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Updated: June 2, 2025
The memorable quarrel over the discovery of Boucher de Perthes in the quarry of Moulin-Quignon is not forgotten. The question was whether real hatchets had been found or merely bits of flint accidentally broken. But that, supposing they were hatchets, we were indeed in the presence of intelligence, and more particularly of human intelligence, no one doubted for an instant.
If it be a comparatively modern race, owing its peculiarities of conformation to degeneracy, it is an illustration of what botanists call "atavism," or the tendency of varieties to revert to an ancestral type, which type, in proportion to its antiquity, would be of lower grade. General Position of Drift with extinct Mammalia in Valleys. Discoveries of M. Boucher de Perthes at Abbeville.
The final results of his commercial decrees on the trade of Hamburg were thus described by Perthes, a well-known writer and bookseller of that town: "Of the 422 sugar-boiling houses, few now stood open: the printing of cottons had ceased entirely: the tobacco-dressers were driven away by the Government.
When the battle of Neuve Chapelle had been fought, although its losses were heavy, there was no longer any doubt in the British nation that victory was only a question of time. The action came as a pendant to the attack by General de Langle de Cary's French army during February, 1915, at Perthes, that had been a steady relentless pressure by artillery and infantry upon a strong German position.
In Champagne they captured Perthes in February and made some progress in the Argonne; in the Woevre they nibbled at both sides of the St. Mihiel wedge, while in Alsace they acquired Steinbach but lost the Hartmannsweilerkopf. But against this balance of gain must be set a more subtle but comprehensive loss.
Farther along this front, in the neighborhood of Perthes, a less important engagement took place. The Germans, under General von Einem, opposed General Langle de Cary and his French forces. The results of this engagement were negligible.
The ground to the east of the Trou Bricot was less difficult. Open and comparatively flat it was defended on the north of Perthes by a triple line of trenches distant 100 yards from each other. At a distance of 1,000 to 1,200 yards a supporting trench, called the "York trench," was almost unique in its entire construction.
It was the service of the late General Pitt-Rivers in this country, and of Klemm more laboriously abroad, to establish this aspect of the 'Evolution of Culture' beyond controversy: as it was the work of Boucher de Perthes, and of Sir John Evans and Sir John Lubbock to proceed in the reverse direction, from a criterion of utility to a hypothesis of design, and the conclusion that certain stones, of reputedly prehuman antiquity, must be the work of human hands, geared to human brains like ours.
Much talk of this sort seems to bring a doubt, by implication, upon the very thing talked about. Channing talked perpetually about religion, that is, everything ran into that, but never about his own religious feelings. Do get the life of Perthes, if you have never read it. That and "Palissy the Potter" are among the most interesting biographies I know.
No one was more sceptical than the late eminent physician of Amiens, Dr. He was at length induced to visit Abbeville, and, having inspected the collection of M. Boucher de Perthes, returned home resolved to look for himself for flint tools in the gravel-pits near Amiens.
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