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The Invention of Words for the Idea of ‘Prehistory’.
Christopher Chippindale
Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society / Volume 54 / January 1988, pp 303 - 314
DOI: 10.1017/S0079497X00005867, Published online: 18 February 2014
Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0079497X00005867
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Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society 54,1988, pp. 303-314
The Invention of Words for the Idea of 'Prehistory'
By CHRISTOPHER CHIPPINDALE1
The standard recent authorities on the history of
archaeology date the invention of a specific word for
prehistory to 1833, saying that Paul Tournal of
Narbonne used the adjective prehistorique ('prehistoric' in the English translation in Heizer 1969, 91; and
in Daniel 1967, 25, following Heizer 1962) or the noun
prehistoire (Daniel 1981,48) in an article about French
bone-caves.
This is not true. The word Tournal used was antehistorique (Tournal 1833, 175), and the mistake has
arisen from working with an idiomatic translation into
English, which rendered 'ante-historique' as 'prehistoric' (Tournal [1959]) instead of the original
French. (Grayson 1983, 102., however, quotes
Tournal's original French correctly.) The earliest use of
'prehistoric' seems to be Daniel Wilson's of 1851 in
The Archaeology and Prehistoric Annals of Scotland
(1851), as the older histories of archaeology say (eg
Daniel 1950, 86 (reprinted in Daniel 1975, 86); Daniel
1962, 9), before the error about Tournal began to
circulate.
In English and in French, the easy forms for the new
concept of a time before any written history began are
the ones which add 'ante-' or 'pre-' to the word history,
by analogy with other neologisms. (They are not the
only ones: a case could also be made for 'palaeohistory', which no one seems ever to have used; for
palaeoethnology, see below.) Ante-historique and prehistoric seem to have the same intellectual parents, of
course, but we should really have a correct idea of the
exact conception and birth of the word which gives a
major part of archaeology — and our Society — its title:
mistakes in the name, the nationality and the date on the
birth certificate are not a wholly trivial matter.
Furthermore, Tournal was not the first to use antehistorique in French; 'antehistoric' was used in English
in the 1830s with much the same meaning as 'prehistoric' came to have twenty and more years later; and the
first uses in both languages came, not from scientists
influenced by the new geology and its accumulating
evidence for the antiquity of man, but from scholars of a
more literary tradition.
In this note, I set out as clear an account of the birth of
prehistorical words and their relatives in French and in
English as is offered by a reasonably thorough excavation of primary and secondary sources, and some
relevant information about cognates in other
languages, especially Danish, which have a special
aspect.
In view of the earlier confusion, I have been
particularly careful to see all original sources available
to me, and to indicate which later editions or secondary
authorities I have depended on. Ante is sometimes set
without the accent on the e, eg Tournal (1833);
hyphenation is variable in both languages, and not
always clear in a printed text, since a printer may
choose to break and hyphenate a single, otherwiseunhyphenated word like 'prehistory' if it falls at a linebreak. I look here at the substantive issue only, and do
not concern myself with accents and hyphenations or
with spellings, another minor question arising with the
prefixes palaeo/palaso/paleo- and prae/pra;/pre-.
ANTEDILUVIAN AND ANTE-/PRE-HISTORIC
Grayson (1983) succinctly identifies the special
character of Tournal's thinking, as set out in papers of
1827 to 1833 about the Bize caverns near Narbonne in
Languedoc, southern France. Paul Tournal (1805—72)
1
Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, University of Cam- was a pharmacist in Narbonne, later a founder of the
museum there and conservator of antiquities for the
bridge, Cambridge.
303
THE PREHISTORIC SOCIETY
departement of Aude. His early papers (1827; 1828;
1829) explored whether there was evidence for antediluvian human occupation of the caves, using the same
distinction between ante- and post-diluvian events in
relation to the biblical Deluge as was attempted by, for
example, MacEnery in his work at Kent's Cavern,
Torquay, between 1825 and 1829 (Vivian 1859).
Grayson describes this pattern of thinking in geological
and archaeological research in early nineteenth-century
Britain (1983, 55-86) and continental Europe (1983,
87—138). In a paper of 1830, Tournal showed that the
diluvium in the sites known to him was of a nature
which could not have resulted from a universal flood,
although he still used the term antediluvien: 'I'existence
des ossemens humains et des poteries ante-diluviennes
ne pent egalement etre contestee' (Tournal 1830, 199).
His last paper, of 1833, took the final step in escaping
from the Biblical frame of thinking, avoided antediluvien, and talked instead of a periode antehistorique.
In view of the confusion caused by the previous
translation of Tournal's paper, the relevant text is given
here in French and in its original layout.
After discussing the etymological difficulties of the
word fossile and neologisms like quasi fossile, Tournal
sets out 'la seule division que I'on pourrait adopter, et
qui a ete je crois de'ja proposee', 'the only division one
could accept, one which I believe has already been put
forward'. I have not traced any such earlier proposal,
which may well exist in the French geological literature.
The text runs as follows:
Periode geologique ancienne.
Elle renferme I'espace immense de temps qui a precede I'apparition de I'homme a la surface du globe, et pendant laquelle se sont
succedees une infinite de generations.
Periode geologique moderne ou periode autropaiienne caracterisee par la presence de I'homme. Cette periode peut-etre
divisee en
Periode historique.
Periode ante-historique
Elle a commence avec I'apparition de I'homme a la surface
du globe, et s'etend jusqu'au commencement des traditions
les plus anciennes. 11 est probable que pendant cette periode
la mer a ete elevee de 150 pieds au-dessus de son niveau
actuel. M. Reboul doit publier a ce sujet un travail fort
important qui levera bien des doutes et fixera beaucoup
d'irresolutions.
Elle ne remonte guere au-deld de sept mille ans, c'est-d-dire
a I'epoque de la construction de Thebes, pendant la iye
dynastie egyptienne (Josephe cite mois par mois et jour par
jour les rois de cette dynastie).
Cette periode pourra reculer davantage par suite des
nouvelles observations historiques.
Cette division offre comme on le voit I'avantage de n'etre basee que sur des observations positives, et d'ecarter la solution de la
question relative a la limite des fossiles, question qui, comme je Vai deja dit, ne me semble pas pouvoir etre resolue dans I'etat
actuel de la science.
This can be translated as follows, in the same format:
Early geological period
This embraces the enormous tract of time which came before the appearance of man on the earth's surface, and during which an
infinity of generations followed one another.
The recent geological period, or 'autropaeian' period, [is] characterized by man's presence. This period could be divided into:
ante-historic period
historic period
This began with the appearance of man on the surface of the
earth, and went on until the beginning of the earliest
traditions. It is probable that during this period the sea-level
rose T 50 feet above its present height. M. Reboul is to
publish a major work on this subject, which will remove
many doubts and resolve much uncertainty.
This goes back barely more than 7000 years, that is to say, as
far as the period of the building of Thebes during the 19th
Egyptian dynasty (Joseph cites the kings of this dynasty
month by month and day by day). This period could be
pushed further back after fresh historical observations.
As one can see, this division offers the advantage of being based only on positive observations, and of setting aside the
resolution of the question relating to the limit of fossils — a question which, as I have already said, does not seem able to be
resolved in the present state of the science.
304
15. C. Chippindale.
INVENTION OF WORDS FOR THE IDEA OF 'PREHISTORY'
The M. Reboul mentioned is surely Henri Reboul,
author of Ge'ologie de la Periode Quaternaire, et
Introduction a I'Histoire Ancienne (1833) and Essaide
Geologie Descriptive et Historique: Prolegomenes et
Periode Primaire (1835).
Tournal's scheme precisely defines an ante-historical
period extending from the first appearance of man on
the globe to the time about 7000 years ago when
written historical records begin. It is the clearest early
statement of the existence of such a period in the
science-directed literature, and quite startlingly similar
in its logic and structure to the classic treatises of some
thirty years later, such as Lyell's Geological Evidences
of the Antiquity of Man (1863). The 'idea of prehistory', as Daniel's book of that name underlines, was
not a single invention, but an idea, variously formulated and usually vague, in which one element, the idea
of some primeval age of stone before those of metal,
goes right back to Greek philosophers and historians
(Daniel 1967,90).
Tournal's vital leap, as Grayson (1983, 102—03)
underlines, was to break the habit of relating ancient
cave deposits of 'diluvium' to the specifics of a biblical
flood, and to begin to deal with an ante-historic rather
than an antediluvian period. This conceptual change
from antediluvian to ante-/ pre-historic is so important
that it is useful first to set out the history of
antediluvian words in English and in French.
The implications are not always plain, since a
reference in the early literature to the evidence of a
flood and the characteristic deposits it leaves behind
need not imply that this is the Flood of Genesis. And
events in France and Britain took different paths. The
attempt to reconcile geological events with the Floodnarrative of Scripture, which had ceased to be of much
consequence in European circles by the first years of
the nineteenth century, continued as an active concern
in England for many years — and Jameson's English
traditions of Cuvier's work were edited to force them
into a Flood way of thinking (Rudwick 1972., no—11,
133-34; Gillespiei95i).
ANTEDILUVIAN AND RELATED TERMS IN
ENGLISH AND FRENCH
In English, 'antediluvian' is first known to have been
used in 1646 by Sir Thomas Browne (1605—82), the
writer and antiquarian collector of rarities (Piggott
1976, 106); his Hydrotaphia, Urn Burial of 1658, is a
meditation on the transitoriness of life inspired by
a discovery of — as he thought — Roman (but in
fact Saxon) cremation urns (Piggott 1976, 13). He
used antediluvian in his Pseudodoxia Epidemica: or,
Enquiries into Very Many Received Tenents and
Commonly Presumed Truths, which explored and
exploded 'those encroachments, which junior compliance and popular credulity have admitted' (Browne
1646, prefatory note 'To the reader'). One of these was
the immense ages of Methuselah and other Old
Testament patriarchs who lived out their spans by the
century. Accounting for omissions from the Biblical
account, Browne showed the text intended 'onely the
masculine line of Seth, conduceable unto the Genealogy of our Saviour, and the antediluvian Chronology'
(Browne 1646, book 7, chapter 3, 344; 1650, 294;
1658,424).
Thomas Burnet's Theory of the Earth of 1684
confirmed the use of the word as an adjective, as
distinguishing the 'Ante-Diluvian' and 'Post-Diluvian'
fathers, following a similar usage by Thomas Lawson:
'The Ante-Diluvian and Post-Diluvian patriarchs, that
is, the Fathers that lived before and after the Flood'
(Lawson 1680, 9). Burnet (1684, 220) extended its use
to a noun for the men of antediluvian times: 'the
Scripture-History of the long lives of the Antediluvians'.
'Diluvian' is a little later, first recorded in John
Evelyn's diary entry for 28 August 1655: 'From the
calculation of coincidence with the diluvian period' (de
Beer 1955); and so is the alternative of diluvial, listed
in a dictionary of 1656 (Blount 1656). Curiously, its
twin of antediluvial was not invented until William
Buckland's Reliquiae Diluvianiae (Buckland, 1823, 2).
The equivalent words in French are a century later,
with antediluvien preceding diluvien in the same
manner as it does in English. The first certain use of
antediluvien is in a French dictionary of 1750 (Prevost
1750, 299), and it is thought to have been borrowed
from the English (Embs 1974, 104). Browne's Pseudodoxia was published in two French editions in 1733
(Souchay 1733; Keynes 1924,61-64); diluvien appears
in 1781 (Barruel 1781, tome 1, lettre 18). Golin's
history of the French language records of diluvien
'1787. F-Ac. 1798' (Golin 1903, 276).
In both languages, the major use of ante- and
post-diluvian was in terms of Biblical chronology,
though the terms gathered a wider meaning of primitive
backwardness, whether threatening or quaint, as in
Victor Hugo's Notre-Dame de Paris: 'II y avait dans ce
mariage a la couche cassee quelque chose de naif et
305
THE PREHISTORIC SOCIETY
d'antediluvien qui me plaisait' (1832, 123). With the mid-seventeenth century. Both were available as a way
growth of geological knowledge, the terms increasingly of expressing 'ante-historical' ideas, when the new
came into use in technical senses: Barruel's, the first use geology brought their possibilities to light towards the
of diluvien in French, for example, is a questioning of end of the eighteenth century.
whether shells from low-lying water could have been
Pre-adamitic — which embodies the theologically
carried up to mountain summits, where they are now more radical proposal — was invented, as has just been
found, by the action of I'eaux diluviennes: 'On nous a noted, for hypothetical arguments about the early
objecte que les coquillages, vivant pour la plupart a la peopling of the world, but these were in the narrow
mime place que les a vu naitre, seroient restes sur tradition of theological theory. So the substantive
I'ancien rivage, tandis que I'eaux diluviennes s'elevoientdebate about an existence for early man was conducted
au sommet des montagnes' (Barruel 1812., 183). It was almost exclusively during the early years of the
this aspect of the diluvial idea, of course, which nineteenth century, in the frame of diluvial words,
crumbled under the evidence of Tournal's cave sedi- surely because the empirical evidence was often
ments.
material in, or related to, sediments with clear signs of
water action; the pressing issue, as the quotation above
from Barruel indicates, was what manner of flood or
PRE-ADAMITIC AND RELATED TERMS IN ENGLISH
floods had brought them about, and the impossibility of
AND FRENCH
a single, rather recent biblical deluge as universal
Another word, and concept, of early biblical chronol- explanation. From a first use in 1817 onwards (Keating
ogy must also be mentioned, that of 'pre- Adamitic' men 1817, vol. 1, 85), 'diluvial' was particularly applied to
— the predecessors of Adam. Theologically, pre- the theory that geological phenomena were to be
Adamitic was a much more radical proposition than explained by the universal deluge, or by periods of
antediluvian since it contradicted the Creation story by catastrophic action by water — a variant of the specific
its own inconsistency. After the Fall, for example, Deluge of Noah which was beginning to reflect the
Adam and Eve are clothed with coats of skins (Genesis variety of proofs the new geology was bringing to light.
4:21), a fact which indicates that needles existed in
Eden, and — necessarily — that there existed at some
earlier time needle-makers. The Pre-Adamites were
named in Isaac de la Peyrere's original Latin treatise of LATER USES OF DILUVIAN, CELTIC AND PRE-ADAMITIC
WORDS WITH CHRONOLOGICAL IMPLICATIONS
1655 (de la Peyrere 1655), and came into English in its
translation of the following year (de la Peyrere 1656), A particular and striking context for antediluvian
which sets out a theory of a two-stage peopling of the words later in the nineteenth century is in the distinction
earth, the pre-Adamitic gentiles, and the later, Adamitic between antediluvian antiquities and Celtic antiquities
Jews and cognate races. The concept goes back into the (Chippindale 1985), as these are used, for example, in
previous century, for Thomas Nashe (d. 1601) refers to the title of Boucher de Perthes's Memoire sur I'lndustrie
'mathematicians abroad who will prove men before Primitive et les Arts a leur Origine whose first volume,
Adam' (Judith Rodden, pers. comm.). There were some Antiquites Celtiques et Antediluviennes appeared in
attempts in the eighteenth century to distinguish pre- 1847. In this distinction, Celtic meant the antiquities of
Adamitic and Adamitic races in relation to the known a seemingly recent time, the sepultures celtiques
ethnography of the world: James Adair, for example, in (Boucher de Perthes 1847, 'Avant-propos de l'editeur',
1775 (Adair 1775, 11) dismisses 'the wild notion that p. i) and especially the megalithic monuments which
some have espoused of the North American Indians were the 'Celtic, or Druidic monuments of the world'
being Prae-Adamites, or a separate race of men'. Other (Britton 1849, 7). These less old things, clearly
pre-adamitic works followed (eg Harris 1846), and a belonging with the Celts of earliest European history,
professor of geology at the University of Michigan were to be contrasted with the rude stone implements
wrote a pre-adamitic geology as late as 1880 titled Pre- from the 'terrains diluviens1 (Boucher de Perthes 1847,
Adamites: or a Demonstration of the Existence of Men i). The Revue Celtique, which had these matters as one
Before Adam ... (Winchell 1880).
of its concerns, was founded as late as 1870.
A different and later use of 'pre-adamitic' must also
So both antediluvian and pre-adamitic were in the
vocabulary from almost exactly the same years, in the be noted. Once the great antiquity of geological time
306
15. C. Chippindale. INVENTION OF WORDS FOR THE IDEA OF 'PREHISTORY'
had been accepted, and the comparatively late appearance of human fossils and artefacts within that
geological sequence, it became useful to have separate
words for the first and longer period of geological time
which lacked a human element, and for the second and
shorter period when there was a human existence. The
first of these was made 'pre-adamitic' or 'pre-adamite'
(eg 'terrestrial giants of the pre-Adamite earth'
(Richardson 1851)), as distinct from the second
which was 'pre-historic', and that again as distinct from
the third historic period of written record. Cataloguing
the collections of the Royal Irish Academy in the 1850s,
William Wilde divided the zoological items between
'Unmanufactured animal remains' and 'Antiquities of
animal materials', explaining in the introduction to the
latter section, 'With those animals that may be
considered pre-Adamite, we do not profess to deal, —
they belong rather to the province of the geologist and
palaeontologist than to that of the antiquary' (Wilde
[ 1860-61 ], 2.47-48)• Addressing the Geological Society
of London as its president in 1860, John Phillips set out
the pre-adamitic/prehistoric/historic scheme plainly.
After describing a section which ran from Oxford clay
up through strata with Elephas primigenius to old
British pottery and, at the top, the very soil where King
Charles I had walked, he remarked: 'What a succession
of periods is here offered to the mind in one opening 16
feet in depth! What errors might not be perpetrated in
our books by a mere indiscriminate gathering of the
spoils of one pit — spoils of historic, pre-historic,
and pre-Adamitic time, always truly distinguished
by Nature, though confused by heedless collectors'
(Phillips i860).
'Pre-adamitic' did not establish itself in this sense,
leaving no distinct word in the modern English
language for the geological eras preceding any human
existence — a lack which has made possible all those
cartoons of brontosauri and cave-men running around
together in an undistinguished prehistoric age.
ANTE-HISTORIQUE IN FRENCH AND ENGLISH
The first use of the French ante-historique in the
archaeological literature is due to Tournal (1833); the
context makes absolutely plain his conceiving of a
prehistory of human people in a geological era. So far as
I have been able to judge, the coining was not taken up
in the scientific literature.
But it was not only geologists who had cause to think
of a period beyond the reach of written sources. An
earlier use of ante-historique is due to M. Guizot,
professor of history in Paris, whose lecture-course on
the history of European civilization from Rome to the
Revolution was published in 1828. His history is a
largely chauvinist affair, intended to prove, 7/ nest
presque aucune grande idee, aucun grand principe de
civilisation qui, pour se re'pandre partout, n'ait passe
d'abord par la France' (Guizot 1828, lec,on 1, 5).
Talking of caste struggles between warriors and priests
as a persistent feature of early Egyptian and Etruscan
civilizations, Guizot looks to a yet earlier background,
saying, 'Mais c'est a des e'poques ante-historiques que se
sont passes, en general, de telles luttes; il n'en est reste
qu'un vague souvenir' (Guizot 1828, lec,on 2, 4; 1837,
33). The context required no confrontation between the
facts of geology and of scripture, but the meaning of his
word is exactly that of prehistorique, as is shown by the
correctness of the sense if prehistorique is substituted
for it. (The English edition of 1837 avoids a direct
translation, and renders the section as, 'These struggles,
however, mostly took place in periods beyond the reach
of history, and no evidence is left of them beyond a
vague tradition' (Guizot 1837, 33)).
Antehistorique came into general use as a rare but
respectable French word of non-technical meaning (eg
Fromentin 1857, 59), and occurs, for example, twice in
Proust's A la Recherche du Temps Perdu (1920; 1922).
The first English use of an antehistorical word is in
H. N. Coleridge's textbook of classical Greek
poetry, published in 18 3 4. Discussing whether Homer's
epics could have been composed by memory alone,
or required the use of writing, Coleridge remarks:
'According to the apparent inclination of Herodotus,
the earliest authority for the common opinion, the
Greeks had no written forms of letters before the arrival
of the Phoenician Cadmus. This specific event, as well as
the existence of Cadmus himself, is involved in the same
thick mist of ante-historic antiquity, which conceals or
disguises almost every thing or person, Greek or
concerning Greece, antecedently to the Homeric era'
(Coleridge 1834, 99—100). (This passage was added
after the first edition (Coleridge, 1830).) Again the
context requires no confronting of biblical and scientific
authority, but the sense is exactly that of prehistoric.
Much the same use at much the same time is: 'It is only
lately that the darkness, which has hung over the antehistorical period of these two universal nations, has
been penetrated' (Winning 1838, 74).
Another fairly early use is due to the philologist
Frederic Farrar (i860). Discussing puzzling languages
307
THE PREHISTORIC SOCIETY
like Berber which present grammars proper to one
language family and vocabulary proper to another,
Farrar remarked, 'Perhaps the only way to account for
these strange appearances is to suppose that language
had a period of primitive fusibility, during which they
were susceptible of great modification from contact
with other languages also in an ante-historical and
embryonary state' (i860, 213-14).
The idea of a period before written history, and the
coining of a word for it, arose, as these French and
English examples show, in four quite different disciplines:
or bronze', and 'teutonic or iron'. It is curious,
nevertheless, that he uses 'prehistoric' as an adjective to
go with the noun 'annals'; annals, by the OED
definition, are 'a narrative of events written year by
year', which is exactly what prehistory would not
directly offer.
The word's use in the title of John Lubbock's
successful general book, Pre-historic Times of 1865,
sometimes taken as the benchmark, follows at least one
other use, in the title and text of Wilson's own general
book, Prehistoric Man of 1862, for example 'prehistoric researches are slow to commend themselves to the
conservative Briton' (1862., 5). By then, of course, the
a. in geological studies by the evidence of bones and struggle over the antiquity of man had been resolved,
stones in early strata;
and the word prehistoric had its unambiguous modern
b. in historical studies by the evidence of early social meaning. Derivatives followed.
structures;
First, came 'prehistorical' with the same meaning as
prehistoric in 1862: 'From a "prehistorical" period
c. in literature by the evidence of early texts;
d. in philosophy by the evidence of common elements down to the Conquest of Tamerlane' in the Parthenon
(26 July 1862, 393) and then in Lyell's Antiquity of
across divers language groups.
Man the following year (1863).
Then, came 'prehistory' in Tylor's Primitive Culture
In each field there is an early invention of an
antehistorical word, each independent so far as one can of 1871, as in the phrase 'history and pre-history of
judge from context and the absence of direct or indirect man' (1871, vol. 2,401). Later, the alternative name for
the subject appeared, 'prehistorics', as in 'Chinese
reference from onefieldto another.
In 1951, Christopher Hawkes attempted a new order prehistorics have not as yet been sufficiently studied'
for that difficult period on the edge of historic sources (Science, 4 July 1884, 212), and parallel to the noun
which the French call protohistoire; the first of his five economics from the adjective economic.
periods was termed an antehistoric period, meaning
Finally, 'prehistorian' in 1892: 'the new school of
'before all history' (Hawkes 1951). This re-creation of prehistorians' in American Catholic Quarterly Review
the idea of antehistory was not taken up.
(October 1892, 728). Where antediluvian meant the
people of antediluvian times, prehistorian was applied
to the modern people who study prehistory — an
PRE-HISTORIC IN ENGLISH AND FRENCH
unfortunate diversion which leaves us still with no
simple
word for a person who lived in prehistoric times.
Thefirstuse of prehistoric in either language really does
The French prehistorique seems to derive directly
seem to be Daniel Wilson's of 1851, as the OED and
older authorities say, in the title of The Archaeology from the English. A first use is in a French review of
and Prehistoric Annals of Scotland, and in its text (eg Lubbock's Pre-historic Times appearing in 1865, the
p. ix: 'prehistoric races of Northern Europe'). In the year of itsfirst,English publication (Tre'sor de la Langue
preface to the second edition of 1863, more simply Franqaise, unpublished archive records). It was used in
entitled Prehistoric Annals of Scotland (1863, xiv), the title of the 1867 meeting of the congress of
Wilson mentions 'the application of the term Prehis- prehistoric archaeology, the body previously named
toric — introduced, if I mistake not, for the first time in with the term palaeoethnology (see below). It is given in
this work'. His book, Wilson explains, attempted 'to Littre's dictionary of 1869 (p. 1277; the dictionary
arrange the elements of a system of Scottish Archaeo- gives no specific quotations or indications of date of first
logy, as a means towards the elucidation of prehistoric use), and the Larousseof 1875; a specific early example
annals' (1851, xxi). No formal definition or explana- quoted is in 1876 (Lecuyer 1876, 82; as cited by Littre
tion of the word is given. The book takes the 1958, 303). The word was admitted by the Academie
Scandinavian three-age system, with prehistoric eras in Franchise in 1878 (Hartzfeld and Darmesteter 1897,
Scotland that Wilson called 'primeval or stone', 'archaic 1797), a formal acceptance of a neologism which has no
308
15. C. Chippindale.
INVENTION OF WORDS FOR THE IDEA OF 'PREHISTORY'
equivalent in the less organized anglophone world. The bibliography lists the 1871 edition as being prehisr
Times may be the best substitute, and the OED has a torique also {Bibliographie nationale, 1886, 628).
use in The Times of 3 October 1888, p. 8, column i,but
this is of prehistory rather than prehistoric, and may not
OTHER EQUIVALENT WORDS IN THESE
in any case be the first.
AND OTHER LANGUAGES
Prehistoire is dated to 1872 by Littre's dictionary
The
placing
of
a conventional prefix before the word
(1958), and a representative early use is a book title of
history
or
histoire
gives three possibilities: ante-history
1874, De I'Anciennete de I'Homme, Resume Populaire
and
pre-history,
as
discussed; and palaeo-history, an
de la Prehistoire (Zaborowski-Moindron 1874). Preanalogue
to
palaeontology,
whose first recorded use is
historien is also listed in the 1875 Larousse, almost
by
Charles
Lyell:
'Palaeontology
is the science which
twenty years before a recorded English use.
treats
of
fossil
remains,
both
animal
and vegetable'
De Mortillet provides, in 1883, a discussion of
(1838,
vol.
2,
281,
note)
and
to
Lubbock's
invention of
nomenclature at a usefully early date. He explains the
palaeolithic
(1865,2).!
have
not
traced
such
a coining in
early hesitation between the words antehistorique and
either
language.
pre'historique, with pre- preferred because it was ''plus
simple etplus net', while ante- had the irrelevant double
Another alternative is palaeo-ethnology, a formula
sense, lanterieur ou oppose" (de Mortillet 1883, 2). which has prevailed in Italian, where a professor of
Daniel (1962,10) makes the same point, and notes that prehistory is still professore di paletnologia and reads
Lubbock considered using the word antehistory. I have the Bulletino di Paletnologia Italiana. The programma
not myself yet been able tofindthis point in Lubbock's of the first number of this journal, founded in 1875 by
writings. De Mortillet's 1883 book, in a series of Chierici, Pigorini and Strobel, talks of preistorica and
summaries of contemporary sciences, was entitled he preistoriche, as well as paletnologia and paletnologiche
Prehistorique, turning into a noun the adjectival half of (pp. 1-2). Afirstuse in English, of 1868, is conveniently
the over-long phrase, I'archeologie prehistorique: but it in a paper written jointly by Pigorini and Lubbock,
was la prehistoire, which established itself in French underlining both the Italian context and its acceptabilover le prehistorique or la paleoethnologie. That this ity to the leading English prehistorian: 'students of
use of prehistorique as a noun was a deliberate use Italian paleoethnology and archaeology' (Pigorini and
rather than a slip is clear; the preceding volume in this Lubbock 1868,103). The proposal for an international
series, Bibliotheque des Sciences Contemporaines, is congress of prehistoric archaeology was first made in
entitled La Science Iiconomique, not L'Economique.
Italy at the meeting in 1865 of the Italian naturalThree examples show how 'prehistoric' became sciences society at La Spezia; it followed the Italian
the standard word, to the exclusion of alternatives. manner in adopting the French title of Congres
Wilson's first, 1851, edition of The Archaeology and pale'oethnologique for its first meeting at Neuchatel in
Prehistoric Annals of Scotland uses also the word 1866. At its second, in Paris the following year, it
'antehistorical': 'Of this comprehensive system of became the Congres International d'Anthropologie et
antehistorical research the Archaeology of Scotland d'Archeologie Prehistoriques, the title which endured in
forms the merest fractional item' (18 51, 700). The French and English forms (International Congress of
French translation of Pre-historic Times, published Prehistoric Archaeology 1869).
So far as I have been able to trace them in historical
in 1867, was entitled L'Homme Avant I'Histoire
(Lubbock 1867); in the second edition of 1876 it dictionaries and early textbooks, the broad equivalents
became L'Homme Prehistorique. The German edition of prehistory and prehistoire — prahistorisch in
of 1874 and the Italian of 1875 a r e prehistoric in their German (though the German vocabulary does not
titles from the beginning. M. E. Dupont, director of the match exactly the French or English), prehistorico in
Belgian natural-history museum, subtitled a study of Spanish, and so on — are all later.
early man Les Temps Antehistoriques en Belgique in its
first edi tion of 18 71, but immediately changed it to Les
THE DANISH CASE — 'FORHISTORISK'
Temps Prehistoriques en Belgique for the second
edition of 18 7 2, or even before. There is a copy with this One European language, Danish, offers a particular
antehistorique wording in the American Philosophical point of interest, as the language in which the three-age
Society library in Philadelphia, but the Belgian national system of prehistoric chronology was worked out and
309
THE PREHISTORIC SOCIETY
that of the most progressive body of archaeological
work of the period. Although modern translations of
nineteenth-century Danish publications into English
often and confusingly use the word 'prehistoric'
(eg Klindt-Jensen 1975), there was no simple word
meaning 'prehistoric' in the early Danish archaeological
literature. A variety of words for early periods, none of
them explicitly prehistoric, is used in Scandinavian
studies of the three-age order, such as Thomsen's
Ledetraad til Nordisk 0ldkyndighed (1836, in English
1848), Nilsson's Skandinaviska Nordens Urinvdnare
(1838-43), and Worsaae's Danmarks Oldtid (1843, in
English 1849); the early English translations follow
suit, talking of 'northern' or 'primeval' antiquities. It
is only with the English translation of Nilsson's
The Primitive Inhabitants of Scandinavia, edited by
Lubbock himself and published in 1868 (from the third
edition of Skandinaviska Nordens Urinvdnare), that
'prehistoric' comes into a plentiful use in the English
text (but not in the title) of a major work of the
Scandinavian school.
In the Danish a common word is oldtid, literally 'old
times' and best expressed in English as 'antiquity'.
Oldtid is a medieval word, established in the modern
language at least by 1764 (von Aphelen 1764), and in
use by poets and literary writers as well as antiquaries.
(For a series of early uses of oldtid and its derivative
words, see Ordbog over det Danske Sprog, vol. 15
(Kobenhavn: Gyldendalske Boghandel, 1934),
cols 420—21.)
The Danish word for prehistoric, forhistorisk, has a
use as early as 1837, in a work of Danish history: ldet
ligger bag ved al Sikker Kundskab, eller langt tilbage i
den forhistoriske Tid' (Molbech 1837-38, vol. 1, 80).
Keiberg (1842-44, vol. 3, 259) has another early use.
But forhistorisk did not enter into the technical
language of archaeological scholarship for many years
and — critically — after the example of French and
English, rather than by the advances of the Scandinavian scholars. In 1873 the Swede Hans Hildbrand (who
strongly influenced the young Sophus Miiller) published De Forhistoriska Folkene i Europa [The Prehistoric Peoples of Europe] (Hildbrand 1873); he had
visited, with J. J. A. Worsaae, the archaeological
congress in Bologna in 1871, entitled the Congres
International d'Anthropologie et d'Archeologie Prehistoriques. In 1874 the Danish translation of
Lubbock's Pre-historic Times was entitled Mennesket i
den Forhistoriske Tid, subtitled with oldtid in the older
manner—Populaere Skildringer afOldtidens Kulturliv
(Lubbock 1874b). The Swedish translation of 1869 had
already been prehistoric: Menniskans Utillstdnd, el den
Forhist. Tiden Belyst gu Fomlenningarne o. Seder o.
Bruk hos Nutidens Vildar (Lubbock 1869). Sophus
Miiller and Worsaae took up the word. Miiller's first
article in Aarbeger for Nordisk Oldkyndighed og
Historie (1876) was called Bronzealderens Perioder: en
undersagelse i forhistorisk arkceologi. And during the
following years, while Miiller worked on the professionalization of archaeology in Denmark, he named the
new discipline forhistorisk ark&ologi, for example in
his reviews of archaeological literature in Nordisk
Tidskrift (Miiller 1879) and his important methodological article, Mindre Bidrag til den forhistoriske
arkceologi (Miiller 1884). And Worsaae published in
1884 his book Nordens Forhistorie efter Samtidige
Mindemcerker.
The older and newer traditions were again combined
when Sophus Miiller's Vor Oldtid of 1897 was subtitled Danmarks Forhistoriske Archaeologi. Forhistoriske is used often in its text.
The same lag appears to occur with the noun
forhistorie, used by the literary critic Georg Brandes in
1873; however, in Danish the word can be used in a
rather loose way as an equivalent of 'background of or
'the story behind', so Brandes's use may not have
anything to do with a concept of an ante-history.
This is a striking pattern in the language in which so
much that is fundamental to the ideas of prehistoric
archaeology was invented. Although Danish was ready
to accept a distinct concept of prehistory when the
example of other European languages in the end offered
one, Danish scholarship did not of itself invent the
concept in three decades following the acceptance of the
three-age system in the 1830s. An explanation of this
delay may be found in two aspects of the particular
character of material and literary sources for earliest
times in Denmark, as contrasted with those for Britain
and France.
Firstly, there is no abrupt break in the written
materials; lying beyond the scope of the Roman
authors, the written sources for Danish history fade
gradually from the secure empirical descriptions of later
medieval documents back into the mistier world of
heroes and legends recorded in the Norse sagas.
Contrast this with the sharp division in British and
Gallic history, from an unknown prehistoric world to
the clear accounts, complete with names, dates and even
maps, and in a thoroughly modern manner which are
offered by the classical historians.
310
15. C. Chippindale.
INVENTION OF WORDS FOR THE IDEA OF 'PREHISTORY'
Secondly, there were no deposits of the first stone
(palaeolithic) age known from Denmark (Sir John
Lubbock remarks on this in his editor's preface to
Nilsson, 1868), no axes from the drift, no bone caves,
no collections of bones or implements sealed under
ancient stalagmite — none of those compelling signs of
a very early human existence which pressed Tournal to
his remarkable statement of an ante-historic age and
which drove Buckland to such troubles in maintaining a
diluvial habit of thinking.
The word and concept oldtid is entirely suited to
Danish circumstances, in which recorded history drifts
gradually away into an undocumented past of no
immense antiquity. Indeed, Thomsen and Worsaae's
three-age system did not necessarily place these stages
of technological development into a prehistoric past;
rather they might be identifiable, if vaguely, within the
named tribes and peoples of earliest history (Hermansen 1934). I have emphasized above that it was the
geomorphology of the bone-caverns which forced
Tournal to state a form of chronology which pushed a
human existence beyond biblical limits; no such
compulsion existed in the north, where a three-age
system might sit alongside a short chronology of
recorded history and even form a part of it.
TABLE i : FIRST TRACED USES OF ANTEHISTORICAL WORDS IN
ENGLISH AND FRENCH
English
French
antediluvian
1646
before 1750
(from English)
pre-adamitic
1656 (from Latin) ?
antehistoric
1834
1818
prehistoric
•1851
*i86s
(from English)
palaeoethnology
*i868
*i866
(from Italian)
prehistory
•1871
(from Italian)
•18710^1874
(from English)
palaeolithic
•1865
•1867
(from English)
An asterisk indicates a first use in the antiquarian or
archaeological literature. (The date of 1874 for prehistory in
French is uncertain. The word appears in an 1872 dictionary,
but I have not seen an actual use before 1874 (see p. 309)).
are quite separate. A three-age system could, and did,
operate as an organizing and explanatory principle
without forcing the issue of the time-span it might
THE KEY DATES SUMMARIZED
represent.
A word is not an idea. Nevertheless, the coining of a
Although this paper revises specifics of the story, it is
word and the passing of the word into general clear that the large pattern is as Glyn Daniel saw it in his
circulation are important markers of an idea's intel- several books. Neither the three-age system, invented in
lectual progress, especially useful in the case of the Nordic region in the 1820s and 1830s, nor the
prehistory (table 1), since there exist several veiled or antiquity of man, demonstrated in France and England
plain statements, from early times in the growth of at the same time, sufficed alone to create an empirical
archaeology, of a three-age ordering or a period before prehistoric science: it was the combination of the two,
recorded or biblical history.
thirty years later and in the evolutionary fashion of the
Credit for making a word of the idea of prehistory 1860s, which constituted the invention of a real
must be shared between several authors, as the table prehistory and forced the lasting creation of a word by
indicates. Three are crucial: Guizot for the first use of an which to call it.
antehistorical word; Tournal for the first use within a
Within that intellectual context, shared by Britain
context of the antiquity of man; Wilson for the and France, one can see the words which endured
prehistoric word that finally became established.
arising in English, not just 'prehistoric' but also for
The sequence of events in Scandinavia, as shown by example, palaeolithic. This, with its corresponding
the progression of prehistoric words in Danish, points partner 'neolithic', was invented by Lubbock in Preto an aspect of the history of nineteenth-century historic Times for the period 'when men shared the
archaeology that has not been much taken note of possession of Europe with the Mammoth, the Cave
before. The new archaeology of the 1860s had two bear, and other extinct animals' (Lubbock 1865, 2);
major elements, the technological progression of the and it went into French as pale'olithique in the 1867
three-age system and the documented evidence of the translation into French (confirmed by Tresor de la
antiquity of man. They were complementary but they Langue Franqaise, unpublished entry on paleothique).
THE PREHISTORIC SOCIETY
Acknowledgements. My starting-points have been the
historical dictionaries, the histories of archaeology,
and my own knowledge of some of the literature. I am
grateful to J. A. Thompson and the Oxford English
Dictionary for material from its unpublished sourcefiles, and to Anni Becquer and the Institut National de
la Langue Franchise for unpublished material prepared
for future volumes of the Tresor de la Langue
Franqaise. Judith Rodden's knowledge of pre-adamites
has been an especial help. My remarks about the Danish
depend much on the kind help of Peter Rowley-Conwy
and of Jargen Jensen of Det Humanistike Forskingscenter, Kobenhavns Universitet.
Daniel, G. E. (ed.), 1967. The Origins and Growth of
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