ANCIENT HARPOONS

Southland Times, Issue 18973, 21 June 1923, Page 11

ANCIENT HARPOONS

USED WHEN NORTH SEA WAS DRY. GENUINE RELIC OF EARLY MAN. A point of extreme importance for the history of prehistoric man in the British Isles has just been settled by the publication of two reports in the anthropological periodical Man, vindicating the authenticity of two bone harpoons found beneath the peat in Holderness, Yorkshire. The two harpoons are one and the other lOin long. Their interest is great, as from certain pr /uliarities they are now shown to be the work of Maglemose men —so called from Maglemose, a place in Denmark, where many extraordinary relics of very early man were discovered. The age of Maglemose may be anything from 10,000 to even 20,000 8.C., when the North Sea was dry, when land connected Denmark with Yorkshire and Scotland, and when the Dogger Bank was covered with forests. In September, when a paper was read by Mr Leslie Armstrong, of Sheffield, at the Hull meeting of the British Association on the Holderness finds, the genuineness of these harpoons was challenged by Mr Sheppard, the curator of the Hull Museums, who declared them to be forgeries not 30 years old. They were consequently examined by two expert committees, whose reports have now appeared. They were compared with four harpoons from Kunda, Estonia, which are unquestionably of Maglemose date, and were proved identical with them in type, colour and chemical condition of the bone. The lines of cutting were also identical.

The two harpoons are declared genuine, and Professor Sir W. Boyd Dawkins, one of the greatest living authorities on anthropology, writes: “I have no hesitation in saying that the charge that they are forgeries is absolutely without foundation.” Further confirmation of his view is afforded by the discovery of a very similar harpoon under the peat at Bethune, in France.

The harpoons are in possession of Mr W. Morfitt, of Atwick. Similar harpoons, with other bone implements of the Maglemose period, have been found at Oban, in the famous MacArthur cave.