ANCIENT BRITONS.

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume XLIX, Issue 16102, 16 April 1923, Page 3

ANCIENT BRITONS.

DISCOVERIES IN BURIAL PLACES

'Elec. Tel. Copyright-United Press Assn.)

(The Times.) (Received April 16, 9 a.m.) LONDON, April 15.

Profossor F. Parsons, Professor of Anatomy at London University, in an article m the- Times, outlines the results of explorations proceeding in ancient British burial places. He states that recent excavations enabled thorough investigations to be made. The opening of a new road near Margate exposed many rows of skeletons, evidently buried fully clothed, with ornaments and weapons. Many graves contained pairs of skeletons which many confirm Tacitus's story that pagan Saxon wives slew themselves when their husbands died.

The average height of the men was 66 inches, compared with 69 of the middle class to-day, and the average of the women was inches. The skeletons' well-worn teeth showed that much of the food consumed by the people consisted of grain. Apparently the ancients suffered teribly from rheumatism. A majority died before they were forty. The proportion of adolescents buried between the ages of fifteen and twenty was very great. The bodies were normally buried with the feet towards the rising sun, and gener ally on the southern slope of a hill. Ornaments and precious stones found prove the people were by no means savages, but possessed gems of refined taste. A knife was buried with eve-

man, woman, and child, and with these men there was also a spear and shield. In rare instances swords and battleaxes were found in the graves of the chiefs.