Evening Republican, Volume 17, Number 180, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 30 July 1913 — SKULLS AS MILESTONES OF THE AGES [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

SKULLS AS MILESTONES OF THE AGES

fHE village of Hailing, situated on the banks of the Medway some four miles above Rochester, England, has sprung into fame through the discovery of a prehistoric man; henceforth the name of Hailing will be as full of meaning to genealogists and anthropologists as that of Galley Hill or Tilbury of Neanderthal. At first sight the finding of a humafl skeleton — strangely like the human skeleton of the present day—some six or seven feet below the stirface does not appear an epoch-making event, but ■when the conditions under which it was found are carefully considered, it is just this striking similarity to the living type that renders the Hailing man so Interesting and valuable. An array of details has been unearthed which assures the Investigators that they have here the remains of an individual who long preceded the builders of Stonehenge, a man who dates back at least to what is vaguely known as the early neolithic period, but who more probably lived his strenuous life under the severe conditions obtaining towards the end of the paleolithic age, warring with the mammoth, the woolly rhinoceros and other aggressive creatures of the pleistocene. The famous skull discovered by Mr. Charles Dawson in the/Weald of Sussex last year belongs to the first chapter of the history of the future; the discovery made recently at Hailing yields materials for a much later chapter—the one giving an account of Englishmen towards the close of the pleistocene period. Between the Sussex man and ''die Hailing man lies an immensely long stretch of time—the time necessary for carving out the greater part of that wide and deep hollow between the North and Souths Downs. *ln that time man shed the last of his anthropoid features and assumed his modern form —for the Hailing man is one of ourselves, and the Sussex individual most certainly is not The importance- of the present discovery is that, until now, we knew very little of our British predecessors at the close of the pleistocene period. The Medway has played a part in carving out the Weald of Sussex; it has cut the "bottle-neck** gorge In the North Downs at Rochester to reach the valley of the Thames. On Its western bank, some four miles above Rochester, stands the little village of Hailing—where the recent discovery was made. Between the village and the river lies a stretch of marshland nearly half a mile in width, but as the village is approached the land rises sharply to form a terrace 15 feet above the level of the river. The terrace extends along both sides of the valley; it is composed of stratified brick earths. In this terrace, between the marshland by the river and the village of Hailing, the skeleton was exposed. The discovery was due to' a fortunate mischance. During an, excavation of some depth a slip of the friable earth occurred, revealing the greater part of a skeleton lying In situ as shown tn the diagram. This landslip also disclosed a fact of great importance, namely, that the strata above were unbroken and level as when deposited in the course of many thousands of years. There can thus be no Question as to the antiquity

of the remains, the undisturbed condition of the ground precluding the idea of burial at a date later than that in which they were deposited. The remains lay in a stratum of what is geologically known as brick earth, though it will be readily inferred that bricks have nothing to do with It. It ie but the rain wash of centuries, the fine particles being inter-

spersed .with larger, which suggest pieces of brick. Overlying this stratum was a layer of sand with a layer of more recent brick earth above it, then red loam, and finally the vegetable top eoil—altogether four strata, averaging about six feet in total thickness. The top of the stratum in which the remains were found appears to have been the land surface of the age in which the man lived. This is shown by the fortunate discovery, some 30 yards away, of the charred and blackened remains of prehistoric fire hearths, fragments, of burnt bones and wood, worked flints and many animal bones. The worked fllnte have been submitted to expert examination at the British museum, where the balance of opinion appears to be in favor of assigning them to the paleolithic period, or, at any rate, to the time of transition between that and the neolithic age, which would place their »■. age at some 15,000 years. Geological evidence, however, dates them still further back, for the corresponding deposits on the 'opposite side of the Medway have yielded fossils of pleistocene times, when the hairy mammoth, arctic fox, reindeer and woolly rhinoceros roamed the land. The Inference, therefore, is that we have here a paleolithic encampment, and that the skeleton was one of the party, who, judging from the position of the remains, was interred a short distance below the then surface, while some religious significance is suggested by the body being buried with the head to the east How did the human remains come to lie in this stratum of brick earth? Drt Edwards observed, from the position of ths bones which remained fast in place, that the skeleton lay on its back, that all parts of the skeleton were represented, and that the whole did not occupy — more than an extent of three feet in length—evidence that the body was In the "contracted” posture at death. A complete skeleton, much weathered and fragmentary, and in a contracted posture, could only be explained by supposing that it had been buried. The solution of the problem became apparent later. At some distance from the site of the skeleton there were found extensive remains of ancient fire hearths. These lay immediately over the stratum containing the skeleton, and under the overlying or fourth stratum. This level represented an old land surface, and the skeleton was probably one of the men who sat round the hearths on that old land surface. That is the explanation Mr. Cook suggested at a recent meeting of the Royal Anthropological institute, when he gave an account of his discoveries. Mr. A 8. Kennard, who is our highest Authority on the age of val-~ ley deposits, regards the strata over the Hailing man as late pleistocene in date. Mr. Cook described the flint implements found on the old land surface, but they belong to a type which was used by paleolithic as well as neolithic men. The remains of the skeleton were forwarded to Professor Keith of the Royal College of Surgeons, for expert examination, and, as he explained to the writer, a close scrutiny revealed the surprising fact that we have here a type .of man who. . in every 'particular—brain capacity, conformation of ekull, long oval face, pointed projecting chin, stature (five feet four inches) and general build—-

is practically identical with people one meets in the street every day, and this notwithstanding the great interval of time that must have elapsed and the vastly different conditions of life now prevailing. Indeed, he • found that the brain capacity (some 1,500 cubic centimeters) even exceeds the present-day average. In this respect the skull is analogous to that of the Tilbury foesil man, to which Professor Keith is inclined to assign an age of 30,000 years, judging from the position in which it was found, beneath 31 feet of strata. He is also of opinion that the Tilbury man and his Hailing neighbor are members of the same race, averaging over five feet in height, strongly built, with welLfbrmed skulls and a striking absence of heavy ridges over the eyes, a race which Huxley described as the “river-bed” type, from its apparent haunts. This type is known to have lived in paleolithic times, since a skull was lately discovered In company with pleistocene fossils buried in a Derbyshire cave. The later portion of the paleolithic period is estimated to extend back from some 25,000 for at least 150,000 years. This race of men was immeasurably superior in cranial development to the race represented by the Piltdown skull, supposing this to be human, and unquestionably hundreds of thousands of years intervened between the two. In comparing the great brain capacity of the Hailing man with that of the neolithic skull discovered near Walton-on-the-Naze, which is estimated to be at most not more than 4,000 years old, we do not find the development expected, since the latter possessed a brain capacity of but 1,260 cubic centimeters, whereas the skull of the Galley Hill man, regarded as the oldest British example (excepting the Piltdown) yet discovered, has a brain capacity of between 1,350 and 1,400 cubic centimeters. Professor Keith, In his work on “The Ancient Typgs of Man,” notes that in an average modern man of the Galley Hill skeleton’s stature “one should expect a brain of 1,450 to 1,475 cubic centimeters (and) there are many men in England today with smaller brains than the Galley Hill man.” These remarks will apply with still more force to the Hailing man. Regarding such primitive types as the Neanderthal, Gibraltar and Piltdown skulls, their antiquity must be measured by many hundreds of thousands of years, if we are to understand that a process of .evolution has developed such high paleolithic types directly from these progenitors.