A BRITON OF 170,000 YEARS AGO.

Oamaru Mail, Volume XXXIX, Issue 10783, 3 June 1911, Page 6

A BRITON OF 170,000 YEARS AGO.

Th;il the present type of inaii —man showing tlie characteristics we ..kiio\v to-day,'instead of those -of his ape-like ancestors —is vastly older than lias been , hitlicrto supposed, is the lesson do- , duced from the so-called fossil man or Galley Hill, England, hv Dr Arthur Keith. The skull of this man, who must have lived, according to Df Keith, at. least 170,000 years ago, is not essentially different from that of the ( modern Briton. There are none of the . simian features about it that cliarac- . terise some of the prehistoric skulls found on the European Continent m recent years, or the celebrated 1 lthecantliropus discovered in Java. Dr Keren, who is conservator of the museum at the Roval College of Surgeons London, writes of it in the Illustrated London News (March 4th). He first describes the discovery of the Galley Hill ma.i in. 1888. We read: . .. "The fossil remains of the Galle\-HilL man were discovered by Mr Robert Llliott, a printer in Camberwell and . zealous collector of everything l throws light on the prehistoric | tarts in the South of England. On a ■ day toward the end of September 1888 he and his son Richard set out to visit'certain gravel-pits winch were being worked in the valley of the Thames, some miles above Gravesciid. The gravel is known to geoloI gists as the high-level or 100-foot terrace, and is regarded by them and with good reason, as an ancient bed ot the Thames. In the gravel the old, or paleolithic, form of flint implements are found; so arc remains of the niammot i j and of other animals which existed m , England when the Glacial period was; . i art end. In those days, just as at the present time, the river engulfed, en- j tombed, and in some cases preserved | in its bed the many things which might be; caught in its flood- ... -p., "On reaching the 1 ' Mr Elliott found Jack Allsop busilj screening gravel and keeping eye for such things as arclieologists value. Jack had something of particular interest for his visitors—nameh a human skull which he found m a ■ sancl>clay layer of the gravel, indicating the | bottom of a pool of the old river. The ! skull was eight feet from the surface of the gravel and two feet above the chalk —too deep to be accounted for by supposing it to be a burial. Fortunateh. Mr Matthew Hayes, now schoolmaster at Greonhitlic, saw the skull when « is t- j exposed, before it was removed and ho noted that the overlying gravel ' was■ m , its natural and undisturbed state. .1 he j skull was already uncovered and taken out, but the other bones of. the skeleton were still embedded in the sandy cla\, and were excavated by .Mr Elliott with great care—they were soft and very fragile. He also, observed that the overlying gravel was just as the ancient Thames had laid it down. Further, the condition of the bones, certain primitive points in structure, and the tact that remains of a similar typo of man have been found on several occasions in ancient strata on the Continent, convince one that the remains thus discovered by Mr Elliott were those of a man who lived in England when the Thames, carrying probably a larger volume of water than it now does .flowed on land which was nearly 100 feet above its present level." . How long ago did this state of tnmgs obtain? No accurate estimate may be made, Professor Keith tells us. we know that the river has worn its valleys down to its present level, and that since the 100-foot terrace was laid down the river has occupied a channel 40 feet below the present one, which it has filled up again. Altogether, the level ot the Thames has been lowered, or raised 170 feet and there is no reason to believe that these changes have not been uniform. Further: "We must judge of the past from what we know of the present, and on this basis 'the laud movement is a slow one, for as far as can be now told, the level of the river has scarcely changed, since the Roman period. If, then, a movement of a foot is allowed for each 1000 years, one may with some safety assign at least a period of 170,000 years to the period which has elapsed since the high-level terrace was laid down at Galley Hill. Further research will probably show that the period is much longer, and that the land movement is much slower than is presumed here. - "Turning now to what can be tolcl of this ancient Bri'ton from a study ot the remains, one is struck with tlie modernity of the type. It is true that there is probably not a single individual now in .'these islands-that shows ail the features of this man, for man he was. The extreme 'length and extreme narrowness of his head may be approached by some, his short stature—a little over fire feet —by many, but few would sgow the curious feature of his thigh-bone and the relative shortness of his legbones. Very few would be found to possess the same relative dimensions of teeth, but in many men an equally retreating chin and a corresponding iorm of forehead can be seen. His. brain was somewhat below that of the average modern man in size,, but bigger than is often found in highly intelligent people. The lesson that the Galley HilL discovery has brought home _to anthropologists and arclieologists is that tho modern type of man —the man who has shed all traces of simian traits in face, feature, and body, is infinitely older than we have hitherto supposed. The history of man in England does not commence some 5000 years ago with an invasion of Celt or of Saxon, but at a period of which 5000 years is but a small fraction." » • : '