First and Last Men Part I - Adam's Kindred

It is an odd thing to consider that only a couple centuries ago there existed among neither the public nor the sciences any particular notion of prehistory. There was history, of course, a field both venerable and respected, but nothing before it. The annals of the Old Testament traced back the lines of man to the very dawn, or so it seemed, and little in the way of archaeology or palaeontology had ever arisen to complicate this picture. The histories seemed complete, a record from dawn till dusk. The process of discovery is rarely gentle. The advent of geology, palaeontology and complex archaeology have resulted in nothing less than a total reinterpretation, if not revolution, in our view of human history. If the old narratives were not destroyed, they were rendered at least vastly more complex than hitherto thought. From this process of discovery and transformation has arisen an entirely new cultural vocabulary, never before known: Extinction, evolution and the vastness of time became concepts enmeshed in popular thought. For the first time in millennia, people spoke of the mammoth and the sabretooth. For the first time in history, of the dinosaur. Yet of all the new images and ideas, perhaps the most startling was also the most familiar: the man before Man, the dweller in the grottos, the ur-person. The Caveman.