A Briton 15,000 Years Ago.

Kaipara and Waitemata Echo, 18 September 1914, Page 2

A Briton 15,000 Years Ago.

By GARRETT P. SERVISS.)

One of the most interesting of all finds of the remains of prehistoric man is that recently made near the village of Hailing, on the shore of the River Mcd way, in Kent —the skull which the Medical Conference in London discussed recently.

It requires but an exercise of the imagination to see this prehistoric gentleman standing before us as he was in life, clothed in his rude skin garments, which other discoveries have indicated were the fashion in his time.

That it is no misnomer to call him a "gentleman" is proved by the outlines of his head and face. The skull and face bones are well shaped, and careful measurements show that he possessed a brain of the modern average in size. He must, then, in all probability, have been a marked man in the ancient community in which he lived.

Relics of the community have been found near the site of his forgotten grave, upon which a dozen historic races have unknowingly trod, for he had already been sleeping there not less than thirteen thousand years when Julius Caesar with hfs legions invaded Britain.

These relics consist of ancient firehearths, with specimens of flint implements. The hearths were situated about thirty yards away from the place where the skull lay, which is regarded .as a sufficient proof that the man had been buried at that spot. \ The remains had not been moved since their original interment.

As the archaeologist, Mr. W. H. Cook, has remarked, one can, in imagination, see the Englishman of a hundred and fifty centuries ago seated with his family and his friends beside those very hearths, which have remained during all the intervening ages. The curling smoke and the flickering blaze may have startled the eyes of long-horned stags, and even of huge mammoths, for those animals, are known to have inhabited England in the geological period to which these remains belong.

One of the most interesting facts about this "Hailing Man" is that he probably possessed a type 'of bodily structure closely accordant with that of many of the inhabitants of the county of Kent to-day. He was probably rather short of stature, measuring only sft. 4in. (Napoleon . was not much taller than that), but he was well formed, though thick-set, and, as already remarked, he had a head of admirable proportions. This may be taken as an indication of the exceeding slowness with which the human race has made its upward march. In the later ages the brains of men seem to have developed more in quality than in quantity. The geologists who have examined the ground are certain that the undisturbed layers above the place have remained, just as natural forces slowly deposited them, from the Pleistocene Age to the present tim.o —"London Budget."