the beginning of the nineteenth century, most scientists were still reluctant to challenge this widely accepted theological dogma.

However more human artifacts and extinct animals kept turning up in sealed and undisturbed layers of stratigraphy in caves in Europe and England, providing more evidence that human beings must have been around at the same time as the accompanying and long-vanished mammals. But it was not until the mid-nineteenth century that many scientists were prepared to believe, and more important to publicly state, that the world was probably a lot older than Genesis and Ussher had determined. By then, many people had forgotten that fifty years previously John Frere had linked archaeological and paleontological evidence to argue for a greater human antiquity.

Tim Murray