12 There was never such doubt about drawings or carvings on bone, antler, ivory or small stone slabs, although the first recorded discovery was puzzling. In 1833 or 1834 a solicitor called André Brouillet found an engraved drawing of two female deer on a piece of reindeer bone in Chaffaud Cave, on his land in the hills between Poitiers and Angoûleme ( Fig. 4). Brouillet supposed the piece must have been made by the Celts, then thought to be the oldest pre- Roman inhabitants of France. His conclusion was not surprising at a time when the great age of the earth was generally accepted but the length of human antiquity was still considered to be no longer than 6,000 years, as calculated back through classical history and the Bible. This was to change with the recognition of the contemporaneity of stone tools and extinct animals found in gravels of the river Somme. Stone tools and human antiquity By the 1850s many discoveries of stone tools with the remains of extinct animals had been published, but geologists were often sceptical about them. Excavation techniques were rough and, without carefully recorded observations, the geologists were often right to suggest that tools and bones of quite different ages had come to be associated by natural processes. However, the publication of Charles Darwin's On the Origins of the Speciesin 1858 offered a new view of humans as part of nature and subject 4 Drawing of two deer, incised on bone. Found in Chaffaud Cave, near Vienne, central- western France. Probably about 13,000 years old, L. 13.2 cm. Musée d'Archéologie Nationale, Paris

13 to evolution over a long period of time. In April 1858 a group of leading British geologists and archaeologists visited the Somme to see the sites and finds that the French geologist Boucher de Perthes had been working on since 1828. Although Perthes had recognized the significance of his finds, his ideas had not found general acceptance because the highly respected palaeontologist Baron Cuvier had stated categorically that ' l'homme fossile n'existe pas' (' fossil humans do not exist'). Few were willing to speak in support of evidence undermining the ideas of such an eminent zoologist, who dominated the Academy of Sciences in Paris, but the meeting on the Somme undid this knot and endorsed Perthes's findings. Fossil humans must exist. Now the race was on to find human fossils, and to discover what the earliest people were like and when and how they lived. Art takes a part Having participated in the proving of Perthes's discoveries, Edouard Lartet realized he could find more evidence of ancient human activity and teamed up with Henry Christy, whom he had met at Abbeville. Together they excavated several important cave sites in the Dordogne, and in 1864 discovered an engraved drawing of a mammoth on a large piece of tusk at La Madeleine ( Fig. 5). This was positive proof that people had not just found and used fossil ivory but had certainly lived among the mammoths. In the same year Richard Owen, the eminent palaeontologist and 5 Drawing of a mammoth incised on ivory, found at La Madeleine, Dordogne, south- west France. Probably about 13,000 years old, L. 24.5 cm. Musée d'Archéologie Nationale, Paris. Engraving published in E. Lartet and H. Christy, Reliquiae Aquitanicae ( 1875), as fig. 2.