The antiquity of man

Front matter

iP tedat A.

28 tonece ete lyle

Ce aera y g.2 s'@ apace een kes wile ele eee

Preface

Furry fifty years ago—in 1863, to be quite exact—Sir Charles Lyell told the story of the antiquity of man from a geologist’s point of view. His book! became a classic ; the geologist came to be regarded as the official historian of ancient man. The modern successors of Sir Charles Lyell have maintained the position he established for them. In the books of Professor Boyd Dawkins,? of Professor W. J. Sollas,? of Dr G. Frederick Wright,‘ and of Professor James Geikie,® the world of our remote ancestors is made to live again. The antiquity of man, from a geologist’s point of view, has thus been placed clearly and fully before the English reading public. In 1865, Lord Avebury—Sir John Lubbock he was then— approached the problem of man’s antiquity from another point of view. He was primarily interested in the culture, the industry, the civilisation of ancient man ; the geological details of the prehistoric landscape took a secondary place in his pictures of prehistoric times.© He sought to follow the human army to its beginning in the remote past by tracing the possessions it had discarded

1 The Geological Evidences of the Antiquity of Man. London, 1863 (1st edition).

® Cave Hunting, 1874. Early Man in Britain, 1880.

3 Ancient Hunters, 1911.

* The Origin and Antiquity of Man, 1913.

6 The Antiquity of Manin Europe, 1914.

id “pega Times, Williams & Norgate, 7th edition, 1913.

Vv vi THE-ANTIQUITY OF MAN while on the march. Lord Avebury wrote the story of the antiquity of man from the archeologist’s point of view.

The problem of man’s antiquity may be approached from another point of view—that of the human anatomist. The anatomist gives ancient man the centre of the stage ; he depends on the geologist and archeologist to provide him with the scenery and stage accessories. It is from the anatomist’s point of view that the problem of man’s antiquity is dealt with in this book. This method of approach has its difficulties. The anatomist has to trace man into the past by means of fossil skulls, teeth, and © limb bones—intelligible documents to him, but complex and repulsive hieroglyphs in the eyes of most people. The publishers have assisted the author to surmount the more technical difficulties by allowing a very liberal use of explanatory diagrams, which make the arguments used in the text more intelligible to the general reader. In many respects this book is supplementary to Lord Avebury’s classical work—Prehistoric Times.

The main reason for the appearance of this work at the present time is that the “‘ mystery”’ of man’s antiquity is now culminating in a critical phase—presenting situations which may be described as of almost absorbing interest. Indeed the manner in which the story of man’s antiquity is now developing recalls the point reached by Dickens in his last and unfinished novel— The Mystery of Edwin Drood. Many learned men have sifted the evidence and tried to solve the problem of Drood’s fate—some solving it in this way and some in that. At the present time, geologists, archeologists, and anatomists are sifting the evidence relating to the combined. problem of how and when mankind came into existence. On the evidence at present available, the author is convinced that the true solution cannot differ

PREFACE vil materially from the one presented in a diagrammatic form in the frontispiece of this book. The author’s solution is only one of many ; time will show which is right.

The mystery of Edwin Drood we can never solve ; _ only the novelist knew what fate had in store, and he carried the secret to his grave. The mystery of man’s antiquity stands in a different position. Every year brings new evidence to light—places facts at our disposal which take us a step nearer to a true solution. In recent years discoveries of fossil man have crowded in upon us, yielding such an abundance of new evidence that we have had to reconsider and recast our estimates of the antiquity of man. No discovery of recent date has had such a wide-reaching effect as that made by Mr Charles Dawson at Piltdown, Sussex. Hence the reader will find that a very considerable part of this book is devoted to the significance of that specimen of humanity which Dr Smith Woodward named Foanthropus dawsont.

In accumulating the material and facts on which this book is based the author has become deeply indebted to many men. The help of some he has acknowledged in the text, but there are many whose names do not appear there. The omission does not mean that he is not grateful to them for their help. He must, however, acknowledge here the assistance he has received from time to time from the officers of the British Museum, from Mr J. Reid Moir, Mr A. S. Kennard, Mr W. H. Cook, the Rev. Edwin H. Mullins, and Mr Courtney Lyne. For assistance in preparing illustrations for this work he is indebted to his friend, Dr Stanley Beale, and particularly to Mr William Finerty.

ARTHUR KEITH.

July 1914.

Vill THE ANTIQUITY OF MAN

ADDITIONAL NOTE TO PREFACE

A year has passed since the proofs of this book were corrected and its preface written. The events of the year have revolutionised the outlook of all of us; we have burst suddenly into a critical phase in the evolutionary progress of mankind ; we have had to lay aside the problems of our distant past and concentrate our thoughts and energies on the immediate present. Liege and Namur, which figure in this book as the sites of peaceful antiquarian discovery, have become the scenes of bloody war. And yet, amidst all the distractions of the present time, the author hopes there may be some who will wish to survey the issues of the present fateful period from the distant standpoint of a student of man’s early evolution. It is in such a hope that this book is now put forth.

An RK.

July 1915.

Contents

A NEOLITHIC COMMUNITY OF KENT : , THE PEOPLE OF THE SUBMERGED FOREST f THE DISCOVERY OF PRE-NEOLITHIC MAN . ENGLISHMEN OF THE LATER PALAEOLITHIC PERIODS . : : é FURTHER EXAMPLES OF LATER PALAEOLITHIC MEN IN ENGLAND ..

THE MOUSTERIAN PERIOD IN ENGLAND AND THE MEN OF THAT PERIOD IN FRANCE.

THE DISTRIBUTION OF NEANDERTHAL MAN IN EUROPE . Re.

Chapter I

Tue road from London to Maidstone, once it has made a steep descent from the North Downs, winds through a district abounding in traces of long-past generations of Kentish men. The traveller along this road, with his face turned eastwards, be he ever so interested in the study of ancient man, cannot fail to note the picturesqueness of the Kentish weald. From time to time he passes villages which have preserved, in spite of a whirling stream of motor traffic, much of an old-world atmosphere. Ever on the left hand, a few miles distant from the road, the traveller sees across the hedges and orchards the steep flank of the North Downs, which trend eastwards to end in the white cliffs of Dover. Here and there he may trace the Pilgrims’ Way as it winds along the foot of the steep grey face of the Downs, the medizval path to the shrine at Canterbury. The great stone monument at Coldrum, which is to give us our first glimpse into man’s past, could be reached by following the grass-grown pilgrims’ path ; but then if that route were taken we should miss ie picturesque village of Ightham and the man who has made this part of Skeet a Mecca for all students of early man—Mr Benjamin Harrison. We are in the centre of some of Mr Harrison’s most important discoveries. On the plateau of the North I I

. THE ANTIOUITY OF MAN

Downs, stretching northward from the steep slope which now faces us until it sinks into the valley of the Thames, Mr Harrison has gathered those rudely worked flints— eoliths—the earliest form of tool ascribed to man. Close by-Ightham, hid in a wood, are the Oldbury rock-shelters where Mr Harrison has found over three hundred flints worked in exactly the same fashion as those chipped by the cavemen in the south of France when the rigorous climate of the Ice age was giving place to our more genial times. On the plateau a few miles away lie the oldest and rudest of human tools—for I am assuming that the reader admits the humanity of Mr Harrison’s eoliths, while here, amongst the earth that has gathered at the foot of the projecting rock, almost burying it, are the stone implements—palzoliths—which mark the last phase of the Paleolithic period.

We are not concerned at this point with the immeasurable stretch of time that lies between the earliest of the eoliths and the latest of the paleoliths ; in following man into the past we are to start from that period or age of culture which succeeded the Palzolithic—the Neolithic. All over this district, on the ploughed fields and in the woods, the keen and delicately worked flints which are characteristic of the Neolithic stage of man’s history can be picked up. How long the Neolithic period _ lasted in England we cannot yet say with any degree of certainty, but we are all agreed that it came to an end about 2000 B.c., when bronze became known to the men of Western Europe. We have only to visit Rose Wood, within a short distance of Mr Harrison’s house in Ightham, to see that the passage from the Paleolithic to the Neolithic period was marked by a much greater change than a mere alteration in the manner in which flint implements were fashioned. In Rose Wood is the evidence that men were no longer vagabonds and wanderers, but had settled down in communities. Hid in the undergrowth of this coppice? is a series of circular

1 For an account of the antiquities of the Ightham district, see ghtham —the History of a Kentish Village, by F. J. Bennett, F.G.S., 1907.

PeNHOLITHHC COMMUNITY OF - KENT 3 depressions, some forty in number, marking the sites of the pit-dwellings of a Neolithic village.t These ancient dwellings were explored over forty years ago by the Kent Archeological Society. They were found to be circular pepacmeeiee pits, 5° to 10 feet deep and is feet ‘in diameter.” Round the pits were found fragments of rude pottery and numerous flint flakes and implements. Near by is Oldbury camp—also the work of the Neolithic period.

As we turn our backs on the pit-dwellings and Oldbury camp to gain the main road and again face eastwards, it is possible that the significance of what we have just seen may escape us. So far as we know at present, the men of the more ancient or Paleolithic period had no conception of house-building or of settled communities, of defence works or of pottery. These were, with perhaps the exception of the last, discoveries of the Neolithic period. Further, it is manifest that settled communities are only possible when the land is tilled and cattle are domesticated. Agriculture was the slow and laborious invention of the Neolithic age. It does not cut the Neolithic age any shorter if we suppose—as we must suppose—that agriculture was not evolved in Western Europe. In different parts of the world and at various times, man did slowly and laboriously discover the art of bringing plant and beast into his service. That stage—a Neolithic stage—was passed through somewhere, and it must have been an undertaking which involved many generations.

Ightham, where we left the main road, is thirty miles from London ; six miles further along the road lies the village of West Malling (fig. 1). At the time this account begins—1910—for I propose in this survey to confine myself to the discoveries and movements of the last four years—Mr F. J. Bennett had retired from a long and active career in the service of the Geological Survey under the British Government and settled in

1 For pit-dwellings in Kent, see Geo. Clinch, Journ. Anthrop. [nsitt., 1899, ser. 2, vol. 11. p. 124.

4 THE “ANTIQUITY -OF sii

West Malling. He was then spending his leisure hours in busily interpreting the traces of ancient man in the county of Kent. The Coldrum Megalithic monument, to which we are now making our way, was the particular object of his attention in the year | have mentioned, 1910. It is true that my friend, Mr A. L. Lewis,’ had recognised the importance of the monument in 1877, and published an accurate plan of the arrangement of the stones; but it was left for Mr Bennett to reveal its secrets and the light it could throw on the Neolithic

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ROSE WOCR WEALD Fic, 1.—A map of the part of Kent in which Coldrum is situated.

inhabitants of Kent. To reach Coldrum we follow a farm track which opens from the main road before the village of West Malling is reached. Before us, to the north, and some three miles distant, is the grey, dry pastureland that clothes the sharp face of the North Downs. Sweep away. the snug farms which lie sheltered in the weald below the Downs and on the uplands of the plateau above them, replace the hedged fields with little terraced cultivated plots, and we have before us exactly the country that Neolithic man inhabited four or five thousand years ago. On our right, as we proceed north-

1 See Journ. Anthrop. Institute, Noy. 1877.

wards, we see the same valley of the Medway opening out before us as it did before him, except that the smoke which sweeps towards us from ne cement works of the _gorge, by which the Medway makes its way northwards through the Downs to reach the Thames, was unknown in his time. When we reach the monument, a little distance short of the Downs, we see that it is not as Neolithic man left it. Time and circumstance have

Fic. 2.—Megalithic monument at Coldrum viewed from the cast (Dr Stanley Beale), defaced it. We pass the farm and reach the raised ‘corner of a field on which the monument stands. Half a mile further to the north is the Pilgrims’ Way along the foot of the steep escarpment. We climb the slope that takes us to the main or central chamber situated on the eastern side of the monument (fig. 2

The great stone which closed the eastern end has fallen forwards and exposed the interior of the chamber, or as we may now name it—for the nature of such chambers is well known—the tomb. It is a commodious chamber,' 12 feet 3 inches in length, east to west, and 5 feet 8 inches in width, from north to south. When Mr Lewis first saw the central chamber, a great vertical slab divided it into an eastern and western half, each half long enough to provide a wide bed for a six-foot man. The flat massive stone which forms the southern wall of the chamber shows that the Neolithic men of Kent were engineers of no mean ability. It stands 7 feet 3 inches high, is 11 feet 3 inches long and 1 foot g inches thick—thus weighing many tons. That mass the men who lived in pit-dwellings transported and set up on this elevated spot. Three other vertical stones make up the northern and western walls. No covering or roofing stone is now present; the chamber lies open to the sky. On the opposite or eastern side of the Medway valley, another Megalithic monument—Kits Coty house—retains the great roofing stone (fig. 10a).

The central chamber is only part of the Coldrum monument; as Mr Filkins’ plan shows, an irregular series of blocks surround the central chamber, enclosing a space, now overgrown with weeds and bushes, about 50 feet square. The monument was evidently set within and formed part of the eastern side of this square. In its original state the central chamber was probably roofed, the encircling stones formed the retaining wall of a great mound which covered the tomb, the entrance being from the eastern side (fig. 9). Whatever its exact original form may have been, this at least is certain : the minds of those ancient inhabitants of Kent must have been deeply moved by a faith in things unseen and of a human existence untrammelled by the flesh.

On April 16th, 1910, Mr Bennett visited the central chamber. In the Megalithic monument at Addington, about a mile due south of Coldrum, he had picked up

Neolithic flakes ; he was now searching for similar traces

1 For a detailed description, see Mr Bennett’s paper, Journ. Roy. Anthrop. Institute, 1913, vol. xiii. p. 76.

of Neolithic man at Coldrum. ‘No sooner,” he writes,’ “had I put my fork in near the west wall than I at once turned up, and under only a few inches of chalky soil, some human bones. This find I kept to myself, and determined to do no more without someone present to keep and record further finds in an area apparently so full wes,

Eas,

Fic. 3.—Surface-plan of the Coldrum monument, from a survey made by Mr E. W. Filkins, of human remains.” With the consent of the Lord of the Manor, Mr Nevill, and with the assistance of Mr E. W. Filkins, Mr G. Payne of Rochester, Mr F. W. Reader, Mr and Mrs Lindsay, and Miss Harker, Mr Bennett made a systematic examination of the central chamber. Besides human bones, only a few fragments of a rude pottery and a flint saw were found. Not a

1 Journ. Roy. Anthrop. Instit., 1913, vol. xlii. p. 81.

trace of any object belonging to a culture later than that of the Neolithic age came to light.

There is not any doubt in my mind that the bones thus discovered by Mr Bennett were those of the people primarily interred in this Megalithic tomb. Once chalk has permeated the porous texture of bones, preservation is secured. ‘The Coldrum bones ring like porcelain when they are struck; the tongue adheres to the freshly fractured surface, showing that the bones no longer contain animal matter. In this manner we came by the material which provides us, for the first time, with the means of forming a true picture of what the Neolithic people of Kent must have looked like in the flesh—the people whose beliefs were centred round the Megalithic monuments. I do not propose to weary the reader with the details of my cramninangs of the bones ; they are already on record ;* all I propose~ here 1s to give in outline the mental picture which my investigation led me to form of the people.

When | had arranged all the fragments, I found that. at least twenty-two individuals were represented ; they were of all ages, from newly born children to old men and women. Unfortunately the skulls, which give us the surest evidence of the racial nature of a past people, were few and fragmentary. There were only five, out of a group of nine, complete enough for our present purpose. But a certain feature of these skulls throws a curious sidelight on the nature of the monument. In a great number of them there were present peculiarities in their formation which could only be accounted for by supposing that the people buried in the tomb were of one family or of nearly related families... Three of. the nine skulls had anomalous bones set within the joinings or sutures of the vault (see fig. 4) ; some of the others showed irregularities in the manner in which the sutures between the skull bones became closed.

They were people of short stature ; from the length of the thigh bones the stature of the men was estimated

1 Journ. Roy. Anthrop. Instzt., 1913, vol. xliii. p. 80.

A NEOLITHIC COMMUNITY OF KENT 9g to have been about 5 feet 44 inches (1°600 m.), and that of the women about 5 feet 1 inch (1°567m.). They were thus 2 or 3 inches below our modern British “average. In size of brain they were apparently not below our standard. Indeed, the three male skulls had a capacity of 1600 cubic centimetres—an amount considerably above the mean for modern men—148o. c.c.; the two female skulls had a capacity of 1450 c.c., which is also above the modern mean for women—1300 c.c. No importance can be attached to figures founded on a group of five skulls ; in every race, ancient and modern, the brain is found to vary widely as regards size. Such observations as those just cited simply show us that Neolithic man, as regards brain size, had at least reached our modern standard.

It is also quite apparent that the Neolithic men in this part of England did not depart very widely from their modern successors as regards form of face and head. How near those Coldrum skulls come to modern specimens will be seen from fig. 4. I have taken one of the Coldrum specimens and set it, as seen in true profile, within a standard frame which bounds the chief limits of a modern Englishman’s skull of mean size. The dimensions actually used are founded on the measurements made by Dr Macdonell? on a large number of plague-pit skulls (seventeenth century) exhumed in the Fast End of London some years ago. Dr Macdonell determined the mean length of the male skulls to be 189° mm.; I have made the length of the. standard frame in round numbers, 190 mm.—just under 74 inches. The width he found to be 140°7 mm.; again I have taken round numbers and made it 140 mm. The width is approximately 74 per cent. of the length. Any race of men in which the width of the head measures 75 per cent. of the length, or less, we count long-headed or dolichocephalic ; if the width is 80 per cent. or more of the length, then the race falls into the short-headed or brachycephalic group ; the races falling above 75 per cent.,

1 Biometrika, 1904, vol. ili. p. 191.

ive THE ANTIQUITY OF MAN and under 80 per cent., form an intermediate or mesocephalic group. Amongst individuals of even the purest races a wide degree of variation in head width is found ; we determine the place of the race by striking the mean of a series of measurements on many individuals.

The height of the vault above the ear-holes is also important. In the Whitechapel skulls—those regarded as males—the vault rises to 114 mm. above the ear-holes ; the vaults of the English skull are low pitched. In the standard frame I have pitched the vault level at 115mm. Now, when one of the Coldrum skulls is placed

Fic. 4.—One of the Coldrum skulls set within a framework of lines which bound the chief diameters of a modern skull of mean size. The skull is represented in two aspects—profile and full-face, within the standard frame (fig. 4) it is seen to fit fairly well. Ifa composite outline were made from the three male skulls, the length of the composite skull would be 190°5 mm., its width 140 mm., the height of the vault 118 mm. The width is 73°3 per cent. of the length. The two skulls regarded as females are relatively wider, the width index (cephalic index) being 77:9. We are clearly dealing with a race with a head form lying towards the upper limits of the long-headed range. In actual dimensions of the head and in the proportion of width to length, this small sample of Neolithic people is not materially different from a modern group of English people of the industrial class; but they do differ from a sample of the Kentish people who lived at Hythe, on the southern coast of Kent, in medieval times. . During the last few years my friend, Prof. F. G. Parsons,' has done much to unravel the evolution of the modern Englishman. In the crypt of the church at Hythe, he examined nearly five hundred skulls of people who lived in medizval times. The heads of those Hythe people were differently shaped from the Neolithic people of Coldrum. They were shorter and broader and higher ; the maximum length of the males was only 179 mm., the width 142 mm., the height 120 mm., the cephalic index 79°9 per cent. The medieval people of Hythe are on the border-line of ‘the short-headed class. In accounting for the difference in head form between Neolithic and medizval people, one has to remember that in the Bronze age typical round-headed people invaded Kent, and at later dates, during the Roman occupation, and also during the Anglo-Saxon invasion, many fresh racial elements were imported into the population of this county. |

I am lingering round this small group of Coldrum people because they have to serve as a standard for our subsequent inquiries regarding the bodily features of ancient races of men. When a skull is viewed in full face (fig. 4) we have an opportunity of standardising its dimensions as seen from that point of view. The greatest width of the face is measured between the cheek or zygomatic arches. ‘The width of the face of the male Whitechapel skulls is 130 mm.; that we shall use asa standard width. The width of the forehead is also important. The lower width is taken between the outer ends of the ridge which crosses the forehead above the orbits—from the outer end of one external angular process to the outer end of the opposite process. The upper width (indicated by a stippled line in fig. 4) 1s taken between the temporal lines which bound the areas

1 See Journ. Anthrop. Instit., 1908, vol. xxxvill. p. 419; also 1910, vol. Ix. p. 483.

on the sides of the skull occupied by the temporal muscles —muscles of mastication. The difference between these two frontal measurements is of some value. In skulls of a primitive race the lower or supra-orbital width is much greater than the upper or true frontal width. As regards the frontal widths, the Coldrum individuals show the same relative proportions as modern English people. In measuring the length of the face the forehead is not included. ‘The forehead is really the anterior wall of the brain case ; it is not, in an anatomical sense, part of the face. The length one desires to measure is from the nasion—the point where the bridge of the nose abuts on the forehead—to the lower margin of the chin. The lower jaw is so often missing in ancient skulls that it is usually impossible to obtain the “total” face length ; Renee we have to rest content with what is known as the

“upper” face length—the distance as measured by calipers between the nasion and the point between the roots of the two central upper incisor teeth, the guathion. Even as regards this measurement there - only one Coldrum skull available. All we can say, taking certain fragmentary parts into account, is that the face of this group of Neolithic people was rather shorter than in modern people and of about the same width.

When we come to analyse the characters which distinguish the people of the Neolithic period from the present population of Britain, we see that the changes affect, in the first place, the teeth, jaws, and face. Amongst modern Kentish folk, as is the case all over modern Britain, there is a tendency to crowding and irregularities of the teeth ; the palate and jaws do not grow and expand sufficiently in youth to give room for a symmetrical eruption of the teeth. There is a decided tendency to narrowing and elongation of the face—a tendency to produce a face of a hatchet-shaped pattern. The ‘nose is narrow and the palate contracted, and its vault is high. The teeth are not worn down as in Neolithic men; they are very liable to be attacked by caries. The front teeth, when the jaws are closed, do not meet edge to edge.as in primitive races; like the blades of scissors, they overlap, the lower passing behind the upper. In the Neolithic people all these modern characters are absent. Abscesses or gumboils at the roots of the deeply ground teeth, however, were common ; but there is not a single carious tooth to be seen in axe Coldrum collection. The teeth are regular in their arrangement, the palates were well formed, but in actual size the teeth possess the same dimensions as those of modern English people. All these changes, which are appearing in the teeth and jaws of modern British people, arise, we suppose, from the soft nature of our modern diet. We believe that were modern men to resume a Neolithic diet their teeth and palates would again be moulded in the ancient manner.

It is not only in face and mouth haa well-marked changes can be recognised. The bones of the lower extremities of Neolithic people were shaped in a different mould. The upper parts of the shafts of the Coldrum thigh bones are flattened in their upper parts, as if they had been compressed from front to back ; the bones of the leg or shin are much more flattened from side to side, and the bones which form the ankle and foot are shorter, stouter, and show more extensive joint surfaces—evidence of freer movement. We cannot explain the disappearance of these characters. Perhaps the modern conditions under which we live—our clothing, our boots, our roads and streets—have brought about a remoulding of the lower limbs. The solution of those problems awaits further investigation. In the meantime we merely note the fact that the men of Kent do differ in certain bodily features from their predecessors of four thousand years ago. Time and environment appear to have worked certain changes in the structure of the human body.