Origins

The year 1859 marked a major turning point for evolutionary science. Not only did Charles Darwin publish On the Origin of Species, but U.K. scientists confirmed the claims of a French amateur archaeologist that humanity had very ancient roots. On 2 June, the Society of Antiquaries of London will commemorate the 150th anniversary of a presentation before the society by geologist and archaeologist John Evans, who, together with geologist Joseph Prestwich, had traveled to France’s Somme River earlier that year to view the evidence.

Since 1837, Jacques Boucher de Crèvecoeur de Perthes, the director of a local customs house, had been claiming to have found humanmade stone axes on the river’s banks, in intimate association with the bones of extinct animals. But until Evans and Prestwich showed up to confirm his conclusions, Boucher de Perthes had been hard put to convince anyone that the Ice Age humans who made the tools had lived long before the great flood described in the Bible.

The afternoon commemoration will feature seven speakers, and a stone ax found by Evans and Prestwich in a quarry near the Somme will be on display. The speakers will include Paleolithic archaeologist Clive Gamble of Royal Holloway, University of London. For a preview of what Gamble might say and lots of details about this seminal event in the history of prehistory, check out Gamble’s recent article for the Geological Society.

—Michael Balter