The International Congress of Anthropology and Archaeology, Part I [pp. 639-647]

Prd~istoric A;tlkropology and A rclza'ology. 643
and independent investigators have work in which the learned and active
allowed themselves to be carried director of our Royal Museum of
away with the apparent revelation of Natural History has condensed his
an entirely new world. In hearing researches.*
of the millions of ages attributed to The opening session took place the
quatemary man, one feels greatly be- 22d of August. The day was spent
l~ind the times, and asks himsdf in receptions, speeches of welcome,
anxiously if there really is a science replies, the installation of the board,
that has a good nght to make man and other official courtesies which we
so old, and that affords means of as- spare the reader. The fbllowing
certaining, as has been stated, what days there were two sessions a day.
our ancestors were observing in the The morning of the 23d of August
heavens on the 29th of January,i 1,542 was devoted to the first question
years before Christ. This feeling of in the programme. There was no
astonishment must be still livelier in one better fitted to develop it than M.
those for whom fl~e insoluble prob- Dupont, the Chief Secretary of the
lems of antiquity extend back to less congress, and the most active of its
than two thousand years. ~Ve do organizers. He had already given a
not know the site of Alesia, and we clear outline of its history in his dispretend to know the habitat and course at the first session of fl~e day
manners of villages of more than before. It was started in Belgium in
three hundred thousand years before 1829, and kept up by the researches
the downfall of the Gallic nationality! of Schmerling, who may be regarded
It should be confessed that the as the Champollion of prehistone
science which has so recently sprung anthropology; but our illustrious
lip, and whid~ has for its object the fellow-citizen was not encouraged in
~tudy of human labor anterior to il~e his discoveries, and it may be said
use of metals, is neither so firmly that be was, to a certain degree, a
established nor so positive in its de- martyr to the scientific prejudices of
ductions that we should blindly ac- his time. His labors, occurring at a
cept such bold theories. This is one time when Cuvier's authonty was at
of the reasons that should encourage its height, could not counterbalance
more men of serious pursuits to take the influence of that great genius, who
a part in these debates, as to which declared that man could not be found
it is allowable to hope that the truth among fossils' bones, and that the
will some day be discovered at an vestiges of il~e human race in the
equal distance from any exaggera- caverns came under the general rule.
tion. No one then could have dreamed of
~Ve shall have occasion to return referring these remains to the epoch
to il~ese questions which occupied of the mammoth, and it was scarcely
the Congress of Brussels. This pre- admitted, till within a dozen years,
amble appeared necessary as a justi- that man was contemporary with the
fication for confimng ourselves to a animals of the geological periods
plain, simple analysis of the proceed- which preceded ours. Schmerling,
ings of the congress-others can re- but little befriended by circumstances,
view il~em better than we. was deceived as to what caused the
We will only add one word more. introduction of this djbris into the
The field for discussion had been prepared in a wonderftil manner by il~e 1e7 ~L~$fomme ~~fl~d~Jttij~52A~~~~Sd~%l~~ Pierre dans
recent publication of il~e excelleiit 11~~~~fl4~~~O~fl~S~q~~~~Z~1~fl1872~~ se ~dition.