Note 11 — Chapter I · The Stone Age: its Duration and its Place in Time.

But to resume our narrative. It is interesting to note the various phases through which the matter passed before the problem was solved. In 1819, M. Jouannet announced that he had found stone weapons near Périgord. In 1823, the Rev. Dr. Buckland published the “Reliquiæ Diluvianæ,” the value of which, though it is a work of undoubted merit, was greatly lessened by the preconceived ideas of its author. A few years later, Tournal announced his discoveries in the cave of Bize, near Narbonne, in which, mixed with human bones, he found the remains of various animals, some extinct, some still native to the district, together with worked flints and fragments of pottery. After this, Tournal maintained that man had been the contemporary of the animals the bones of which were mixed with the products of human industry.11 The results of the celebrated researches of Dr. Schmerling in the caves near Liège were published in 1833. He states his conclusions frankly: “The shape of the flints,” he says, “is so regular, that it is impossible to confound them with those found in the Chalk or in Tertiary strata. Reflection compels us to admit that these flints were worked by the hand of man, and that they may have been used as arrows or as knives.”12 Schmerling does not refer, though Lyell does, and that in terms of high admiration, to the courage required for the arduous work involved in the exploration of the caves referred to, or to the yet more serious obstacles the professor had to overcome in publishing conclusions opposed to the official science of the day.