page_title: Discovery of human antiquity
section_title: Human origins and the "universal deluge" debated
hierarchical_section_title: Discovery of human antiquity / Historical debates / Theological debates / Human origins and the "universal deluge" debated
caption_attribution_description: English: Noah's ark, The Church as a nave. Stained glass window. Church Saint-Etienne-du-Mont. Paris. Français&#160;: L'arche de Noé. le Vaisseau de l'Eglise.Vitrail. Eglise Saint-Etienne-du-Mont, Paris. Salle des catéchismes.
context_page_description: The discovery of human antiquity was a major achievement of science in the middle of the 19th century, and the foundation of scientific paleoanthropology. The antiquity of man, human antiquity, or in simpler language the age of the human race, are names given to the series of scientific debates it involved, which with modifications continue in the 21st century. These debates have clarified and given scientific evidence, from a number of disciplines, towards solving the basic question of dating the first human being.
  Controversy was very active in this area in parts of the 19th century, with some dormant periods also. A key date was the 1859 re-evaluation of archaeological evidence that had been published 12 years earlier by Boucher de Perthes. It was then widely accepted, as validating the suggestion that man was much older than previously been believed, for example than the 6,000 years implied by some traditional chronologies.
  In 1863 T. H. Huxley argued that man was an evolved species; and in 1864 Alfred Russel Wallace combined natural selection with the issue of antiquity.
context_section_description: The Flood could explain extinctions of species at that date, on the hypothesis that the Ark had not contained all species of animal. A Flood that was not universal, on the other hand, had implications for the biblical theory of races and Noah's sons. The theory of catastrophism, which was as much secular as theological in attitude, could be used in analogous ways.
  There was interest in matters arising from modification of the biblical narrative, therefore, and it was fuelled by the new knowledge of the world in early modern Europe, and then by the growth of the sciences. One hypothesis was of men not descended from Adam. This hypothesis of polygenism (no unique origin of men) implied nothing on the antiquity of man, but the issue was implicated in counter-arguments, for monogenism.
caption: Noah's Ark, a stained glass window of the earlier 17th century, Church of Saint-Étienne-du-Mont, in Paris.
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