Dissent with Modification : Human Origins, Palaeolithic Archaeology and Evolutionary Anthropology in Britain 1859-1901

by Mcnabb, John

• ISBN13: 9781905739523
• ISBN10: 1905739524
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2012-08-01
• Publisher: David Brown Book Co

Summary

The author's original aim in writing this book was to chronicle the story of a very specific debate in human evolutionary studies that took place between the late 1880s and the 1930s - the 'eolith' debate that had to do with small, natural stones whose shape and edges suggested to our earliest ancestors their use as tools, either as they were, or with a small amount of chipping to the stone's edge, a process called 'retouch'. These were the most primitive of tools, thought to date to the very beginning of human cultural evolution, and therefore suited to our very earliest ancestors. The more the author researched this topic the more he realised that its explanation was rooted in a number of research questions which today are considered separate subjects, and, gradually, a book that was to be about a forgotten Palaeolithic debate became a book that was just as much about 'Morlocks', stone tools, racial difference, and the Anthropological Society of London. The major themes of this study include: Apart from interconnectivity itself, the development of Palaeolithic archaeology, its relationship with the study of human physical anthropology in Britain and, to a much lesser extent, on the Continent; The links between these and the study of race and racial origins; The question of human origins itself; The link with geological developments in climate and glacial studies; The public perception of the whole 'origins' question and its relationship with 'race'; How the public got its information on origins-related questions, and in what form this was presented to them; a review of the opening phase of the eolith debate (1889-1895/6) as a logical extension of developments in a number of these areas (e.g. Victorian science fiction). This fascinating book incorporates original research with synthesis and overview, and at the same time presents original perspectives derived from the author's overall arrangement of the material. While the targeted readership includes postgraduates and third-year undergraduates, the work is very much intended as accessible to the non-academic reader wanting to know more about a subject that (re)touches on everyone.

Table of Contents

Preface and Acknowledgments
Illustration and image credits
Journeys in Time and Space: Introduction and Aims of the Book	p. 1
Chronology: Then and Now The Structure of the Book and the Big Picture
1859: A Brave New World	p. 17
1859
Human Origins and the Origin of Species
1859: The First 'Antiquity of Man' Debate
1859 and Onwards: The Geological Implications of Prestwich and Evans's Work
The Moulin Quignon Affair and the Triumph of Methodology
The 1860s: Owning, Administering and Populating the Antediluvian World	p. 53
E. B. Tylor and Evolutionary Anthropology
New Territory - How to Explore the Brave New World.
People and Politics in Human Origins Research in the 1860s
Human and Racial Origins in the Ethnological and Anthropological Societies
The 1860s: A Growing Sense of Time and Place	p. 75
Searching for the Evidence: Caves and Skeletons
Searching for the Evidence: Links to the Modern Races
The Concept of a Global Palaeolithic Period
Searching for the Evidence: Expanding on the British Sequence; Further Discoveries in the Drift
Comparisons with the European Evidence: Chronology and Caves on the Continent
Philosophising the Palaeolithic	p. 100
Theory and Interpretation in the 1860s: Philosophical Evolution
The Biologists: Alfred Russel Wallace and T.H. Huxley
The Geologist: Charles Lyell
The Anthropologist: John Lubbock
Thesis and Antithesis, but No Synthesis: The 1870s and the Darwinians in Power	p. 121
Under New Management
Ancient Stone Implements and Flint Chips
Challenges to Consensus and Consolidation
Debating the Challenges to Consensus
Theory Building in the 1870s
Augustus Lane Fox and Material Culture
The Eve of the War: The 1880s: Questioning Post-Glacial Man at the Start of the Tate Victorian Period	p. 156
The Geological Background
Palaeolithic Archaeology in the late Victorian Period
The Shape of Things to Come: Anthropology, Heredity, and Race in the 1880s and Early 1890s	p. 182
Tertiary Man
The Biological Study of Heredity in the late Victorian Period
Heredity and Race, the Anthropology of Observation
Francis Galton and the Anthropometric Laboratory
Evolutionary Anthropology, Race, Material Culture and the Universality of the Human Mind, 1880s-early 1890s
The Limited Palaeolithic Skeletal Data Set
The British Eolith Controversy: A Home Grown Human Origins Debate	p. 205
Dramatis Personae
Prestwich's Geological Views just Prior to the Beginning of the Eolith Debate
The Eolith Debate Begins
1889-1892: The Fighting Begins! The Geological Society and the Anthropological Institute
1892-1896: In the Storm - the Battle for the High Ground
1896-1901: Trying to Hold the High Ground
Many Meetings Eoliths and Palaeoliths in the 1890s	p. 248
Eoliths on Display: Academia, the Public, and the Press
Progress of Palaeolithic Research during the 1890s
Eoliths and Anthropology
The View from the Hill: Human Evolution in the 1890s	p. 277
The Story so Far
The Time Traveller's View of Evolution and Human Origins
The Informed Opinion of a Gentleman of Science
The Public's Engagement with Evolutionary Issues: Getting the Story Out, or How the Time Traveller Would Have Acquired his Understanding of Human Evolution
Science Fiction and H.G. Wells: Resolving the Conflict Between Past and Future	p. 289
Science Fiction in Victorian England
H.G. Wells's Science Fiction between 1888-1901
Amazing Stories	p. 312
Scientific Romances: George Griffith
Prehistoric Fiction
Other Scientific Romances Relevant to Human Origins
Lost Worlds/Lost Races Fiction
Conclusion
Bibliography	p. 337
Appendix	p. 364
Index	p. 367
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