Boucher de Perthes and the Foundations of Prehistoric Archæology

Abstract

PREHISTORIC archæology, being one of the younger among the sciences, has had few opportunities of celebrating centenaries. It is a little more than a hundred years ago that the excavation of Kent's Cavern, Torquay (1825–29), first afforded a warrant for the tentative suggestion that man had lived in some remote past as a contemporary of an extinct mammalian fauna. Until this coexistence was demonstrated conclusively, discussion of the antiquity of man had no solid factual basis of inference on which to proceed. For this reason, Boucher de Perthes, on account of his discoveries of flint implements in the valley of the Somme, derived from geological horizons in which they were shown to be associated with the fossilized remains of extinct mammals, has been regarded as the founder of prehistory, and more especially of that branch of archaeological studies which deals with the industries and cultures of the Old Stone Age.