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agreed that the St. Prest gravel beds were of Pliocene age. He observed, however, that among the fauna was the large extinct beaver, Trogontherium, and asked how one could be certain it was not the teeth of this animal that produced the marks on the fossil bones (Lyell 1863, appendix p. 4). Gabriel de Mortillet, professor of prehistoric anthropology at the École d’Anthropologie in Paris, stated in his book Le Préhistorique (1883, p. 45) that Lyell’s supposition was inadmissible because the marks on the bones of St. Prest were not at all of the character of those of a rodent’s teeth. In particular, they were too narrow to have been made by the strong and powerful incisors of Trogontherium.

De Mortillet had his own ideas about the cause of the marks on the fossil bones of St. Prest. Some authorities had suggested glaciers had been responsible for the markings. But de Mortillet said that glaciers had not reached that particular region of France. Modern authorities (Nilsson 1983, p. 169) agree on this point—the extreme southern limit of the North European glaciation passed through the Netherlands and Central Germany. De Mortillet also rejected human action as the cause of the marks on the bones.

The key to understanding the marks, according to de Mortillet, could be found in the statement by Desnoyers that they appeared to have been made by a sharp blade of flint. According to de Mortillet (1883, pp. 45–46), that was true, only the flint, instead of being moved by the hand of man, had been moved by natural force—a very strong underground pressure that caused the sharp flints to slide across the bones with force sufficient to cut them. As evidence, de Mortillet cited the fact that he had observed flints from the St. Prest gravels and elsewhere that displayed on their surfaces deep scratches. At this point it should be mentioned that in Le Préhistorique de Mortillet rejected every single one of the many discoveries of incised bones made up to that time, almost always offering the same explanation—that the marks were caused by sharp stones moved by subterranean geological pressures.

But in the case of the St. Prest bones, Desnoyers (1863, p. 1201) responded to de Mortillet’s objections, observing: “many of the incisions have been worn by later rubbing, resulting from transport or movement of the bones in the midst of the sands and gravels. The resulting markings are of an essentially different character than the original marks and striations, and offer superabundant proof of their different ages.” In other words, marks from subterranean pressure may indeed be found upon the bones, but, according to Desnoyers, they can be clearly distinguished from the earlier marks attributed to human action.

So who was right, Desnoyers or de Mortillet? Some authorities believed the question could be settled if it could be demonstrated that the gravels of St. Prest contained flint tools that were definitely of human manufacture. This same demand—for the tools that made the marks—is often made today in cases of anomalous discoveries of incised bones (Section 2.3). The Abbé Bourgeois, a clergyman who had also earned a reputation as a distinguished paleontologist, carefully searched the strata at St. Prest for such evidence. By his patient research he eventually found a number of flints that he believed were genuine tools and made them the subject of a report to the Academy of Sciences in January 1867 (de Mortillet 1883, p. 46). Even this did not satisfy de Mortillet (1883, pp. 46–47), who said of the flints discovered by Bourgeois at St. Prest: “Many others that he found there, and which are now deposited in the collection of the School of Anthropology, do not have conclusive traces of human work. The slidings and pressures that resulted in striations on the surfaces of the flints have also left on their sharp edges a number of chips that greatly resemble retouching by humans. This is what deceived Bourgeois. In effect, of the flints discovered at St. Prest, many present a false appearance of having been worked.”

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