The Discovery of Human Antiquity

More than two hundred years before anyone had even heard of Intelligent Design, scholarly naturalists, geologists, and antiquarians—many of them devout Christians—began to discover puzzling artifacts, including stone tools and human-like skeletons. Such relics suggested that human life on earth had begun tens of thousands of years earlier than anyone previously supposed.

Although the names of these discovery sites (Neander Valley, Altiamira, the Courbet Cave) and their discoverers (Buckland, Lyell, Darwin, just to name a few) are well known, their original reports—and the ensuing, often fierce debates—have been left mostly untranslated and unexamined. In The Discovery of Human Antiquity, Jill Cook gathers this archival material together for the first time, culling from scholarly journals, the minutes of “learned society” meetings, and even the columns of local newspapers. With dozens of illustrations and Cook’s expert commentary, The Discovery of Human Antiquity provides insight into what would become the foundation of modern archeology—and the beginnings of the Intelligent Design/Evolution debate.