PREHISTORIC PALESTINE

Greymouth Evening Star, 26 December 1934, Page 5

PREHISTORIC PALESTINE

IMPORTANT CAVE-DISCOVERIES. [by CABLE —PRESS ASSN. —COPYRIGHT.j (Recd. December 26j 10 a.m.) LONDON, December 25. Delving into the caverns on Mount Carol, Palestine, which men inhabited 200,000 years ago, an expedition comprising members of the British School of Archaeology, _ and the American School of Prehistoric Research, were rewarded by discoveries, opening the most remote chapter in the evolution of prehistoric man yet disclosed. Theodore McCown, who is cooperating with Sir Arthur Keith, examining the Expedition's speciments at the Royal College of Surgeons, told the “News-Chronicle” that the Palestine discoveries included a cave inhabited almost continuously 50,000 years, in which was the best Neanderthal skeleton ever found, also skeletons of a man aged 30, a girl three and a-half, and a woman of 25. Mr McCown says: These people were more progressive than the previous Neanderthals, who were an unsatisfactory experiment in Nature’s evolutionary process. The male skeletons had chins, but the woman’s was chinless. The story of countless centuries was revealed as the scientists excavated one cave, layer after layer, to a depth of 25 feet. The remains of hippopotamus, crocodile, rhinoceros, elephants, wolf, gazelle, rats, and mice were found among flints and pottery of the bronze age, but these were absent in the lower layers. Mr McCown believes that the discoveries show Palestinian cultures were allied wit’i African cultures on the one hand, and Asiatic and European cultures on the other. Modern man was evolved from the intermediate type which followed the Neanderthals.