Les Hommes Fossiles: Eléments de Paléontologie Humaine

Abstract

ON opening the covers of this magisterial work by Prof. Marcellin Boule, one has the feeling of having entered a court of justice where a severe judge has conveyed to counsel and to witnesses that his cases are to be tried according to the strict law of evidence, and that he will stand no nonsense. All the cases on which is based our conception of the antiquity and origin of man come up for review; judgments are duly given in such clear, unmistakable terms that they carry with them an air of finality. For example, there is the case for eoliths—whether they have been fashioned by the hand of man or by Nature; the judge listens to what Sir E. Ray Lankester and Mr. T. Reid Moir have to say for the worked flints from the Pliocene deposits of East Anglia. A decided verdict is given against them, because, so the judge asserts, it is impossible to tell Nature's handiwork from that of man ! For the learned judge that ancient stone culture known to experts as Chellean, which many archæologists regard as marking a high point in man's skill as a worker in flint, is the earliest that can be attributed to human hands. He admits that there must be preceding and more primitive stone cultures, but Prestwich and Harrison, and also M. Rutot who has espoused the cause of eoliths “by the publication of an avalanche of pamphlets,” were, and are, gravely in error.

Les Hommes Fossiles: Eléments de Paléontologie Humaine.

By Prof. Marcellin Boule. Pp. xi + 491. (Paris: Masson et. Cie, 1921.) 40 francs net.