Presenting the Evidence

Abstract

Abstract The next month is a busy time for Evans and Prestwich, who are now back in London, as they fit writing their papers into a hectic business schedule. The importance of two learned societies—the Royal Society and the Society of Antiquaries—is explained, as is the craft of putting together a scientific argument. Prestwich’s original manuscript and the referees’ reports are used to show the process. Evans’s chance discovery of comparable implements to those they had found at St Acheul proves a game changer. They came from Hoxne in Suffolk and had been found, but forgotten, sixty years before. Revolutions rely on chance. Attention is paid to the case they made that stone tools were human rather than natural. Did Evans fall back on his knowledge of numismatics and his recent struggles with a patent law case to convince sceptics that the tools from the Somme were indeed evidence of ancient humans? The language of the flints is all important. As they prepare and present their evidence, the chapter picks up the story of Falconer and his niece, Grace McCall, who were introduced in Abbeville in Chapter 2. They are now in Italy, caught up in the latest phase of the Risorgimento war.