Saint-Acheul is found by the banks of the Somme River in France. It is an important site within the field of history because it lends its name to an entire era of history and the weapons found within that era: the Acheulean. The Acheulean era is one of the two main periods of the early Paleolithic Age. The weapons of that time were all stone tools, the majority being handaxes. They have chipped blades, and show evidence of quite a bit of work. Most of these tools have been dated between 1,000,000 and 300,000 years ago. The current theory is that Homo Erectus started with Oldowan styles of tools and moved into Acheulean styles of tools. The site has an interesting history. One of its first explores was Boucher de Crevecoeuer de Perthes, who dug into the pits early in the 1800's. The handaxes he found caused controversy because people of the time did not accept the idea that there was such a thing as mankind existing very early in history. Many church officials accused de Perthes of having made the axes himself.
In 1854, Dr. Rigollot, an amateur archaeologist, went to prove de Perthes' theories wrong. He went to the Saint-Acheul and Saint-Roch pits, and found handaxes for himself. This began to give credibility to the evidence. More credibility was established when Falconer (geologist), Prestwich, Evans (archaeologist) and Lyell (author of Antiquity of Man) also visited Saint-Acheul. They too unearthed man-made implements from the site. They were all wee-respected men, and their opinion that the artifacts were genuine carried a lot of weight. Although the evidence of early man was accepted now, many questions were still raised by what type of man had fashioned the tools found at Saint-Acheul. At this time in history, the notion of anything other than homo sapiens was unthinkable.
The most famous person associated with the Saint-Acheul pits is the Abbe' Henri Breuil, who is known as the Father of Prehistory. He, like the many others before him, unearthed many artifacts from Saint-Acheul. Saint-Acheul is located on a high terrace of the Somme River, and he reasoned that by virtue of its placement, must actually be a site of great antiquity. No human remains were found at Saint-Acheul, which caused the mystery of what type of man was associated with these tools to deepen. Eventually, though, remains were found at sites near Saint-Acheul which did establish that it was not homo sapiens at Saint-Acheul, it was a race hitherto unknown. Eventually, this led Breuil to his greatest achievement: the proper placement of the Acheulean Age within the framework of prehistory. Before this, the framework as we now know it was wildly disputed as well as being wildly inaccurate.
Saint-Acheul, therefore, provided some of the first concrete evidence for early human habitation in Europe. Although many sites yielded more important fossils, bones, and tools, Saint-Acheul retains its importance because of the quantity of the axes it yielded, and because of the number of important archaeologists who used those tools to establish their theories.
Interesting Link:
www.abotech.com/Articles/Kowalski02.htm pictures of Acheulean handaxes from Saint-Acheul
Broderick, Alan Houghton. Father of Prehistory.William Morrow & Trent, Christopher. Terms Used in Strong, DE (Ed.).Archaeological Theory Hutchinson Encyclopedica.Stone Age Novenmber 15, 1999. Sellars, Dr. Bill. (Leeds University) Tool Use (H. Erectus / Acheulean) http://www.leeds.ac.uk/chb/lectures/anthl_12.html The Acheulean Tool Industry http://www.scale.uiuc.edu/anth102/lect28.html ( unavailable) The Flint Weapons and Implements. http://abob.libs.uga.edu/bobk/whiteg02.html History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom. Chapter Vii. The Antiquity of Man and Prehistoric Archaeology. http://www.human-nature.com/reason/white/chap7.html November 15, 1999
Written by: Elizabeth Jordan-Prince