The Search for Fossil Man: Cinq Personnages à la Recherche du Temps Perdu

The Search for Fossil Man: Cinq Personnages àla Recherche du Temps PerduAuthor(s): John LyonSource: Isis, Vol. 61, No. 1 (Spring, 1970), pp. 68-84Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of The History of Science SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/229149 .

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The Search for Fossil Man:

Cinq Personnages 4 la Recherche

du Temps Perdu

By John Lyon*

"JT IS CERTAIN," wrote the great French paleontologist Georges Cuvier in 1812, "that no one has yet found human bones intermixed with fossils; and this is a

further proof that fossil races were not [simply] varieties [of present species], since they have not been able to coexist with man."' Cuvier felt that some further explanation had to accompany such oracular statements, however, and went on to admit that in peat bogs, in alluvial deposits, and in the stalagmite of caves one might find human remains mixed with the remains of animal species common today. But never had anyone uncovered the least fragment of human bone in the regular strata with remains of paleotheriums, or even rhinoceros and elephant.2 Cuvier then detailed his familiarity with controversial discoveries of supposed human fossil remains3 and proceeded to the conclusion that all the evidence has led us to believe that the human race did not exist at the same epoch or in the same place with extinct species, nor did our race wit- ness the catastrophes which destroyed these monsters.4 It was impossible to mount any argument for the antiquity of our race in any region yet investigated.,6

The basic position which Cuvier is elaborating here is not one predicated solely upon the necessities of the natural sciences, as we would understand them today. His position is a hybrid, physico-theological one, in the best tradition of late eighteenth- or early nineteenth-century natural theology.6 Its roots lay in the cosmogony of the Book

* University of Notre Dame. 1 Georges Cuvier, Discours sur les revolutions

de la surface du globe (Paris: D'Ocagne, 1830), p. 135. This is the subsequently separately published preface to Cuvier's Recherches sur les ossemenis fossiles, 4 vols. (Paris, 1812). See also Jameson's translation of the Discours, entitled Essay on the Theory of the Earth (New York: Kirk & Mercein, 1818), pp. 129-130. Unless otherwise noted, translations from the French throughout this essay are mine.

2 Cuvier (1830 ed.), pp. 135-136; Jameson, pp. 130-131.

3E.g., Spallanzani, Scheuchzer, and the Guadeloupe skeleton in the 1818 edition, to which are added discoveries at Canstadt and Koestriz in the 1830 edition.

4 Cuvier (1830 ed.), pp. 142-143; Jameson, p. 132.

6 Cuvier (1830 ed.), pp. 143-144; Jameson, p. 133. But Cuvier did leave open the possibility that man existed before the last great catastrophe which terminated the previous order of creation. The few survivors of the species had then gone forth to people the present order of creation (see 1830 ed., p. 143, and Jameson, pp. 132-133).

6 It has been asserted that the progressive serially catastrophist variation on the Mosaic cosmogony devised by Cuvier and Buckland was a "new reconciliation" of Genesis and geology. See Jacob Gruber, "Brixham Cave and the An- tiquity of Man," in Melford E. Spiro, ed., Con- text and Meaning in Cultural Anthropology (New York:Free Press, 1965), esp. pp. 375-377. It had novel elements. But the Judeo-Christian over- view is not dismissed.

68



THE SEARCH FOR FOSSIL MAN 69

of Genesis. Generations of exegetes had taken the word of Moses au pied de la lettre. Those somewhat less literally inclined had not the nerve to burke the issue this side of complete disbelief in the Judeo-Christian revelation. Christian hermeneutics, whether proceeding literally, morally, allegorically, or anagogically, had been unable to accommodate satisfactorily theories which postulated the origin of man in some epoch greatly anterior to the last geologically verifiable "catastrophe."7 Man's existence on earth had to be recountable in terms of history, not prehistory.

Consequently, for the first two-thirds of the nineteenth century "orthodox opinion fought a bitter rearguard struggle against the founders of prehistoric archaeology."8 The general eighteenth-century belief that no genuine human bones or relics had been or could be found in conjunction with the remains of extinct fauna gave way grud- gingly as "evidence" to the contrary accumulated. One might argue that the "Mosaic" influence on the earth and life sciences (a protean influence, whose most recent form had been that of the pseudo-empiricism of the serial catastrophists, Cuvier and William Buckland) finally gave way in the years from 1857 to 1869. In those years the discovery of the Neanderthal skull (1857, generally known to the scientific community from 1865); of cave paintings of extinct mammals (mammoths, at La Madeleine, Dordogne, by Edouard Lartet); the publication of Charles Lyell's Geological Evidences of the Antiquity of Man (1863); the controversy over the work of Boucher de Perthes (died 1868); and the work of the Lartets on the remains at Cro-Magnon (1864)9 had led "most scientists of repute . .. to accept man's geological antiquity."'0

This essay is concerned with the critical work of several gifted geologists in the first forty years of the nineteenth century and their conversion from or obduracy in the accepted physico-theological explanation of man's origin and age as set forth briefly above. Their conversion-or obduracy-was established a generation before the scientific community at large underwent this turning about. This is a study of a hand- ful of men who, in the course of what they thought was simply making observations and eschewing normative judgments, came to realize that some of the pieces of evidence that they came across belonged to a puzzle other than the one which they had set out to put together. They had, unavoidably, begun their labor under the influence of that set of directions for puzzle resolution the cardinal point of which had been classically put by Cuvier: the human race had not coexisted with extinct species."I

What this contention meant in a positive sense for Cuvier was that the human race had existed for not much more than about 5,400 years since its rejuvenation by the great Flood described in the Pentateuch.'2 According to the same Mosaic chronology, the period from Adam to Noah would be proportionately brief. Greek myth, Cuvier found, reinforced Christian revelation on this account; and the history of non-Western peoples did not give any proofs of a greater antiquity.

Agreeing, then, with the conclusions of his contemporaries Jean De Luc and D. I The story has been often told. Cf. C. C.

Gillispie, Genesis and Geology (New York: Harper and Row, 1959), and J. C. Greene, The Death of Adam (New York: Mentor, 1959).

8 R. Furon, "Prehistory," in Rene Taton, ed., Science in the Nineteenth Century, Vol. III: A General History of the Sciences (London: Thames & Hudson, 1965), p. 484.

9 Ibid., pp. 486-488. 10 Ibid., p. 487. For the significant work of men

such as Pengelly, Prestwich, Falconer, and Evans, see Gruber, "Brixham Cave," pp. 373-402.

11 For an explanation to which the terminology of this passage is parallel, see Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (5th ed., Chicago: Univ. Chicago Press, 1967), esp. pp. 23-24,37.

12 Cuvier (1830 ed.), p. 175; Jameson, pp. 165-166.



70 JOHN LYON

Dolomieu, Cuvier concluded that if anything was established in the geological disci- pline it was that the earth had undergone a sudden violent revolution some five to six thousand years ago, and this revolution had submerged lands formerly inhabited by man and his animals and had formed from newly elevated sea bottoms the continents inhabited today by the descendants of those few individuals who were spared from this great catastrophe. It was only since this event that modern societies had developed.'3 Cuvier thought it certain that we stood in a fourth period of succession of terrestrial animals, and that the bones of current species might be found in alluvial deposits, peat bogs, or recent concretions (such as in the calcium deposits of bone caves), but never naturally intermixed with the fossil remains of reptiles, paleotheriums, or mammoths and mastodons.'4

Cuvier's contemporary, the British geologist William Buckland, came to the same conclusions: ". the evidence of all facts that have yet been established in Geology coincides with the records of Sacred History and Profane Tradition to confirm the conclusion that the existence of mankind can on no account be supposed to have taken its beginning before that time which is assigned to it in the Mosaic writings."'5 The ambiguous position of human remains found in conjunction with antediluvian deposits could be accounted for by fortuitous circumstances. They were all postdiluvial in origin.'6 "M. Cuvier also expresses an opinion which coincides entirely with my own," Buckland wrote in 1823, "that the human race had not established themselves in those countries where the animal remains under consideration have hitherto been found, in the period preceding the grand inundation by which they were destroyed."'17 Without the hypothesis of a recent and universal deluge Buckland found the explanation of observable geological data impossible. 18

"The two great points then of the low antiquity of the human race, and the univer- sality of a recent deluge," Buckland concluded, "are most satisfactorily confirmed by everything that has yet been brought to light by Geological investigations; and as far as it goes, the Mosaic account is in perfect harmony with the discoveries of modern science." 19

There had been speculation on the meaning of "fossils" and on the relative antiquity of man for a long time before Cuvier and Buckland. But that story has been often told, at least in sufficient outline.20 The individuals and episodes which are the con- cern of this discussion, however, are not generally known, at least in the English- speaking world, references to them being largely limited to footnotes in scholarly surveys. Their significance cannot be said to lie in their obscurity, however.

It is to be found primarily in the examples which they offer of the tortuous path that leads from one orientation to another (perhaps less "hybrid") one, and in the fact that

13 Cuvier (1830 ed.), pp. 290-291; Jameson, pp. 165-166.

14 Cuvier (1830 ed.), pp. 362-363; Jameson, pp. 130, 166-167.

15 William Buckland, Vindiciae Geologicae; or the Connexion of Geology with Religion Explained (Oxford, 1830), p. 23. This address was given 15 May 1819 at Oxford.

16 William Buckland, Reliquiae Diluvianae; or Observations on the Organic Remains Contained in Caves, Fissures, and Diluvial Gravel, and on Other Geological Phenomena Attesting the Action

of an Universal Deluge (London:Murray, 1823), pp. 164-170. Also Vindiciae, pp. 45, 57, 58, 59.

17Buckland, Reliquiae, p. 231. Quote from Cuvier, Ossemens fossiles, 2nd ed., Vol. IV; no page given.

18 Buckland, Reliquiae, p. 228. 19 Buckland, Vindiciae, p. 24. 20 See Herbert Wendt, In Search of Adam

(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1956); Boule and Vallois, A Textbook of Human Palaeontology (London: Thames & Hudson, 1957); Gillispie, Greene, etc.




some of these individuals came to conclusions which anticipated by a generation those classic formulations of the 1850's and 1860's noticed above. Furthermore, in the absence of any adequate theory of the evolution of life, they began to elaborate a hypothesis about the antiquity of man based on solid geological observations and experi- ment. And this they did also a generation before Prestwich, Falconer, Pengelly, and those to whom Gruber devotes his attention. That Paul Tournal and Jules de Christol are not today credited with the degree of perspicacity and scientific devotion that their pioneer work merits is a study in the failure of communication within the scientific community, a failure not in the literal sense, for they indeed did "communicate"; but they were not heard. That such was the case may have some direct relation to the per- vasiveness of "natural theology" (or "physical theology," as Newman would call it) and the corruption which it brought to the nascent sciences it touched, in particular the life sciences. At any rate, the present study cannot undertake to prove the negative. Someone else must speak to the failure of communication and its causes.

After a typically disconcerting revolutionary career, Fran9ois-Rene-Benet Vatar, Sieur de Jouannet (1765-1845) joined the Faculty of the University of Perigueux in 1808 as a Professor of the Fine Arts.21 He soon became involved, however, in excavations of Roman and Gallic fortifications in the vicinity of the plateau of Ecorneboeuf. Here he found more than he had anticipated. Quite soon his workmen uncovered pottery of a much more ancient cast than that of the Gauls. Next, a polished hand-axe was uncovered, and Jouannet then had the countryside scoured for such relics as might have been uncovered by the inhabitants of the region. Arrowheads were dug up by Jouannet's workmen also. A report of these discoveries was given by Jouannet to the Academie de Bordeaux in 1813, and in the following year an account was published in the Calendrier de la Dordogne.22 Jouannet's excavations led him to conclude that "a une epoque qui se perd dans la nuit des temps," there had existed on the plateau of Ecorneboeuf a place of manufacture for stone implements for a society that knew not the copper tools of the Gauls.23

Further explorations followed. In a letter dated 11 August 1816, addressed to the Comte Wlgrin (sic) de Taillefer, Jouannet recounted his exploration of a cavern at the entrance of a small valley called "la Combe Grenant." There he had found a jumble of bones of birds and quadrupeds mixed in with the chalky marl of the cavern. On the floor of the cavern he discovered two flint implements such as those at Ecorneboeuf'24 The flint was not native to the vicinity of la Combe Grenant or the plain of Born, in which the latter was located; it had been imported from Ecorneboeuf. A second letter (19 Dec. 1816) recorded Jouannet's exploration of a cavern on the side of the Pey de l'Aze. The cavern was packed with the bones and teeth of animals (unspecified) of extraordinary size. What struck Jouannet, however, was the artificially constructed terrace about the opening of the cavern, a terrace composed of huge blocks of stone obviously placed there by human hands.

In an article appearing in the Calendrier de la Dordogne the following year (1817). Jouannet described further his discoveries at la Combe Grenant. The argillaceous-

21 Andre Cheynier, Jouannet: Grand pere de la prcihistoire (Brive:Societe Historique et Archae- ologique du Nrigord, 1936), pp. 19-25.

22 Ibid., p. 26. Jouannet had apparently con- tributed to the Calendrier since 1811.

23 Jouannet, "Extrait du Calendrier de la Dordogne (1814): Du Perigord sous les Gaulois," in Cheynier, Jouannet, p. 37.

24 Which he calls here "ces instruments gaulois." Cheynier, Jouannet, p. 38.



72 JOHN LYON

calcareous floor of the cavern was here noted as being interlarded with numerous bones of birds and quadrupeds and, "unless I am deceived," Jouannet wrote, even man. Shying away from any conclusions as to how the bones got there, the author pointed out that the bones-"os fossiles"-of all the species found there had the same chemical and physical properties.5 In this same journal in 1818 Jouannet reported on the "Puy- de-l'Aze" (sic) cavern, noting that among the bones found there-bones which had begun to carbonize and which showed signs of being broken on purpose-were great quantities of black flints. He once again noted the "esplanade" before the entrance. "Partout ici on reconnait la main de 1'homme," he concluded, and noted that if one spoke of such discoveries in an article on Gallic antiquities it was simply because everything here bore the mark of the greatest antiquity. To what epoch the works of man belonged remained undetermined.Y

By this time Jouannet seemed to have made a firm distinction in his own mind between the Gallic antiquities which he had sought for, found, and recognized as such (copper tools, jewelry, bronze armor, etc.) and the flint implements often found in the same locale.27 Though failing to recognize as such any extinct species, Jouannet re- jected a catastrophe as the cause bringing about the deposition of bones and tools (copper or flint).28 He also noted the persistence of flint implements after the introduction (discovery) of metals by the inhabitants of these caverns. Comparing the results of his discoveries with the work of others, Jouannet gathered some sense of stratigraphy and an idea of the succession of epochs. By 1834 he had a quite explicit idea of the distinction between the crude, early implements of flint-made by striking repeated blows -and the more recent implements of varied materials made by polishing.29 The neo- lithic village of Ecorneboeuf and the paleolithic implements of la Combe Grenant and Pey de l'Aze were distinct products of succeeding eras.

Although his influence was felt by such subsequent enthusiasts of prehistory and archeology as Boucher de Perthes, Jouannet is of interest in the present connection because of the similarity of his work with that of an almost equally unknown Irish amateur "scientist," who was just as nonplussed by his discovery of fossil bones of extinct species in conjunction with worked flints.30 To the latter investigator attention must now be turned.

Along the Devonshire coastline of Tor Bay lies the large limestone cavern locally known as Kent's Hole. This calcareous cavern, carved into the landscape eons ago by the forces of fire and water, had been visited at least as early as 1615, when two Lon- doners, Peter Lamaine and Richard Cally, inscribed their names and the date in the stalactites and went their way.31 Scores of others visited the cave over the next two

25 Cited in ibid., pp. 39-40. 2B Ibid., p. 41. 27 Ibid., p. 70. 28 Calendrier extract, 1817, cited in ibid., p. 40.

See also ibid., p. 70. 29 Ibid., pp. 71-74. 30 Cheynier, listing Jouannet's accomplish-

ments, mentions that he had noticed "I'association des ossements fossiles avec les silex taill6s (avant le Reverend J. MacEnery)"; ibid., p. 74.

31 J[ohn] MacEnery, Cavern Researches, ed. E. Vivian (London: Simpkin, Marshall; Torquay: E. Cockrem, 1859), p. 24. Vivian's edition of this

work is a partial reproduction of McEnery's manuscript. The complete text of this manuscript was printed with explanatory comments by William Pengelly in 1869. See his "The Literature of Kent's Cavern. Part IL. Including the Whole of the Rev. J. MacEnery's Manuscript," Report and Transactions of the Devonshire Association for the Advancement of Science, Literature, and Art, 1869, 3:191-382. Vivian's edition will here- after be cited as "MacEnery," and Pengelly's transcription as "Pengelly." For the spelling of McEnery's name ,see n. 33 below.




centuries, apparently leaving little more public record of their ventures than similar inscriptions.

Shortly after the close of the Napoleonic Wars, however, the attention of visitors to the cave shifted from the fantastically shaped stalagmite and stalactite to the earth beneath these surface encrustations. In 1823 and 1824 one Mr. Northmore, an ardent searcher for "Druidical and Roman antiquities," visited the cavern and found the "antiquities" he was looking for. Then a Mr. Trevilyan followed up Northmore's investigation and subsequently made public the fact that he had discovered fossil bones and teeth of the bear, rhinoceros, hyena, tiger, and fox.32 This news attracted dozens of the region's amateur paleontologists and almost made of Kent's Hole a picnic spot. In fact, it was on an expedition the aim of which appears to have been as much pleasure as "business" that the Catholic chaplain of Tor Abbey, Reverend John McEnery,33 first visited this cavern in the summer of 1825.34

A frolicsome air characterized the random digging which members of the excursion undertook under Mr. Northmore's "direction." This was Father McEnery's first venture inside a cave, and he spoke of his reluctance to say farewell to the light and enter the precincts of the cavern. According to his own testimony, however, he soon realized that no amount of scratching the surface would suffice. He therefore secreted himself in a small cove and proceeded to pick his way through the stalagmite to the loam. In tumbling over the detritus thrown up by rodents, the perennial occupants of the cave, McEnery came across fossil teeth. Further excavation revealed the bones of hyena, cat, birds, horse, deer, rabbit, and rat. Recording his sensations at the time, McEnery wrote that as he fingered these remains of ancient times "and witnesses to an order of things which passed away with them, I shrunk back involuntarily; though not insen- sible to the excitement attending new discoveries, I am not ashamed to own, that, in the presence of these remains, I felt more of awe than joy....'35

Subsequently McEnery visited the cave often. He kept an extensive collection of fossils himself, and sent large quantities to Buckland at Oxford and Cuvier at Paris. Unfortunately McEnery's manuscripts and fossil collection were auctioned off at his death. The British Museum eventually acquired part of his materials, and from a manuscript originally designed for publication but not published owing to financial diffi- culties and other considerations, S. Vivian edited the volume entitled Cavern Re- searches. This was published under McEnery's name in 1859.

McEnery and a companion, Reverend F. Lyte, excavated a cave known as Berryw Head Cavern, and they composed detailed notes on the venture. The notes are lost,36f but sufficient manuscript material relevant to Kent's Hole remained to allow a reconstruction of the story of the semi-systematic excavation of this major archeological site.

32 MacEnery, pp. 3-5. 33 John McEnery was born in Limerick, Ire-

land, in 1796 or 1797, and was ordained priest in that city 1 June 1819. He was attached to the mission at Tor Abbey in 1822, where he remained until his death in 1841. His health was delicate, and he travelled much seeking relief. He was a member of the geological societies of London and Paris. See George Oliver, Collections Illustrating the History of the Catholic Religion in the Counties of Cornwall, Devon, Dorset, Somer- set, Wilts, and Gloucester (London: Dolman,

1875), pp. 351-352. Oliver spells the name "McEnery," and this is doubtless the correct spelling for an Irish name. Vivian and Pengelly insist upon "MacEnery," and this has been allowed to stand in notes only.

3 See E. M. M. Alexander, "Father John MacEnery: Scientist or Charlatan ?" Trans. Devon. Ass. Adv. Sci. Lit. Art, 1964, 127, where the author dates McEnery's "serious digging" in the cave from Nov. 1825.

36 MacEnery, p. 7. 36 Ibid., p. vi.



74 JOHN LYON

The cave had apparently been serially, but not continuously, inhabited by man. "The floor... presents the anomaly of repeated layers" of stalagmite, McEnery wrote, "between which rubble was interposed containing flint blades."37 Stone hatchets, pottery, rounded pieces of blue slate, rounded and pierced bits of sandstone, charcoal, and smelted copper ore were also found in the intercalated mold.38 Skeletal remains of the cave bear, the hairy mammoth, the saber-toothed tiger,39 the rhinoceros, elephant, and elk were also uncovered,40 and intermixed with the bones were found flint knives, flint arrowheads, and scrapers.

One of the most remarkable sets of discoveries to be made in the cavern took place on 14 August 1829, when McEnery visited the spot with a Mr. Alliffe. A foot beneath the mold they came across plain and ornamented pottery, marine shells, and animal bones. Some of the latter had been fashioned by intelligent creatures into useful ob- jects. Delving deeper into the strata, McEnery removed a large rock, and the pair stood in amazement. For what faced them was more startling than the prelude: immediately obvious below the rock were "pottery, charcoal, human teeth and bones, flint relics, copper ornaments and mountings of tin.... "41 Two lumps of copper had been pressed together into a cake. The excavators also were able to match together two pieces of pottery which turned out to be cinerary urns.

A flat funereal stone lay under the human skeleton, urns, ashes, and miscellanea. Beneath the stone lay findings which once again astonished the excavators: "Arrows and spear-heads, stone axes-all of white flint, beautifully shaped, occurred amongst fossil teeth and bones of herbivorous and carnivorous animals." But, significantly, there was no pottery at this level. Further down even flints and human bones disappeared; only animal remains were seen.42

The dating of the various remains was an impossible task for McEnery, as it would -have been for anyone of his generation. Their allowances of time were simply not ample enough. The significance of the successive disappearance of human artifacts in the strata of the cave was largely lost upon its investigators. McEnery assumed a deluge to have rearranged the contents of the cavern: the reader of his manuscript con- stantly comes across "the muddy vehicle" as the assumed agent. Specifically,McEnery's reconstruction of the causes of the collection of these remains of animals and man ran

37Ibid., p. 20 38 Ibid., p. 15. For the subsequent identifica-

tion of two of the periods of human occupation of this cave as Mousterian and Magdalenian, see Gabriel de Mortillet, Le Prehistorique antiquite de 1' homme (2nd ed., Paris :Reinwald, 1885), p. 285. Jacquetta and Christopher Hawkes say that "the oldest recognizable human dwellings" in Eng- land are those Neanderthalian and Mousterian remains in Kent's Cavern and in Pin Hole Cave, Derbyshire. (Prehistoric Britain, Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1958, p. 25). They also corrobor- ate de Mortillet's identification of the upper layer human deposits at Kent's Hole as Mag- 1dalenian (ibid., p. 29).

39 For the results of modem scientific methods applied to the identification of this species, see Alexander, "Father John MacEnery," pp. 137- 141.

40 McEnery had the assistance of Buckland and Cuvier in identifying his fossil remains. He cor- responded with them, and presented to them several collections of fossils. Buckland visited Kent's Hole several times, at least once with McEnery, and McEnery visited Cuvier in Paris (see Pengelly, pp. 194, 303). McEnery was quite conversant with Cuvier's works, as he was with those of Buckland, the English geologistHenryDe LaBeche (1796-1855), theSwiss geologistJean De Luc (1727-1817), and the French geologist D. Dolomieu (1750-1801). The works of these men supplied the framework into which he fitted his own researches. For Cuvier and Buckland, see Pengelly, esp. pp. 194, 222, 303, 378, 430. See also the study by L. K. Clark, Pioneers of Prehistory in England (London: Sheed & Ward, 1961), esp. pp. 6-8.

41 MacEnery, p. 51. 42 Ibid., p. 52.




in the following manner. In remote, antediluvial ages, various species of carnivores serially inhabited the cave, bringing to it the carcasses of their prey. Next, a deluge hit the region, swept up the remains, and, as it ebbed, left the osseous remains in an effiux of fine, sandy "mud."43 At an historic or near-historic date, then, man came to the cave. The presence of flint weapons in juxtaposition with skeletal remains of extinct species of animals was not proof to McEnery that man was a contemporary of these species.44 Even the presence of human skeletons in the same layer of earth as extinct animal remains failed to constitute proof for him. Always working within a Mosaic cosmogony, but rarely alluding to it explicitly, McEnery explained away such incon- venient discoveries by assuming that either the now-extinct species had not been extinct, say, three thousand years ago, or that the human skeletons had been buried in the cave floor and hence lay encrusted several feet below the chronological strata to which they actually belonged.45 Signs of historic occupation-an iron spearhead, for example-gave to the chaplain of Tor Abbey all the evidence that he needed for the assumption that the human occupants of the cave were not antediluvian. And that convenient catastrophic event he gave its traditional date, some "four or five thousand years" ago.46

The spatial conjuncture of remains that McEnery would have liked to have kept temporally discrete gave him some pause, however. It was only as the result of long personal observation, he remarked, that he had been able to avoid the common error of supposing the human remains to be contemporaneous with the other fossil bones.47 McEnery had communicated his first thoughts on the matter to Buckland, who had apparently dissuaded McEnery from publishing them. As a result, when McEnery

43 Ibid., pp. 40-42. 44 This is what I have concluded regarding the

matter. H. G. Dowie, former Honorary Secre- tary of the Torquay Natural History Society, in his article on Kent's Hole, in the Encyclopaedia Brittanica (Chicago: William Benton, 1959), Vol. XIII, p. 331, begins with the statement: "Kent's Cavern ... yielded some of the earliest evidence of man's co-existence with extinct animals. The Rev. J. McEnery who investigated the upper deposits (1825-29) was perhaps the first man to proclaim this fact." But see Pengelly, p. 226, where McEnery states his own conclusion:

I am persuaded that if due attention is paid to the place in which these remains occur- and the manner that they are intermingled with the soil and bones reputed fossil, it will be in every case found as from a display of similar phenomena in this cavern, that they are not coeval neither with one or the other but that they had been added subsequently to the deposition of the former and commingled with them into a common heap by causes such as operated here I mean the visits of man, or according to their position by the disturbing action of running waters-[sic]

Had Inot devoted so long aperiod to personal examination of all the circumstances attending this delicate question, in common with others I

should have fallen into the error of supposing human remains to be contemporaneous because conjoined with the deposit of mud and bones-[sic].

Buckland, Cuvier, the "evidence," and McEnery's genesaic mindset dissuaded him from "pro- claiming" his first opinion.

45 MacEnery, p. 48. 46 Ibid., p. 46. Upon reviewing McEnery's

evidence firsthand, Cuvier concluded that Kent's Hole had served "as the den and the tomb of a whole dynasty of unknown monsters that issued from the central spot to devour the feeble inhabitants of the woods during a long succession of ages, before man had subdued the earth and freed it from all dominion but his own..." (Pengelly, p. 378). Cuvier dated the Deluge c. 5,000-6,000 years ago (Pengelly, p. 340).

47 MacEnery, p. 50: Pengelly, p. 226. For a juvenile panegyric in the Irish manner, which asserts that McEnery did conclude to the contemporaneity of fossil man with the extinct fauna, see Thomas Canon Sheehan, "Father John McEnery and Paleolithic Man 1796-1841," Stud- ies, 1932, 21:471-479, esp. p. 474. For a similar contention, see Stanley Casson, The Discovery of Man (New York: Harper Bros., 1939). Casson states (p. 175) that Pengelly and McEnery "held to their guns and insisted that the cave held in- disputable evidence for the antiquity of man."



76 JOHN LYON

came to compose his manuscript he was able to state, quite ingenuously, that it was only as a result of prolonged observation in the cavern that he had come to the conclusion that the deposition of human remains long postdated the laying down of the animal remains and that man was therefore not a contemporary of the extinct fauna.48

It has been pointed out that it was remarkable that it should have been the amateurs like McEnery who initially perceived the meaning of what they had stumbled upon, while the professional geologists like Buckland "proved themselves the most conserva- tive and obtuse."49 Perhaps the distinction in this case between the amateurs and the professionals was that the amateurs gave to geology and paleontology an existence of their own as disciplines largely independent of philosophy and theology, while the professionals did not. "Buckland's geology was wholly in the service of natural theology," it has been asserted. 50

And so Father McEnery sorted out his flints and pottery, his obsidian and copper, his human and animal bones. Yet the problem of dating them all stuck in his mind. He remained perplexed "by the singular phenomenon of flint instruments intermingled with fossil bones."5' He realized that there were arguments for the antediluvial origin of the flints. Ultimately, however, he concluded that since no flints were found on the lowest level, where the deluge should have washed some of them, therefore they were postdiluvial in origin.52 Summing up the results of his excavations, McEnery concluded that the flints belonged to savage man, who lived in the cave when the prehistoric animals lay buried in the loam. The "transfer of domain" which made man the sole occupant of the cavern occurred "immediately after the deluge"; which was assigning him a higher antiquity in England than had been hitherto admitted.53

McEnery's unspoken assumptions clang on the ears as one turns the pages of his report. While trying desperately to act with "scientific" detachment, he yet seems to know that he must square his discoveries with the account of man's early history given in Genesis. His mental template does not yet allow him to express publicly the thought that man's antiquity on this planet was measurable in millennia and eons rather than centuries. Yet he should not be censured for this, nor should one assume that this mental roadblock was due to his profession of Roman Catholicism. It was not until 1863 that the master of English geologists, Charles Lyell, could bring himself to admit in print to the vast antiquity of our race.

There are those who think that neither Buckland nor McEnery was as timid in his geological conclusions out of deference to the supposed Biblical chronology as their critics think. Thomas Henry Huxley, for instance, compared McEnery's contemporary, the French antiquary and paleontologist Boucher de Perthes, with Columbus. Both had discovered new worlds, and posterity, which pays upon results, had grandly re-

48 MacEnery, p. 51; Pengelly, pp. 225-226. For McEnery's explicit denial that Buckland's -opinion determined his own, see Pengelly, p. 249.

9 Grahame Clark, Archaeology and Society (London: Methuen, 1947), p. 8. Quoted in Jac- quetta Hawkes, ed., The World of the Past (New York: Knopf, 1963), Vol. 1, p. 113.

50 Dwight A. Culler, The Imperial Intellect (New Haven:Yale Univ. Press, 1955), p. 15. See also Gillispie, Genesis and Geology, p. 103. For a more positive view of the achievements of Buck- land, though, see Walter F. Cannon, "The Prob-

lem of Miracles in the 1830's," Victorian Studies, Sept. 1960, pp. 20-21. See also Cannon's "History in Depth:The Early Victorian Period," History of Science, 1964, 3: 31. That Buckland was not a hidebound catastrophist may be seen by a reading of R. Hooykaas' Natural Law and Divine Miracle: The Principle of Uniformity in Geology, Biology, and Theology (Leiden: Brill, 1963), esp. p.33.

51 MacEnery, p. 61. 52 Ibid., pp. 63-64. 53 Ibid., p. 65.




warded them. But we must be careful, Huxley noted, not to abuse the contemporaries of these men for refusing to believe in the schemes of visionaries, and upon evidence which was largely insubstantial. Huxley, apparently suffering from that "Bacono- mania" so characteristic of the earlier part of the nineteenth century, preferred to be in error so long as he was on the side of scientific rigor and logic rather than be right "in the company of haste and guesswork."54

L. K. Clark, in his account of the development of prehistory in England, thinks the evidence facing the generation of Buckland, McEnery, and their contemporaries is susceptible to various interpretations. Buckland himself in 1836 made the type of reservation regarding his conclusions which the Roman Catholic (later Cardinal at Westminster) Nicholas Wiseman would make at approximately the same time. It was admitted on all sides, Buckland wrote, that immense amounts of time were necessary for the accomplishment by secondary causes of the phenomena which geology reports. The question was not whether the Mosaic narrative was accurate, but whether or not we had been interpreting it correctly.55 It is not quite fair, Clark implies, to conclude that Lyell and Buckland came to the same conclusion regarding the antiquity of man -Lyell because of his professional caution about geological evidence and Buckland because of his clerical bias and timidity.56 This case illustrates the impossibility of "objectively" interpreting uncertain data and indicates the confused, though perhaps necessary, jumble of scientific and religious reasons which lead men to adopt or reject what subsequently seems an obvious interpretation. 57

Despite his mental mindset, McEnery made an interesting, though not fully articu- lated, assumption. He assumed that animals had inhabited our planet for untold eons before man appeared. He thus assumed that the literal interpretation of Genesis, as it was commonly understood, was not necessary. It at times seems remarkable that Mc- Enery was able to slip over into a figurative interpretation with so little apparent diffi- culty, working as he was within the insular framework of English-Irish Roman Catholicism. McEnery's "shrinking back involuntarily" upon his first contact with the relics of an unknown past did not prevent him from pursuing a systematic appraisal of the cave's contents. Nor did his apparent assent to a Mosaic cosmogony prevent him from reinterpreting that cosmogony in at least one particular-namely, regarding the immense distance in time between "creation" and the appearance of man, as the evidence seemed to demand. Though not much is ascertainable regarding McEnery's life, he speaks with such technical virtuosity in Cavern Researches that one is led to suspect that his pursuit of natural history and geology must have led him to a thorough reinterpretation of Genesis.

Yet in at least one particular McEnery could, or would, not be moved from his Mosaic chronology. The human remains could not be more than five or six thousand years old. It appears that McEnery felt that this proposition was capable of being

54 Thomas Henry Huxley, "Presidential Ad- dress to the Geological Society, 1869," Journal of the Geological Society of London, 1869, 25: xxx- xxxi. Quoted in Clark, Pioneers of Prehistory in England, pp. 75-77. For the methodological aberration called "Baconomania," see L. Pearce Williams, "The Physical Sciences in the First Half of the Nineteenth Century: Problems and Sources, "Hist. Sci, 1962,1:12.

56 William Buckland, Geology and Mineralogy Considered with Reference to Natural Theology (London, 1836), Vol. I, pp. 8-33. Quoted in Clark, Pioneers of Prehistory in England, pp. 80-81.

56 Clark,PioneersofPrehistory inEngland, p. 84. 57 This has been pointed out by Mary B. Hesse

in her review of Pioneers of Prehistory in England (Hist. Sci., 1962, 1:116).



78 JOHN LYON

proved geologically and did not need to rely upon theology for either its formulation or its documentation.

McEnery's uncertainty was of a kind with that of Jouannet. Both had come for- tuitously upon evidence which to them appeared anomalous. Their set of mind did allow them to recognize the anomalies, but the anomalies were not of sufficient weight to move them to change their basic outlook.58 McEnery's comparatively early death at the age of forty-three or forty-four59 cut short the possibilities of conversion for him.60

Why did McEnery not "proclaim" his discoveries? Ill health, perhaps; or-though he specifically denied it-the influence of Buckland (and Cuvier); or perhaps the anomalous discoveries simply conflicted too radically with his early religious training.A In the absence of other data it seems impossible to determine precisely why McEnery did not conclude otherwise. There was a correspondence carried on by McEnery in which one might expect to find some information relevant to the resolution of this question. But Professor Michael J. O'Kelly of the Department of Archaeology at University College, Cork, who has made a diligent search for the correspondence, assures me that he has been unable to uncover it.

It may seem that the implication that McEnery might have come to other conclusions is too harsh. Was he not a man of his time? How could he contest the author- ity of Buckland and Cuvier? That such anticipation of other conclusions is not belaboring a point will become more clear, however, when the discoveries and conclusions of one of McEnery's contemporaries are discussed.

Paul Tournal was born in Narbonne on 10 January 1805. After the traditional classical education, he was, at the age of eighteen, made a pharmaceutical apprentice to a M. Lepelletier at Paris. Tournal was more intrigued by the sciences than by the classics, and while in Paris he went well beyond the usual studies for pharmacy- chemistry and medical botany-and devoted himself to the study of geology and mineralogy.62

In 1825 Tournal returned to Narbonne and took over the direction of his father's pharmacy. At the same time, however, he also devoted much attention to the practical implications of geological theory which he had acquired in Paris. In the company of

58 For Kuhn's interpretation of such "crises" see The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, pp. 57, 147, 150. . 59 There is some debate over McEnery's birth-

date, three dates being given: 17 Nov. 1796; 27 Nov. 1796; 27 Nov. 1797. See Alexander, "Father John MacEnery," p. 115.

60 There is doubt about the exactness of McEnery's reporting of the sequence, date, and exact details of his discoveries. Anyone reading Pengelly's transcription of the manuscript is struck by the confusing testimony it contains and the somewhat "illogical" development of the Chaplain's thought. When precisely McEnery composed the various "fasciculi" (there are ten of them, itemized "A" through "J" by Pengelly) seems impossible to determine. When Pengelly worked on the manuscript it had already been much worked over, presumably by McEnery. The numerous lacunae, torn pages, corrections,

redrafts of whole passages, missing pages, and so on are disconcerting. Alexander estimates that perhaps as much as one-third of the original manuscript was missing at the time that Pengelly worked it over (ibid., p. 134). Alexander's well- considered resolution to the question posed in the title of his article is that "MacEnery was com- pletely honest and free from deceit" (ibid., p. 141).

61 Specifically, at St. Munchin's Seminary, Limerick (see ibid., p. 115). I am indebted to Miss Hilda Walker, Honorary Editor of the Torquay Natural History Society, for her kind reply to my inquiry concerning certain of the above points.

62 Paul de Rouville, "Notice biographique sur M. Paul Tournal," Bulletin de la Commission Archeologique et Litteraire de l'Arrondissement de Narbonne, Tome I, 1876-1877 (Narbonne: Caillard, 1877), pp. 6-7.




Marcel de Serres, Jules de Christol, Laurent Pareto, and others, Tournal explored and mapped the geology of the Narbonne basin.3

After 1827 Tournal began a systematic investigation of the small caves found in the mountain of Bize. In a note communicated to the Annales des Sciences Naturelles in that year, he spoke of his discovery in a cavern in the layer of Jurassic limestone of the fossil bones of cave bear, wild boar, horses, and various species of ruminants not then native to the region. Remarking upon the fascination which bone caves held for the geologist, Tournal attributed this fascination to the evidence such caves gave of the destruction of various species of animals in a catastrophic manner.64

The cavern floors were covered by two distinct layers: an encrusted and hardened layer of red calcareous clay (the lower), and a layer of black, greasy silt (above). Both layers contained rounded pebbles of limestone and green sandstone. In a somewhat naive manner Tournal also noted the presence of gunflint fractured into pieces with very sharp angles.65 Noting that when the soil and bones in either layer were subjected to chemical tests and heating they gave traces of ammonium carbonate and gelatine (those bones in the upper strata having much more organic matter than those in the lower), Tournal passed over any detailed scientific treatment of the bones, noting that M. Marcel de Serres, who had visited the caves with him, had undertaken that task.6

Marcel de Serres, an investigator much better known to posterity than Paul Tournal, published his conclusions regarding the significance of human remains found in these deposits in 1829.67 The second division of an extensive introduction to de Serres' work is entitled "Ossemens humains et debris de fabrication humaine, observes dans des terrains deplaces et transportes." In this section de Serres devoted himself explicitly to the "very serious question" of whether or not the discovery of human remains and artifacts in conjunction with the bones of extinct species meant that man was a contemporary of theirs.68 The problem for de Serres lay in distinguishing alluvium from diluvium, for it was certain that one found numerous remains of races similar to ours in Tertiary deposits, intermingled with remains of supposedly extinct species. Since some species seem to have disappeared in the recent (Quaternary) period, de Serres ques- tioned whether one could identify a given stratum as "antediluvian" on the basis of the presence of skeletal remains of now-extinct species. How could one distinguish antediluvian from postdiluvian periods, fossil from nonfossil remains, geologic from historic eras ?69

De Serres then described in detail the circumstances in which he had found human remains in the bone caves of Bize (Departement Aude). The bones had been cemented into a mass by stalagmitic calcium, forming a breccia with the bones of other mammals.70 He presented the discoveries of Paul Tournal in this same cave in a most favorable light, noting that Tournal had uncovered human bones and teeth in both the "limon noir" and the lower "limon rouge," in conjunction with terrestrial and marine shells, bones of extinct land mammals, and fragments of unglazed pottery. Evidence of

63 Ibid., p. 7. 64 Paul Toumal, "Note sur deux cavernes a

ossemens, decouvertes a Bire [sic], dans les environs de Narbonne," Annales des Sciences Naturelles, 1827, Ser. I, 12:78.

65 Ibid., pp. 79-80. 66 Ibid., p. 81. 67 Marcel de Serres, Gdognosie des terrains

tertiares (Paris/Montpellier, 1829). 68 Ibid., p. lij. 69 Ibid., pp. liij-lv. 70 Ibid., p. lxij. De Serres suggested that the

human bones thus found were not as old as the other bones with which they were fused-having perhaps been conjoined in an accidental manner, i.e., washed or dragged into position.



80 JOHN LYON

fire was present. And the pottery could not apparently have been washed into the cave or brought there by any accidental means, for the shattered fragments gave evidence of having been destroyed on the spot by violent means.71 The remains of aurochs, cave bear, and other extinct fauna in the same strata as human skeletons gave point to the dilemma of dating or separating species.

De Serres' timidity is remarkable here, for he takes pains to assure his readers that it is at least very difficult to prove the contemporaneity of human fossils with other faunal fossils. The circularity of argument seems evident. For, after setting out to determine the (relative) age of human remains by means of the animal fossils found in conjunction with them, de Serres concludes by using an (assumed) age of man to show that certain extinct species cannot be very old since human bones are found withthem !72

De Serres mentioned in some detail the researches of Jules de Christol in the bone caverns at Pondres and Souvignargues (Departement du Gard), alluding also to other researches in caves at Lunel-Viel and elsewhere. He then detailed the net result of the comparative chemical analysis of the organic matter found in bones taken from bone caverns (such as the above), bones taken from a Gallic sarcophagus some fourteen to fifteen hundred years old, and bones more recently entombed (c. 400-500 years ago). The result was simply to show that human bones lost more than seventy-five percent of their organic matter in less than four hundred years.73

Summing up the "evidence," de Serres concluded: (1) that many species of animals had become extinct since man appeared on earth ;74 (2) that human remains had undoubtedly been found in the same geological circumstances as those of certain animal species hitherto considered antediluvian (i.e., extinct); (3) that such factors tend to show that it is nearly impossible to distinguish between current and fossil species and that geologic and historic times are linked inextricably together ;75 (4) that "geologic time" ends with the last great retreat of the seas, but human remains found in deposits of such an age would not be fossils, for they were not contemporaneous with the bones of terrestrial mammals thus found in such deposits ;76 (5) man was a contemporary of the last great flood, as were now-extinct species of bear, deer, rhinoceros, and hyena.

Thus the evidence was explained away again. The best of men found themselves on opposite sides of the great question of the age of man. Perhaps further investigation would clear up the issue, de Serres hoped.77 Jouannet had not hazarded a guess. McEnery had balked, doubted, and concluded erroneously. De Serres had come upon the same evidence, and, once more, the old patterns had held. Perhaps too much seemed to be at stake.

But what of Paul Tournal ? In the midst of much fumbling and groping Paul Tournal slowly came to conclu-

sions of a most original nature.78 In notes appearing in the Annales des Sciences Naturelles for September 1827 and October 1828 Tournal remarked on the presence of

71 Ibid., p. lxiv. 72 Ibid., pp. lxx, lxxj. 7 Ibid., p. lxxiv. 74 Ibid., pp. lxxiv, lxxxviij-lxxix. 7 Ibid., pp. lxxv-lxxvj. 76 Ibid., p. lxxxviij. 77 Ibid., p. xcij. Some nine years later, in his De

la cosmogonie de Moise, compare'e aux faits

geologiques (Paris: Lagny Freres, 1838), de Serres continued to insist roughly upon the same conclusions.

78 For a precis of Tournal's conclusions, see Emile Cartailhac, La France preAhistorique (Paris, 1889), pp. 16-17. Also Rouville, "Notice biographique," pp. 12-19.




flint with sharp angles in the same strata as extinct faunal remains.79 Yet he did so in a manner that showed he was somewhat oblivious to the implications which might be deduced from such a conjuncture.80

A month later (Nov. 1828), however, a significant change had taken place in Tour- nal's thinking. At Bize, he then remarked, one finds human remains indistinguishable chemically and physically from the bones of extinct species mixed up in the same strata. Such discoveries put in a more favorable light than hoaxes or previous finds (the Guadeloupe skeleton is mentioned) the question of whether fossil remains of our species exist. Although the present state of science might not be able to offer criteria by which to determine the comparative ages of the human and other mammalian species found at Bize, Tournal noted that such discoveries as he had made at least allowed one to have great reservations about the generally accepted proposition that human fossil remains did not exist on the (presently constituted) continents.8'

Tournal's acceptance of a more adequate hypothesis apparently took place in the following year (1829). Spurred on by the presentation of the results of his contemporary, the geologist Jules de Christol, in excavations near Montpellier,82 Tournal sent a letter to the editors of the Annales des Sciences Naturelles, which appeared in the November 1829 issue of that journal.

The new discoveries of M. de Christol,83 Tournal noted, were of great importance, for they not only confirmed Tournal's opinion of the contemporaneity of man with now-extinct (but perhaps postdiluvial) animal species, but de Christol's discoveries also showed that man had lived at the time of species even older than any hitherto considered, species which were undoubtedly antediluvian.84

Tournal had found the fossil fauna in the caverns near Narbonne (Aude) not essen- tially different from the fauna presently existing in the Pyrenees. But such was not the case with the fossils found by de Christol in the Departement du Gard. The fossil species uncovered there not only had no related species presently existing, but re- quired an environment for their support far different from that which characterized the Gard today.

Tournal had journeyed to see de Christol's discoveries. It was impossible to temporally distinguish the human bones from the bones of tigers, lions, and hyenas with which they were found in the floor of the caves. The bones, when subjected to physical and chemical analyses, were indistinguishable. It was impossible to argue with de Christol who, said Tournal, saw things as they were, and not as he might have wished them to be. Man was a contemporary of extinct and antediluvian species.

There was no necessity to posit grand catastrophes in order to explain the extinction of species, Tournal continued. The slow encroachment of man was sufficient cause for

79 Tournal, "Note sur deux cavernes a ossemens, decouvertes a Bire," p. 80; and Tournal, "Memoire sur la constitution geognostique du bassin et des environs de Narbonne (Presente a l'Academie Royale des Sciences)," Ann. Sci. Nat., 1828, 15:41.

80 Rouville, "Notice biographique," pp. 12-13. 81 Paul Tournal, "Note sur la caverne de Bize

pr,s Narbonne," Ann. Sci. Nat., 1828, 15:348. See also Rouville, "Notice biographique," p. 14. Rouville ascribes Tournal's hesitation to the influence of Cuvier.

82 Jules de Christol, Notice sur les ossemens humains fossiles des cavernes du DeTpartement du Gard (Presentee a l'Acad6mie des Sciences le 29 Juin 1829). (Montpellier:J. Martel, 1829). Rouville says that de Christol "seconded" Tournal's opinion a few weeks after Tournal enunciated it in the Ann. Sci. Nat. But de Chris- tol's talk was given in June 1829.

83 Taken up subsequently. 84 Paul Tournal, "Considerations th6oriques

sur les cavernes a ossemens de Bize, pres Nar- bonne . ..," Ann. Sci. Nat., 1829, 18:243.



82 JOHN LYON

such disappearance. Yet we were still unaware of the creative force of nature and the means used to produce the successive orders of living beings whose fossil remains had been found.

One reason why the debate over the existence of human fossils had raged so in- conclusively and so long, Tournal noted, was that the definition of the word "fossil" had been by no means agreed upon. A general definition of the word seemed to mean any organized body found entombed in the regular strata of the earth. But the present state of science did not allow one to discern with certainty the regular strata from more recently deposited layers, and the discovery of human remains in problematical strata need not be convincing proof of human fossils.85 Other definitions of the word seemed to change the context and only further confuse the issue. Tournal insisted that what really distinguished fossils from skeletal remains was their age. And one thus defined human fossils by their presence in certain strata with the remains of extinct and essen- tially antediluvian species.86 If one did not accept such a criterion, then it became impossible to determine whether human fossils existed. For Tournal, the human bones from the caverns of the Gard were genuine human fossils, or antediluvians.87

Tournal certainly recognized the significance of what he was saying, for he immediately put in a saving clause which noted that such conclusions as he had come to "are in accord with that book which forms the basis of the beliefs of European civiliza- tion," since, according to it, man was living before that event (the Flood) to which one alludes when one uses the words "antediluvian" or "postdiluvian," and to which many geologists attribute the destruction of numerous races of animals.88

Tournal disqualified the discoveries he had made of human remains at Bize from being fossil man (i.e., they were not certainly antediluvian). To the question of how the various bones got into the cave he devoted much attention and concluded that one ought not attempt to limit the manner of their arrival to one simple, single catastrophe which washed them there.89

The evidence, for Tournal, led to one natural conclusion: man was a contemporary of extinct and antediluvian species. This contention Tournal presented for the consideration of "naturalists," in the hope that they, too, would accept the expansion of knowledge thus offered. Geology began where archeology ended, he noted, and such discoveries as those presented by geological methods ought to awaken human pride. Geology showed the antiquity of our race, and by geology alone would man be able to ascertain the period when the first of his ancestors appeared on earth.90

Jules de Christol,91 Rouville tells us, confirmed Tournal's conclusions "a few weeks later," with his publication of the pamphlet Notice sur les ossemens humains fossiles des cavernes du Deipartement du Gard (Montpellier, 1829). But de Christol had apparently presented his material to the Academie des Sciences on 29 June 1829.92 Showing himself quite familiar with Tournal's discoveries at Bize, de Christol agreed that the species represented there were of immense age-but not "antediluvian."93 De

85 Ibid., pp. 243-248. 88 Long argument, terminating in ibid., pp.

250-251. 87 Ibid., p. 251. 88 Ibid., pp. 251-252. 89 Ibid., pp. 252-254,255. 90 Ibid., p. 258. 91 No biographical data available, except that

he was at one time Secretary of the Natural History Society of Montpellier.

92 De Christol, Notice, title page. 93 With the possible exception of a fragment

perhaps belonging to the ursus arctoidus, a species of bear identified by Cuvier and supposedly found only in the fossil state. See ibid., pp. 7-8.




Christol asserted that if the word "fossil" could be legitimately applied to the bones of hyena, rhinoceros, and extinct bears found in these caves, then the word was equally applicable to human bones discovered in the same geological circumstances.94 Apply- ing this test, de Christol then suggested calling "fossils" those bones of man which he had discovered at Pondres and Souvignargues (Gard) in the same strata as those of rhinoceros, aurochs, bears, and hyena.95

Christol then gave a detailed account of his excavations at Pondres and Souvig- nargues, with side references to the cave at Lunel-Viel which he had recently excavated (Buckland had visited Lunel-Viel with him). Several professors at Montpellier had examined the bones-especially Messrs. Marcel de Serres and Dubrueil-and had declared themselves satisfied that the human and extinct mammalian remains were of the same date and ought to be considered as fossils. Yet de Christol's concluding para- graph was remarkably mild. He refrained from all conjecture on the meaning of this discovery of human fossils (the only discovery, he noted, which, up to the present, satisfied the stratigraphical and chemical requirements of a fossil). He limited himself to recording facts, recalling that the nonexistence of man in a fossil state was a position asserted solely on the basis of absence of data, not a legitimate deduction from the certain principles upon which science rested.96

Thus, by the end of 1829 at least four men-Tournal, de Christol, de Serres, and Dubrueil-had concluded positively to the existence of human fossil remains and to the contemporaneity of man with extinct and antediluvian species. In that same year McEnery visited Kent's Hole for the last time. Beset with sickness, burdened with pastoral duties, without money, and without that mysterious ingredient that makes it possible to glide in faith from one cosmogony to another, McEnery mulled over his manuscripts for the next twelve years, but to no avail. His constant reassertion that the facts and lengthy study at Kent's Hole had made him decide that man was not a contemporary of extinct species has a hollow ring. It sounds like a man trying to convince himself of what he knows (the Mosaic account tells him) ought to be the case. The positive assertions of Tournal and de Christol stand out in sharp contrast.

Paul Tournal seems to be a very obscure figure today. Yet his distinction between animal species which had simply disappeared and those which were definitely extinct (the latter alone being fossils) was not lost on his contemporaries. The French archeo- logist Edouard Lartet (1801-1871) wrote to Tournal in 1864 that his (Tournal's) memoir in the Annales de Physique et de Chimie (1833) was in much demand in Eng- land early in the 1860's.97 In an article of Lartet's sent to the Natural History Review (London) in January 1860 Lartet stated explicitly that Tournal was the first to put into the form of a scientific proposition the contention that man was a contemporary of fossil species.98

It is pointless to speculate overmuch on what might have made McEnery draw back from what seems to us to be the logical conclusions of his discoveries, while Paul Tournal pushed on to the new world that lay ahead. But one comment by Tournal's biographer might be in place here. "C'est le vrai, c'est le beau dans tous les domaines qu'il poursuivait sans relache."99 Few would doubt that MeEnery was also searching

94 Ibid., pp. 9-10. 95 Ibid., pp. 10, 15. 96 Ibid., pp. 22-25. 97 Rouville, "Notice biographique," p. 22. One

can understand why it might be in great demand. It is not to be found there.

98 Ibid. Also not to be fotnd as cited. 99 Ibid., p. 30.



84 JOHN LYON

for "the true." But the Irish clergy have not been particularly noted for their pursuit of the beautiful (at least since the time of Jansenius), and one might suspect that the traditional seminary approach to the "problem of the beautiful" (that is, ascetic theology, or, in practice, "giving up" what might seem to be legitimate human goods for the sake of a "higher" and ethereal synthesis) prevented McEnery from coming to an "aesthetic" conclusion. The ascetic and the aesthetic have not been notably com- patible ways of life. So far as the case in point is concerned, one might cautiously suggest that it was aesthetics-Tournal's pursuit of the "beautiful"-that provided that necessary ingredient in the balance of the senses that we call "rationality" which allows an individual to pass with little friction from one worldview to another.100 He was not a "literal" man: his hands and his ears taught him, as well as his eyes.

100 Kuhn remarks, for example, on the narrowness of the education ordinarily given a science student. It is a narrowness that allows an individual so trained to solve problems defined by the paradigm-but makes it difficult for him to

change paradigms. This education, Kuhn remarks, "is a narrow and rigid education, prob- ably more so than any other except perhaps in orthodox theology," Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, p. 165. Emphasis mine.



Documents

The Search for Fossil Man: Cinq Personnages à la Recherche du Temps Perdu