“Paleontology made untenable the idea that humanity, agriculture, and civilization all began at roughly the same time. History and archaeology had put it beyond doubt that agriculture and civilization were just a few thousand years old, but paleontology put it beyond doubt that humanity was millions of years old. Paleontology made it impossible to believe that Man had been born an agriculturalist and a civilization-builder. Paleontology forced us to conclude that Man had been born something else entirely—a forager and a homeless nomad—and this is what had been forgotten in the Great Forgetting.”
When it was discovered- how did the intellectual and scientific community respond?
Mac's Adventure 