Jacques Butcher of Perthes

Jacques Butcher of Perthes , of its true name Jacques Butcher of Crèvecœur de Perthes , (born close to Rethel (the Ardennes), on December 10th 1788, died with Abbeville (Somme), on August 5th 1868), prehistorian French, which was one of the founders of its discipline.

In 1804, it became made of his/her father, Directeur of the customs with Abbeville and one of the founders of the Company of Emulation of the locality, which sent it in Italy. It returned in Abbeville only in 1824, after twenty years of absence. It was the time when the fossil discoveries of bones multiplied in the peat bogs and sand pits. To stop of Perthes published various works: Lovesongs, Ballades and Legends in 1829, Opinion of Mr. Christophe on prohibitions and the freedom of the New trade in 1830, in 1832, Speech with the workmen in 1833, Satires, Tales and Ditties in 1833, Of probity in 1835, Of Courage, bravery, civil courage in 1836.

At this point in time he became president of the Company of Emulation of Abbeville, binds with Doctor Casimir Picard and undertakes the installation of a local museum.

Of 1838 with 1841, it publishes five volumes of Creation, philosophical talk, recontrant the ideas of Georges Cuvier, where the seniority of the Man is not under discussion. In 1844, it discovered in the oldest layers of the terrace of Menchecourt-les-Abbeville (alluvia of the Somme) of the flint tools beside large bones Mammifère S disappeared which it dated from the Pléistocène. It wrote several works between 1846 and 1864, in particular Celtic Antiquités and antédiluviennes , in which it showed that the Man existed already at this period - it is today agreed to locate Pleistocene between 1,87 million and 10.000 years before our days. Before its conclusions, it was generally allowed that the appearance of the Man went up at 4.000 years front J. - C.

In 1860, Boucher of Perthes made and published a speech remained famous: Of the Man antédiluvien and his works , which concludes:

the Man indeed was the contemporary of certain disappeared animals, at one time former to the Flood;
the climates changed since there were elephants and hippopotamuses in the valley of the Sum;
one can distinguish one tropical period, one icy period and a moderate period.

With his demonstration of the existence of a man antédiluvien, Boucher of Perthes attracted itself the lightnings of the scientific community, in particular Géologue Leonce Élie de Beaumont, which in 1863 still affirmed not to believe that Mammouth and Man lived in same time.

In 1864, Edouard Lartet found with the Madeleine, in the the Dordogne, a Mammouth engraved by the prehistoric men. In 1866, Henry Testot-Ferry, with which it maintains a long correspondence, discovers in his turn of the bones of elephant S in the layers of the Roche of Solutré. The scientists then started to realize of the importance of the work of Stopping of Perthes, unfortunately very little time before its death.

It gave its name to the local museum and the college of Abbeville. ----

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