STONE-AGE FAMILY FOUND.

Taranaki Daily News, 24 January 1933, Page 7

STONE-AGE FAMILY FOUND.

400 YEARS BEFORE CHRIST.

SCIENTISTS CONSTRUCT STORY.

Geologists climbing about a newlyfound cave in a limestone quarry at Bishop Middleham, Durham (England) have pieced together the astonishing story of a family which perished there 400 years before Christ. There were eight people in the family, and they all used the cave as their home. The men stood well over six feet high. The family’s milk probably came from cattle and goats, the remains of which were found near the cave. There were badgers and wolves in profusion for the men to hunt with fine bone spears. The “kitchen” was at the back of the cave. Marks of smoke on the stone show where the fire had been. The family lived happily; but they died together in the cave which had been their home. The roof collapsed without warning, and for 2300 years their bones lay under the stone. The cave itself was hidden until, a modem quarryman fired. a ’ shot, which revealed the entrance to it. Then scientists were summoned. They included Dr. Arthur Raistrick and Professor Hickling, of the geological department of Armstrong College, Newcastle, and Miss Bates, of the British Museum. Dr. Raistrick said recently: “The men lived in the early Iron Age. This discovery provides a definite link between the Bronze Age and the early Roman times.” One of the specimens found in the cave was shown to Professor G. Elliott Smith, the anthropologist. “This is obviously the lower jaw of a neolithic woman,” he said. “She was a frail woman, about five feet high. “She lost the teeth on one side of her jaw before she died—-probably because she ate too much sand with her oatmeal.”