Prehistory and Protohistory in India and Pakistan c4.s22: Geology
Prehistory and Protohistory in India and Pakistan c4.s22
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- English
Geology
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Then CHARLES LYELL (1797-1875) propounded 17 the theory that rocks of a similar nature were developed or laid out in an identical way all over the earth. This is called the theory of uniformitarianism. The theory did not find a ready response or acceptance among all. Its recognition was also slow in an intellectual and social world steeped in Biblical theory of the Deluge.
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However, it facilitated the understanding and the ready acknowledgement by some of the most prominent British geologists—JOHN EVANS, FALCONER, LYELL, PRESTWICH, PENGELLY—of the significance of the discovery of stone tools (hand axes) in association with fossil animal bones deep down in the cliff over the Somme river at Abbeville in France by BOUCHER DE PERTHES in 1836, and of the discovery, under the direct supervision of PENGELLY in a cave at Brixham, South Devon, in England in 1853.
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¹⁷ In his Principles of Geology (1830-33). DANIEL, op. cit., p. 88.
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*Environmental Archaeology*
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These discoveries proved beyond doubt that man, the maker of stone tools, and the associated animals—such as lion, elephant, rhinoceros, ox, belonged to a time and clime which were not only of hoary antiquity but belonged to a time when Europe was much different climatically and to some extent geographically. Thus the new disciplines of palaeogeography, palaeobotany, palaeoclimatology—what is now called "Environmental Archaeology"—were slowly being ushered in, though their regular establishment in Universities was much later.
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*Evolution of Man*
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The discovery of the skeletal remains of man himself (as distinguished from his tools) was not far to come. Already a human skull had been found in 1700, but went unnoticed. Then a skull was unearthed at Neanderthal on the river Dussel in Germany in 1857.¹⁸
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¹⁸ For this and other earlier discoveries see DANIEL, A Hundred Years of Archaeology, p. 35.
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This has later been recognized as the species of an extinct type of man known as Neanderthal Man. This man had high brow ridges and backward sloping dome of the skull and was regarded as "the most ape-like" by HUXLEY.
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So everything—tools, extinct animals and man—were there to disprove the beginning of Earth only some 5000 years ago. A scientific explanation was necessary to understand their relationship. This was provided by Charles DARWIN¹⁹ and HUXLEY.²⁰
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¹⁹ Origin of Species (1859) and The Descent of Man (1871).
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²⁰ Man's Place in Nature (1863).
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A new point of view was now given for looking at these momentous discoveries.
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*Foundation of Museums*
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Though the British Museum had been founded in the 18th century, it was the Danish archaeologists who thought of and founded a museum of antiquities, classified them on some principles and later tried to explain the bases of similarity and difference by reference to tradition, comparative methods and ethnography. Thus between 1800—1850, they had laid down the real foundation of prehistoric archaeology. The outstanding names in this movement were RASMUS NYERUP, VEDEL-SIMONSEN, CHRISTIAN JURGENSEN THOMSEN, SVEN NILSSON and J. J. A. WORSAAE. NYERUP advocated the formation of a National Museum of Danish Antiquities in 1806, but was unable to classify the small collection of antiquities he had made at the University of Copenhagen. This was achieved by THOMSEN, developing the notion of Three Ages first set out by VEDEL-SIMONSEN in 1813. THOMSEN, as first Curator of the National Museum of Denmark "arranged his collections by classifying into three ages of Stone, Bronze and Iron as the basis of the material used in making weapons and implements." The specimens were divided into three groups as they represented, according to THOMSEN, three chronologically successive ages.