Abstract
THE Conference on the Antiquity of Man lately held by the Anthropological Institute, and reported in these columns, has led to a result by no means unsatisfactory, when all the conditions of the problem are duly weighed. The result is merely negative, but in arriving at it several misconceptions and errors of fact seem to us to have been swept away. In its discussion there were two parties represented, one eager to show that the antiquity of man has been proved by modern discovery to be far older than the date which had been arrived at by the labours of Falconer, Lyell, Prestwich, Evans, Boyd Dawkins, and others, while the other contended that the subject had not advanced in the least degree during the last few years, and that the so-called discoveries were either errors of observation, or resulting from premises which were altogether unsatisfactory. The field of the discussion lay in matters geological rather than archæological, and the caution which the president urged upon the conference was certainly not urged in vain.
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The Antiquity of Man . Nature 16, 97–98 (1877). https://doi.org/10.1038/016097a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/016097a0