A HANDSOME RACE

Evening Post, Volume CV, Issue 89, 14 April 1923, Page 12

A HANDSOME RACE

BRITISH ANCESTORS OF 25,000

Written without pedantic technicalities and with its accuracy vouched for by that high • authority on anthropology, ■Professor Elliot Smith, Mr. Ronald A. Mackenzie's. "Ancient Man in Britain" gives a most. interesting account of our more remote ancestors, in the Stone Age and in days down to Roman times; says a. critic in the "Daily Mail."

Some 25,000 years or so ago it is known from skeletons that the men fomid in Britain."in all essential features were of modern type. They would, dressed in modern attire, pass through the streets of a modem city without particular notice being taken of them; One branch was particularly tall and handsome, with an average height for the males of 6ft: 1^ in." Indeed, according to.. Professor Elliot Smith, "they' were, if : . anything, both physically and mentally superior to the average present-day inhabitants of Europe." . , .> These people suffered from our complaints. There is evidence in skeletons of the effects of rheumatism and of badl teeth. They were clever surgeons and could trepan the skull with success, as skulls have been found in which the wound made by trepanning has healed. They;' buried the dead with rites which proved'that their minds, like ours, were occupied with the mysteries of life and death. In the mouths of some of the dead found have been green §tone amulets, as in Egyptian burials, as far ..back at 3400 8.C., and perhaps even further. The latest evidence from Asshur, in Assyria, has even been thought to suggest that Sargon, who ruled there 2600 8.C., may have sents ships to Britain:— "He conquered Kaptara (? Crete), and. 'the Tin Land beyond the Upper Sea: (the Mediterranean). The explanation may be that he obtained control of the markets to which the Easterners carried from Spain and the coasts of Northern Europe • the ores and pearls they , had found. It may be, therefore, that Britain was visited by Easterners even b»fore Sargon's time." . • ■ ' .

British jet has been found in very early, graves in Spain,' linking up Spain with. Britain in days long Wore Romulus! founded Home. Even more interesting is the fact that beads of a, peculiar blue colour, which are now identified as undoubtedly of Egyptian origin and as: dating back to some time between 1500 8.C., and 1250 B.C. (or about tha period of Tutankhamen), have been found in' very ancient British graves, and can now 1 be seen in Devizes Museum. ( We are even told that "a regular overseas trade route was in existence." So far as has yet been ascertained, there was no other source than Britain from which the anoient .world could draw the tin it needed in such immense quantities- for its bronze.