Page:Palæolithic Man and Terramara Settlements in Europe.djvu/99

 CHAPTER III

lieu of historical data and written records, which are inapplicable to prehistoric investigations, it is desirable to define with some degree of fullness the nature of the methods and arguments on which the high antiquity now claimed for man is founded. This object is best accomplished by an analysis of the following brief narratives of a few of the earliest discoveries of flint instruments before they were recognised by scientific men to be human productions.

Methods of Investigation.

In 1797 Mr John Frere, F.R.S., described at the Society of Antiquaries of London some flint implements, or "weapons," as he called them, found, in association with shells and bones of great animals, at a depth of 12 feet, in brick-earth at Hoxne, in Suffolk. He was so much struck with the situation that he gave a precise account of the circumstances, with sections showing the stratified condition of the superincumbent deposits. He regarded the flint implements, which were turned up in great numbers, as belonging "to a very remote period indeed; even beyond that of the present world." (Archæologia, xiii., p. 204).

Mr Frere presented some specimens of the Hoxne implements to the museum of the Society, yet they lay there unheeded till 1859, when Sir John Evans, on his return from a visit to the implement-bearing gravels at Abbeville and Amiens, recognised