Exhibition

It was between Abbeville and Amiens that prehistory first emerged as a scientific discipline in the mid-19th century. Today, this region remains an essential site of research for those hoping to understand the life of prehistoric man. The Somme basin offers a favourable context for the conservation of deposits, from the remains of the first human populations in Northern Europe 700,000 years ago, to the last appearances of hunter-gatherer populations before the advent of agriculture around 7,000 years ago. Over the last thirty years, major and at times unprecedented discoveries have been made in this department. Prehistorians study remains, formulate hypotheses and make use of modern technology every day to continue advancing our knowledge. However, there are fields which remain a mystery to this day, like the beliefs or social organisation of our distant predecessors. A certain creative drive has slipped into this gap in our knowledge, fuelling our collective imaginary – sometimes to the detriment of discernible truths.

This exhibition invites you on a journey into Prehistory: that written by specialists over the course of their research and that which all of us imagine, rightly or wrongly.

I.  To each their own Prehistory ?

Since the recognition of Prehistory, in around 1859, society has seized on scientific discoveries or theories to put this period into images or words. While specialists debate they way in which deposits and objects should be analysed, artists and writers share their own imaginary around Prehistory and prehistoric man. These works are rooted in the society and representations of their times. But prehistory, which is the study of mankind before history, is itself understood by scientists who are products of their time. Ideas, analyses and clever hypotheses can also be influenced by contemporary thinking.

What if, ultimately, Prehistory could also reveal something about us- ? Like permanent traits inherent to the human species, or truths about us as men and women of our times, about our ways of thinking, structured by the society in which we exist ? Is it possible to imagine an otherness, freed from our presuppositions ?

The adoption of Prehistory by 19th-century artists

These paintings of prehistoric subjects, created at the time of the scientific discipline's birth, reveal the studies of artists who often take great care to document their work. However, they deal with deeply human and timeless themes: survival, violence, sexuality, family and death. Though these works illustrate how artists saw our distant predecessors and their social codes, they also reveal the preoccupations, tastes and fantasies of their own society.

II. The establishment of a science

In the early decades of the 19^th century, scientists were particularly active, criss-crossing Europe in pursuit of "global archives". From the 1840s onwards, archaeologists, naturalists, palaeontologists and geologists working between Paris and London began to converge. With different methodological tools, they all set off on identical quests into the origin and antiquity of mankind. In the field, they offered decisive proof that the human species had in fact lived alongside animals now extinct or having moved far from our shores thousands of years ago, in pursuit of a more suitable climate. Despite some opposition, a consensus began to form. On 15 September 1859, the British geologist Charles Lyell announced that he recognised the evidence discovered of mankind's existence in prehistoric times as valid. Leading French scientific institutions also came out in agreement with these conclusions. This was the birth of Prehistory.

1.Jacques Boucher de Perthes (1788–1868)

"Boucher de Perthes did it all! Philosophy, history, poetry, literature, novels and, on top of it all, prehistory, as unscientific as it gets, with pieces of inane stone figures and not a trace of geological thinking. A century on, it's hilarious to think, and yet prehistory was born from it, but oh the work that had to be done!"

Abbott Henri Breuil, 1937

Despite sometimes confusing methods, a few daring theses and the mishmash of his collections, this Abbeville man remains a decisive actor in the recognition of mankind's ancient history, thanks to his stubbornness in defending his ideas, the accuracy of his observations and his capacity to build networks to benefit his cause, whether made up of leading scientists from both sides of the Channel or of more modest informants, like the quarry workers of Abbeville who brought him their latest finds.

2. A troubled birth

Accepting prehistory as a discipline in itself was no mean feat. Various scientific and religious obstacles arose, against the backdrop of a rivalry between French and English specialists, geologists and palaeontologists. Boucher de Perthes, a controversial figure, served as a matrix in this respect: opponents and followers alike set out to determine relevant analytical criteria upon which to base their judgements on his discoveries. The geologist Albert Gaudry presented an argument in favour of the Abbeville native, in an 1859 memo to the French Academy of Sciences, though its text was truncated upon publication; he then provided a full reading to the French Geological Society.

3. The context of the first discoveries

In the Somme, prehistoric discoveries have been, first and foremost, linked to economic and industrial development. The railway and its ballast requirements, along with the construction of factories and the city's expansion requiring brick and cob: all these factors led to the opening of quarries. When digging several metres below surface level to extract gravel and earth, workers discovered fossilised remains and cut stones that captured scientists' attention. The Amiens districts of Saint-Acheul and Montières, along with Abbeville and the Menchecourt district, therefore played a key role in the establishment of scientific proof.

4. From axe to handaxe: the biface and the Acheulean

The biface, a typical Early and Middle Palaeolithic piece, became the symbol of Prehistory as a whole. Several facts explain this. For Jacques Boucher de Perthes, first of all, tools allowed man to compensate for his inferiority in the world, and his attention became focused on the "primitive axe", as he referred to it. After him, Gabriel de Mortillet chose to name the oldest material culture known at that time after the Amiens Saint‑Acheul deposit, defined by what he referred to as a "coup‑de‑poing", or "handaxe". He therefore invented the Acheulean, an iconic term in prehistory, still used by specialists around the world. The name "biface" did not appear until 1920, in a text by André Vayson de Pradennes, who was the first to propose a more objective technical and descriptive vocabulary, moving away from our contemporary references.

III.  Studying Prehistory today

Since the first discoveries in the 19^th century, prehistoric research has been transformed. Today, it is closely linked to land-use planning, with the development of preventive archaeology some 30 years ago. Excavation and laboratory-study methods have also changed: in contrast to the search for the "beautiful object" of the 19^th century, today, all remains and data are collected and subsequently processed by a multidisciplinary team. A dozen researchers can be involved in the study of a single deposit.

Analytical methods have been adapted, turning to the most modern technology. The aim is no longer to simply understand man's antiquity. Instead, the questions are now multiple: in which climates and landscapes did prehistoric people live? How did groups of hunter-gatherers live? How were their settlements organised? This discipline has evolved significantly over the last 170 years!

IV.  The succession of climates over 1 million years

For 1 million years, the climate has undergone large-scale cyclical variations, characterised by alternating long cold periods, known as glacial periods, and much shorter temperate intervals referred to as interglacial periods. Between each period, intermediary episodes occur, slow when cooling and rapid when heating. These variations are caused by the eccentricity of the Earth's orbit, the tilt of its axis and the gradual change of its orientation (Milankovitch theory).

These shifts influenced environments in the north of France: deciduous forests (oak, beech) in temperate phases, and real polar deserts during glacial phases, with boreal forests (pine and birch) during intermediate phases. These fluctuating landscapes have resulted in the presence of very different animal species and human groups.