Dissent with Modification: Human Origins, Palaeolithic Archaeology and Evolutionary Anthropology in Britain 1859-1901

The author's original aim in writing this book was to chronicle the story of a very specific debate in human evolutionary studies that took place between the late 1880s and the 1930s - the 'eolith' debate that had to do with small, natural stones whose shape and edges suggested to our earliest ancestors their use as tools, either as they were, or with a small amount of chipping to the stone's edge, a process called 'retouch'. These were the most primitive of tools, thought to date to the ve...