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BOUCHER DE PERTHES (Jacques). Celtic and antediluvian antiquities. Mémoire sur l'industrie primitive et les arts à leur origine. Paris: Treuttel et Wurtz, Derache, Dumoulin, Victor Didron, 1847-1864. - 3 volumes in-8, 233 x 149: (2 ff.), XII, 628 pp. 80 plates; (2 ff.), XVI, 511 pp. 24 plates; (2 ff.), XXIV, 178 pp. (1 f.), pp. (179)-681, 10 plates. Demi-basane, spine ribbed and decorated, speckled edges (modern binding). In French in the text, no. 266. First edition of this key text "for the history of archaeology as a discipline, but also for the history of ideas and science". In fact, as Grégoire Meylan, head of the library at the Musée d'Archéologie Nationale, points out: "Jacques Boucher de Perthes is considered today as one of the 'fathers of prehistory', his Antiquités celtiques et antédiluviennes being one of its founding works. A customs director in Abbeville, he was nevertheless a man of letters, and the author of numerous literary works, as well as President of the Société d'émulation d'Abbeville. He was neither an archaeologist nor a geologist, but was particularly interested in man's origins and evolution. To this end, he wrote and published a metaphysical essay, De la création, essai sur l'origine et la progression des êtres in 1838, in which he hypothesized that traces of "antediluvian man" would one day be found. In 1838, he presented to the Académie des Sciences the first lithic elements extracted from the sandpits of the Somme, whose stratigraphic position enabled him to assert that "antediluvian man" had indeed existed at the time of the large mammals. But for many years, he came up against the skepticism and fierce opposition of a certain intellectual elite, convinced that man's antiquity could not predate the Celtic and Gallic periods. In 1842, the discovery of a mammoth jaw associated with a flint tool in the same stratigraphic layer enabled him to demonstrate the contemporaneity of man and extinct species. This hypothesis was definitively validated in 1859 when English scholars J. Prestwich, J. Evans, J.W. Flower, R. Godwin-Austen, R.W. Hylne and C. Lyell, who attested to the authenticity of his discoveries. In these works, Boucher de Perthes presents his research and demonstrates his theory to convince even the most skeptical. Les Antiquités celtiques et antédiluviennes was published in three volumes, each one providing new answers and enabling the author to assert his position by presenting his latest discoveries and, above all, by listing the new scholars and scientists around the world who had rallied to his cause" (Source: Grégoire Meylan, in: site du Musée d'Archéologie Nationale, domaine de Saint-Germain-en-Laye, Les collections, Bibliothèque, Antiquités celtiques et antédiluviennes). The edition comprises 114 plates, 80 in the first volume, 24 in the second (numbered I to XXVI), and 10 in the last (numbered III to XII, with the figures numbered I and II being full-page, and therefore included in the pagination). Together, these plates comprise more than 2,200 figures. A good copy in 20th-century binding. Spine slightly faded, a few scratches. Scattered foxing in the first volume. Provenance: Henri Millerioux, with bookplate bearing the motto "Semper transformare".

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BOUCHER DE PERTHES (Jacques). Celtic and antediluvian antiquities. Mémoire sur l'industrie primitive et les arts à leur origine. Paris: Treuttel et Wurtz, Derache, Dumoulin, Victor Didron, 1847-1864. - 3 volumes in-8, 233 x 149: (2 ff.), XII, 628 pp. 80 plates; (2 ff.), XVI, 511 pp. 24 plates; (2 ff.), XXIV, 178 pp. (1 f.), pp. (179)-681, 10 plates. Demi-basane, spine ribbed and decorated, speckled edges (modern binding). In French in the text, no. 266. First edition of this key text "for the history of archaeology as a discipline, but also for the history of ideas and science". In fact, as Grégoire Meylan, head of the library at the Musée d'Archéologie Nationale, points out: "Jacques Boucher de Perthes is considered today as one of the 'fathers of prehistory', his Antiquités celtiques et antédiluviennes being one of its founding works. A customs director in Abbeville, he was nevertheless a man of letters, and the author of numerous literary works, as well as President of the Société d'émulation d'Abbeville. He was neither an archaeologist nor a geologist, but was particularly interested in man's origins and evolution. To this end, he wrote and published a metaphysical essay, De la création, essai sur l'origine et la progression des êtres in 1838, in which he hypothesized that traces of "antediluvian man" would one day be found. In 1838, he presented to the Académie des Sciences the first lithic elements extracted from the sandpits of the Somme, whose stratigraphic position enabled him to assert that "antediluvian man" had indeed existed at the time of the large mammals. But for many years, he came up against the skepticism and fierce opposition of a certain intellectual elite, convinced that man's antiquity could not predate the Celtic and Gallic periods. In 1842, the discovery of a mammoth jaw associated with a flint tool in the same stratigraphic layer enabled him to demonstrate the contemporaneity of man and extinct species. This hypothesis was definitively validated in 1859 when English scholars J. Prestwich, J. Evans, J.W. Flower, R. Godwin-Austen, R.W. Hylne and C. Lyell, who attested to the authenticity of his discoveries. In these works, Boucher de Perthes presents his research and demonstrates his theory to convince even the most skeptical. Les Antiquités celtiques et antédiluviennes was published in three volumes, each one providing new answers and enabling the author to assert his position by presenting his latest discoveries and, above all, by listing the new scholars and scientists around the world who had rallied to his cause" (Source: Grégoire Meylan, in: site du Musée d'Archéologie Nationale, domaine de Saint-Germain-en-Laye, Les collections, Bibliothèque, Antiquités celtiques et antédiluviennes). The edition comprises 114 plates, 80 in the first volume, 24 in the second (numbered I to XXVI), and 10 in the last (numbered III to XII, with the figures numbered I and II being full-page, and therefore included in the pagination). Together, these plates comprise more than 2,200 figures. A good copy in 20th-century binding. Spine slightly faded, a few scratches. Scattered foxing in the first volume. Provenance: Henri Millerioux, with bookplate bearing the motto "Semper transformare".

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