FINDS IN DEVON CAVERN

Hokitika Guardian, 27 April 1926, Page 4

FINDS IN DEVON CAVERN

LION ItELICS. TORQUAY, March (i. Deep down in the prehistoric gloom of Kent's Cavern, on the outskirts of Torquay, expert geologists and anthropologists were to-day searching for the remains of men and women who, it is believed, inhabited this country more than 30,000 years ago. Under the glare of an electric globe, their figures in sharp, black silhouette ami their eager laces vivid in the strong light, a little group of men bent over a glittering mass of shattered stalagmite heaped upon a rough table. In this mass their careful lingers sought for traces of primitive man and of those monstrous animals that roamed the earth when no Channel separated England front, France. From a pit below the experts a man ceaselessly shovelled up for their scrutiny more and more stalagmite which had been broken by explosive charges. The searchers are led by Mr H. G. Dowie, hull, secretary ol the 1 orquax i Natural History Society, and Mr A. 11. Ogilvio, curator of the Torquay Natural History Museum. 20,000-YEAR S-01 ,D REI ACS. A new line of excavation lias been started. In 18(5-1 William Pengelly, one of a number of explorers working under the auspices of the British Association, discovered ill the cavern what lie thought to he a huge- hearth at which prehistoric men cooked their lood. It is in tho vicinity of this hearth that the first search for human remains is now being made. A score of flints used by men 20,000 years ago are among the latest finds, as well as bones and teeth of the rhinoceros, hyena, great Irish elk. and cave lion. The most sensational find, however, consists of 30 pieces of the skull of a man who, it is computed, lived in the period of the break-up of the Lee Age more than 20.000 years ago.

“ But what we really hope to find,” saiil Mr Dowie, “ are remains dating as far hack as the famous Piltdown skull found at Lewes and thought to lie .30.000 years old.”