He is a French customs official who argued that the shaped stones found in association with animal bones during canal dredging in the Somme Valley were actually ancient tools. He presented this assertion in Antiquites Celtiques et Antediluviennes (Celtic and Antediluvian Antiques), (1847-1864).
Jacques Boucher de Crèvecœur de Perthes (10 September 1788-5 August 1868), sometimes referred to as Boucher de Perthes, was a French geologist and antiquary notable for his discovery, in about 1830, of flint tools in the gravels of the Somme valley.
Born at Rethel, in the Ardennes, he was the eldest son of Jules Armand Guillaume Boucher de Crèvecœur, botanist and customs officer, and of Etienne-Jeanne-Marie de Perthes (whose surname he was authorised by royal decree in 1818 to assume in addition to his father’s). In 1802 he entered government employ as an officer of customs. His duties kept him for six years in Italy, but upon his returning in 1811 he found rapid promotion at home, and finally was appointed, in March 1825, to succeed his father as director of the douane (customs office) at Abbeville, where he remained for the rest of his life.
His leisure time was chiefly devoted to the study of what was afterwards called the Stone Age and antediluvian man, as he expressed it. About the year 1830 he had found, in the gravels of the Somme valley, flints which in his opinion bore evidence of human handiwork; but not until many years afterwards did he make public the important discovery of a worked flint implement with remains of elephant and rhinoceros in the gravels of Menchecourt. This was in 1846.
