DISCOVERY OF ICE AGE MAN. Reliquiae Diluvianae; or, Observations on the Organic Remains Contained in Caves, Fissures, and Diluvial Gravel, and on Other Geological Phenomena, Attesting the Action of an Universal Deluge by Buckland, William - 1823

London: John Murray, 1823. First edition.

ILLUSTRATED WITH 27 PLATES, THE DISCOVERY OF PREHISTORIC ANIMAL FOSSILS IN EUROPE INCLUDES A 26,000 YEAR-OLD HUMAN SKELETON.

11 inches tall hardcover, 3/4 leather binding, rebacked, retaining original tooled spine with gilt black label, new marbled paper covering boards, marbled edges, marbled endpapers, contemporary signature, Rev. W. T. Collins to front free endpaper, i-vii, errata, folding table, 303 pp, 27 lithographed plates, 3 hand colored, 1 folding. Light foxing to endpapers, otherwise very good in custom archival mylar cover. Described by SJ Gould in "The Freezing of Noah" in The Flamingo's Smile, 1985, pp 114-125.

WILLIAM BUCKLAND (1784–1856) was an English theologian who became Dean of Westminster. He was also a geologist and palaeontologist. Buckland wrote the first full account of a fossil dinosaur, which he named Megalosaurus. His work proved that Kirkdale Cave in North Yorkshire had been a prehistoric hyena den, for which he was awarded the Copley Medal—he was later elected to the Royal Society. Early in his career Buckland believed he had found evidence of the biblical flood, but later saw that the glaciation theory of Louis Agassiz gave a better explanation. From his investigations of fossil bones at Kirkdale Cave, in Yorkshire, he concluded that the cave had actually been inhabited by hyaenas in antediluvian times, and that the fossils were the remains of these hyaenas and the animals they had eaten. While Buckland's analysis convinced him that the bones found in Kirkdale Cave had not been washed into the cave by a global flood, he still believed the thin layer of mud that covered the remains of the hyaena den had been deposited in the subsequent 'Universal Deluge'. He developed these ideas into his great scientific work Reliquiæ Diluvianæ (offered here) that was published in 1823 and became a best seller. On 18 January 1823 Buckland walked into Goat's Cave in Paviland, Wales, where he discovered a human skeleton which he named the Red Lady of Paviland, as he at first supposed it to be the remains of a local prostitute. Although he found the skeleton in the same strata as the bones of extinct mammals (including mammoth), Buckland believed humans could not have coexisted with any extinct animals, and he attributed the skeleton's presence there to a grave having been dug in historical times. His discovery is described in pages 82-98 of Reliquiae Diluvianae and illustrated in Plate XXI. Exploration of Goat's Cave by William Solace in 1912 revealed flint arrow heads and tools that led him to conclude that the skeleton was in fact a male hunter-gatherer during the last Ice Age. Over the last 100 years the date estimated by Solace has been shifted from the Mesolithic to the Palaeolithic era of the last Ice Age. Results published in 1989 and 1995 suggested that the individual from the cave lived about 26,000 years ago. When the skeleton was discovered, Wales lacked a museum to house it, so it was moved to Oxford University, where Buckland was a professor. The bones are currently on display at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History.