J. Sternberg, The Cambridge Handbook of Creativity (2010), p. 280; Google Books.
- S2CID 20296624. Archived from the originalon 3 October 2012. Retrieved 1 May 2011.
- ^ "'Modern' Behavior Began 40,000 Years Ago In Africa", Science Daily, July 1998
- ^ Systematic Theology, vol. 2 § 3. Antiquity of Man.
- Popular Science Monthly.
- Popular Science Monthly.
- ^ Such as the Catholic Hebraist Richard Simon, the Calvinists Samuel Maresius, Johannes Hoornbeek, and Gisbertus Voetius, and the Lutherans Abraham Calovius, Johannes Andreas Quenstedt, and David Hollazius.
- ^ a b c Herbermann, Charles, ed. (1913). Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company. .
- ^ Giordano Bruno, Jacob Palaeologus, Paracelsus, Gabriel de Foigny, and possibly Thomas Harriot and Christopher Marlowe; with some Familists, Ranters and Diggers. Philip C. Almond, Adam and Eve in Seventeenth-century Thought (1999), pp. 49–52; Google Books.
- ^ William Poole, The World Makers: Scientists of the Restoration and the Search for the Origins of the Earth (2009), p. 29; Google Books.
- ^ Philip C. Almond, Adam and Eve in Seventeenth-century Thought (1999), p. 58; Google Books.
- doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/22776. (Subscription or UK public library membershiprequired.)
- ^ a b Grahame Clark, The Identity of Man: as seen by an archaeologist (1983), p. 48; Internet Archive.
- ^ Edward P. Mahoney, Philosophy and Humanism: Renaissance essays in honor of Paul Oskar Kristeller (1976), p. 51; Google Books.
- Richard Henry Popkin, Isaac La Peyrère (1596-1676): his life, work, and influence (1987), p. 85; Google Books.
- ^ Richard Henry Popkin (editor), The Columbia History of Western Philosophy (2005), p. 413; Google Books.
- Richard Henry Popkin, Isaac La Peyrère (1596-1676): his life, work, and influence (1987), p. 30; Google Books.
- ^ The Polynesians and Their Migrations
- ISBN 978-0-16-004583-7. Retrieved 1 March 2013.
- ^ A. Bowdoin Van Riper, Men among the Mammoths: Victorian science and the discovery of human prehistory (1993), p. 174; Google Books.
- ^ Nicholas A. Rupke, Caves, Fossils, and the History of the Earth, p. 242, in Andrew Cunningham and Nicholas Jardine, Romanticism and the Sciences (2009).
- ^ Theodore Ziolkowski, German Romanticism and Its Institutions (1992), p. 23; Google Books.
- ^ Grahame Clark, Archaeology and Society: reconstructing the prehistoric past (1967), p. 32; Google Books.
- ^ Dermot Anthony Nestor, Cognitive Perspectives on Israelite Identity (2010), p. 48; Google Books.
- ^ Bruce G. Trigger, A History of Archaeological Thought (2000), pp. 78.
- ^ a b Frere, John, "Account of Flint Weapons Discovered at Hoxne in Suffolk"., in Archaeologia, v. 13 (London, 1800): 204–205
- ^ Richard B. Lee, Richard Heywood Daly, The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Hunters and Gatherers (1999), p. 7; Google Books.
- ^ Donald K. Grayson, The Establishment of Human Antiquity (1983), p. 3.
- ^ John G. Evans, The Environment of Early Man in the British Isles (1975), p. 68; Google Books.
- ^ A. Bowdoin Van Riper, Men among the Mammoths: Victorian science and the discovery of human prehistory (1993), pp. 82–3; Google Books.
- ^ John Lubbock, Pre-historic times, as illustrated by Ancient Remains, and the Manners and Customs of Modern Savages (1890), p. 420; Google Books.
- ^ Charles Lyell, Principles of Geology, Volume 2 (1991 reprint), p. 270; Google Books.
- ^ Justin E. H. Smith, Divine Machines: Leibniz and the Sciences of Life (2011), p. 257; Google Books.
- ^ Charles Lyell, Principles of Geology, Volume 1 (1990 reprint), p. xiv; Google Books.
- ^ Joe D. Burchfield, Lord Kelvin and the Age of the Earth (1990), p. 191; Google Books.
- ^ Jack Morrell, John Phillips and the Business of Victorian Science, p. 361; Google Books.
- ^ Henrika Kuklick, New History of Anthropology (2009), p. 263; Google Books.
- ^ Dictionary of National Biography. London: Smith, Elder & Co. 1885–1900. .
- ^ Winfried Henke, Thorolf Hardt, Handbook of Paleoanthropology, Volume 1 (2007), p. 20; Google Books.
- ^ Bruce G. Trigger, A History of Archaeological Thought (2000), pp. 88–9.
- ^ Peter Bogucki, The Origins of Human Society (1999), p. 3; Google Books.
- ^ (in French) Eric Dellong, Narbonne et le narbonnais (2003), p. 62; Google Books.
- ^ Christol, Jules de - La France savante XVIIe-XXe
- ^ Marianne Sommer, Bones and Ochre: the curious afterlife of the Red Lady of Paviland (2007), p. 88; Google Books.
- ^ Marianne Sommer, Bones and Ochre: the curious afterlife of the Red Lady of Paviland (2007), p. 202; Google Books.
- ^ Encyclopedia of Virginia Biography
- Sources
- This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Herbermann, Charles, ed. (1913). "Preadamites". Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company.