HUMAN BONES FOUND.

Manawatu Herald, Volume LI, Issue 4040, 11 January 1930, Page 4

HUMAN BONES FOUND.

FIVE THOUSAND YEARS OLD.

SURGEONS’ UNUSUAL TASK

An unusual task awaits the - Royal College of Surgeons. It was revealed at a meeting of fellows and members held in London in November that three large and important collections of human remains had been deposited in 'the museum of the college for investigation and report. Among these remains are some from the deepest and oldest graves discovered at Ur of the Chaldees, Irak, by Mr. Leonard Woolley. They aire over 5000 years old. Ur was Abraham’s birthplace. The remains'are somewhat fragmentary and fragile, but by great care and patience Mr. Ernest Smith has succeeded in piecing the parts together. Human- remains from a cave at Shukbah, Mount Ephraim, have also been deposited. These were excavated by Miss Dorothy Garrod, working for the British School of Aichaelogf in Jerusalem during the winter of 1927-28. ■ In the deepest stratum of the cave she discovered the type, of implements used by Neanderthal man and some fragments of the skull of that strange race of humanity. In the upper strata Miss Garrod found the remains of a number of individuals —men, women and children —people of the modern type with long, narrow heads and of short stature. ' A full examination of this collection will throw light on the evolution and distribution of pre-historie races of the East.

The third collection is that brought back by Mr. L. S. B. Leakey, leader of the East African Archnelog'ical Expedition, from ancient sites of human habitation in Kenya Colony. Mr. Leakey spent the summer of 1928 in the museum studying his collection, and returned to Kenya Colony as leader of a larger expedition in order to extend his investigations and verify the geological evidence relating to the antiquity of the human remains already found. In this he has been successful and has discovered further human remains. These fossil remains do not represent a race or races now living in Africa, but their exact racial af- ‘

Unities cannot be determined without much further inquiry. The material for such an inquiry is afforded by collections already in the museum. Mr. Lea key stated that the report presented is without doubt opening up a new and important source of information concerning the history of man in Africa.