FACES IN FLINTS.

Horowhenua Chronicle, 4 January 1927, Page 7

FACES IN FLINTS.

TjOUND IN CRETACEOUS DEPOSITS AN ARCHAEOLOGICAL ENIGMA. '1 Scientists are completely puzzled (says the London Daily Express) fby human faces and - animal figui es which/peer put of a scries of fUnts pn ; exhibition-at the Psychic Bobksnop, run by Sir Arthur ■Conan Doyle at Abbey House,.,.Victoria Street, London. There are forty or fifty ■of them, none larger, than an egg. They-were found by Mr W. H. Clarke, an amateur geologist, embedded in chalk near Brandon, in Suffolk. All -of them were at least forty feet beneath the surface. These faces, which Mr Clark declares to be tens of thousands of years old, stir the. imagination. Sonrhave an evil leer, some are crafty, some are sullen, and all, except one with a freakish resemblance to a modern woman in evening dress, have an elemen y tal and primordial coarseness. Yet they :are alive with character and personality.

One arresting face might be the portrait of a Stone Age philosopher. A beetling brow, receding rapidly, hangs ever deep-set eyes. A supercilious mouth curls beneath an elongated nose, •of which the bridge almost meets the forehead.' The features appear in replica in each half of the flint, which has been split open. Another face is that of a woman who might have been a Neolithic society matron. Plaits of hair, or some vaguely defined head-dres i, form a background for features similar to the man’s, long, perpendicular and ;almost Grecian in their straightness. A surprising likeness to the shingle is ' shown in a third. This head is small, fiat on top and tilted in the air. Thick mostrils and suggest a negroid origin. No psychic influence is suggested, but the mystery deepens even if the markings are assumed to be the work of prehistoric man. How did they come to be embedded in flint? They show up like ghostly white figures projected on a flinty grey background. They are not carved in the, flint, for they do not stand out in relief. They are not painted, for the niarking goes right through the grain and appears in irregular lines on the outside. Equally they fit much foo closely • to be inlaid as in mosaic work,' but when they are held up to the' light they appear as dark objects in th-j transparency of the- flint. Mr Clarke puts forward an entrancing theory which explains this* difficulty. He contends that the, faces, none of which is much larger than a thumb-nail sketch, are the fossilised remains of a pigmy race. .‘/I think they have lived,’' he said. “They are absolutely true to life. Just as'modern men are much too large to wear .the 'mediaeval v armour ■shown in the Tower, so it is possible that there was a tiny race of men millions of years ago. Flint would en -close their bodies through the action of '■water- - which has, in a similar way preserved sniall fish and leaves. One of v my find which is on show is ; a perfect