The whole discovery indicated a series of great geological changes since the time when these implements were made, requiring cycles of time compared to which the space allowed by the orthodox chronologists was as nothing.
His work was the result of over ten years of research and thought.
Year after year a force of men under his direction had dug into these high-terraced gravel deposits of the river Somme, and in his book he now gave, in the first full form, the results of his labour.

So far as France was concerned, he was met at first by what he calls "a conspiracy of silence," and then by a contemptuous opposition among orthodox scientists, at the head of whom stood Elie de Beaumont.
This heavy, sluggish opposition seemed immovable: nothing that Boucher could do or say appeared to lighten the pressure of the orthodox theological opinion behind it; not even his belief that these fossils were remains of men drowned at the Deluge of Noah, and that they were proofs of the literal exactness of Genesis seemed to help the matter.
His opponents felt instinctively that such discoveries boded danger to the accepted view, and they were right: Boucher himself soon saw the folly of trying to account for them by the orthodox theory.
And it must be confessed that not a little force was added to the opposition by certain characteristics of Boucher de Perthes himself.
Gifted, far-sighted, and vigorous as he was, he was his own worst enemy.
Carried away by his own discoveries, he jumped to the most astounding conclusions.

The engravings in the later volume of his great work, showing what he thought to be human features and inscriptions upon some of the flint implements, are worthy of a comic almanac; and at the National Museum of Archaeology at St.Germain, beneath the shelves bearing the remains which he discovered, which mark the beginning of a new epoch in science, are drawers containing specimens hardly worthy of a penny museum, but from which he drew the most unwarranted inferences as to the language, religion, and usages of prehistoric man.
Boucher triumphed none the less.

Among his bitter opponents at first was Dr.Rigollot, who in 1855, searching earnestly for materials to refute the innovator, dug into the deposits of St.Acheul--and was converted: for he found implements similar to those of Abbeville, making still more certain the existence of man during the Drift period.

So, too, Gaudry a year later made similar discoveries.
But most important was the evidence of the truth which now came from other parts of France and from other countries.