tour 10 of 15
Enlightenment: The Birth of Archaeology
Pointed flint handaxe
The apothecary John Conyers (1633-94) recorded
that this handaxe was found in London with the remains of an
elephant in 1679. At this time, educated Europeans thought that
humans had appeared on earth relatively recently, so it was a
puzzle that the axe had been found with the remains of an animal
that had been extinct in Europe for a long
time.
After
Conyers' death, his discovery was published by John Bagford
(1650-1715). Rejecting the idea that the gravel, handaxe and
elephant bones had been laid down by Noah's flood, he
explained the find in historical terms. Bagford thought it more
likely that the elephant had been brought to Britain during the
Roman invasion of AD 43 and that the native Britons had tried to
repel the beast with stone
weapons.
Conyers'
handaxe is now understood to be about 350,000 years old. At this
time, elephants lived in Britain, in a period during the Ice Ages
when the climate was similar to that of
today.
The Gray's
Inn Road handaxe, as it is now known, was acquired by
Sir Hans
Sloane and was among the first Palaeolithic
stone tools in the collections of the British
Museum.