PREHISTORIC MAN

Hokitika Guardian, 26 August 1932, Page 6

PREHISTORIC MAN

OTHER DISCOVERIES RELATED

■LONDON, August 23.

Mingling with , elderly savants of .all nations, women were prominent 'at the Prehistoric Congress. Although, their 'fchneology investigations; cover a period of probably 35,000 years, * Misses Caton-Thompson and Gayrqd wore shingled hair and trim' clothes, and' looked; as though they-.' were, ready . to fly an aeroplane at a moment’s notice. Miss Thompson; indeed, took, her oivp aerial pictures of jihe at Kharga Oasis, in the Nile ValleyV Superintending ,200. Atyb .. workman, she discovered fossil springs .used by mp-n probably 35,000 years also hundred's ‘ of prehistoric ‘ weTpbns and tools, .showing- a long: occupation in .paleolithic ; times,.. the, springy dried.,,and ,t%r9 a. lq{}ggap .ip, thfir ; histp ; ry until bored a . well in the §ixt)v b.c, ,-7”‘7-~ r f {T,

Miss Thompson' told the , congress that her, camp was located in the wildest. imaginable,, desolation. Though sh'e had faced the dpugers of . the, desert unflinchingly, .she, blushed like ~ a school girl when the. prehistorian;: broke iqto a, storm' of. applauseFlinders Petrie described, her,,as ail , extremely brilliant j'Qung .'.wppian. •.:/ Mrs Cunningham surprised the cpri-o-’-ess by declaring that, from the evidence of potteiy discoveries, Stone-* henge could not have been built before the Bronze A»e. It was probably built by the Beakei people, about 1500 B.C.

Abbe Brueil, who accompanied Sir Elliot Smith to China to investigate the Peking man, produced evidence that the Peking man, produced 1,000,OQO years ago knew the use of fire. Sir Smith Woodward, discoverer of the Piltdown man, exhibited implements indicating that the antiquity pf fire was at least as great in England as in the East. 1