ANCIENT TYPES OF MAN

CHAPTER I

AN ANCIENT ENGLISH TYPE FROM

ESSEX

S I sit down to write the story of the various forms which the body of man has assumed in ancient times, I find it difficult to determine whether I should begin at the beginning, or at the end. Were the story now complete, there would be no difficulty; it should be told from the beginning. Some day, no doubt, it will be told thus, but at present the known phases of man's early history are so few, so fragmentary and so isolated, that a survey of the later and better known phases is needed to place the earlier stages in their proper perspective. For that reason, I propose to reverse the usual order, and trace man's physical history from the present into the far past.

The individual selected as the first type is one discovered in 1910 on the coast of Essex, near Walton-on-Naze, some fifty miles north of the estuary of the Thames. The sea there washes

against a flat coast-line, cutting into and exposing on the beach remains of a buried or prehistoric floor containing many worked flints. Over this prehistoric floor is a stratum-8 to 10 feet in depth of clay. The prehistoric floor, now being

exposed by the tide, has been closely studied by Mr. Hazzeldine Warren. It was at one time dry land, on which men lived and worked. The number of years which has passed since then may be roughly guessed. Flints of the finished or Neolithic type, certain forms of pottery, and

also traces of the foundations of dwellings and of hearths are found, from which we infer that this floor must be assigned to the end of the Neolithic, or commencement of the Bronze Age. In round numbers, about 4000 years ago. We infer, then, that the east coast of Essex has been slowly sinking, the prehistoric surface being partly submerged by the sea, and partly buried beneath a deep layer of rain-washed clay, which has been deposited over it, thus preserving for us the traces of a bygone civilization. Beneath this prehistoric floor Mr. Warren has found traces of an older civilization.

On a September afternoon of 1910 Mr. Hazzeldine Warren and his companion, Mr. Miller Christy, were searching the beach for washed-out flints, when they found that the tide had exposed-2 feet below the prehistoric floor and 12 feet below the surface of the original coast-line- the leg of a human skeleton. Setting to work, they quickly exposed a complete human skeleton, lying on its left side, with the face to the cast and the head to the north. It was in the "contracted posture," the limbs having been bound closely to the body. by grass ropes, remnants of which were found. Inside the ribs was found a heap-nearly a pintof fruit seeds of the blackberry and dog-rose. That discovery throws light on the nature of the diet and the season of the year when death overtook this individual. Clearly, too, it was a burial,

not the chance interment which overtakes those who find a last bed in the sea or the river. Nor could it have been a burial made in recent times, for until the other day the grave lay twelve feet below the surface. The grave was at least as old, and perhaps older, than the prehistoric floor. The skeleton was permeated by the fine clay and sand in which it lay, and so wonderfully preserved that a very complete picture can be formed of the person in life. We have here a specimen of a Late Neolithic Briton.

It seems almost ridiculous to have to admit that there was at first some difficulty in determining the sex of the individual thus discovered. In life even an infant can tell a man from a woman, but when there is only the skeleton, the most expert anatomist sometimes feels a difficulty. As a rule the pelvis, because it is so closely connected with the functions of child-bearing, provides the most certain grounds. In the present case, the evidence of the pelvis was equivocal; its characters were more those of a man than of a woman, yet when its breadth was compared with that of the chest, a marked female character was recognized it was decidedly wider than the chest, whereas in man the chest is usually wider than the lower, or pelvic, part of the body. The muscular attachments to the base of the skull showed the delicate tapering neck of the woman; the skull itself was in all its features feminine. The bones

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Fig. 2.