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In 1869 he was appointed curator at the Manchester Museum and lecturer in geology at Owens College in Manchester. In 1874 the college became the Victoria University of Manchester (now Manchester University) and Dawkins became its first professor of geology, a position he held until his retirement in 1909.
Dawkins became interested in Paleoanthropology in 1859 when he helped the Rev. J. Williamson explore the Wookey Hole, a cave in the Mendip Hills in southern England, in search of evidence of early humans in England. At the same time william pengelly and hugh falconer were interpreting prehistoric material found at brixham cave in Devonshire to the same end. While in his first book, Cave Hunting (1874), Dawkins cautiously supported the idea of early human antiquity, by his second, Early Man in Britain (1880), he argued that human antiquity was only as old as the Pleistocene period (10,000 years ago). Dawkins believed that the mammalian extinctions at the close of the Tertiary period would have also included humans—if they had existed at all. Based on the fossil remains in river-drift terraces or cave sites, Dawkins argued that humans first appeared in Europe during the middle Pleistocene period. He criticized French archaeologist gabriel de mortillet for excluding regional variations in early human evidence, and went on to suggest that differences in assemblages might also be the result of tribal or ethnic variations, or of access to raw materials.
Dawkins maintained his position on human antiquity despite subsequent developments in Paleoanthropology, but remained active in scientific debates, including that of the great antiquity of Piltdown man. Despite regarding the arguments for Piltdown as “heresy,” he was to become close friends with Sir Arthur Keith, who at that time was vigorously supporting the finds from Piltdown.
Dawkins became a Fellow of the Geological Society in 1861 and received the Lyell Medal in 1889 and the Prestwich Medal in 1918. He was knighted in 1919.
See also
Britain, Prehistoric Archaeology; Piltdown Forgery
Widely acknowledged as a highly significant collection of Hebrew and Aramaic manuscripts, the Dead Sea Scrolls were originally discovered in 1946 in a cave near the Dead Sea at Khirbet Qumran in what is now Israel. Further discoveries were made in caves along the northwestern margin of the Dead Sea. The manuscripts have been dated to a period between the last two centuries b.c. and the first century a.d. and represent primarily religious texts. They are still being studied by scholars from all over the world.
A page from the Dead Sea Scrolls
(Gamma)
See also
Syro-Palestinian and Biblical Archaeology
References
Silberman, Neil Asher. 1994. The Hidden Scrolls: Christianity, Judaism, and the War for the Dead Sea Scrolls. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons.
(1862–1914)
Déchelette is considered one of the first professional archaeologists in france, not only because he was paid by an institution to conduct his work, but also because his social and financial situation allowed him to devote himself full-time
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