THE DATING OF EARLY HUMAN REMAINS. 55
Combe Capelle and Brunn type. On the other hand. Dr. W.
L. H. Duckworth has pointed out that the skull has suffered from
great posthumous distortion, and that after making the necessary
allowance for this, neither the skull nor the limb bones show
any discoverable difference from long-headed Europeans of
to-day.
If the remains were of the race-type characteristic of the
period to which the deposit belongs, there might be some pro-
bability that they represented a contemporary interment made
from a buried "floor." As this is not the case—so far as our
available information goes—the problem of the dating of the
interment is the same as if this interment had been made in a
deposit of the Eocene, the Cambrian, or any other geological
period.
BURY ST. EDMUNDS.
A fragment of skull, which may be palaeolithic, although the
evidence is not conclusive, was found by Mr. H. Prigg in 1882.
The fragment is unfortunately too imperfect to give any reliable
characters.30
THE TILBURY SKELETON.
As this discovery was made on Essex soil, it has a peculiar
interest for us. It was unearthed during the excavations for
the Tilbury Docks in 1883, and described by Sir Richard Owen,
who made a greatly exaggerated estimate of its age.31 It is
erroneously referred to the Neanderthal race in the French
manuals of de Mortillet and Dechelette, but it really belongs
to Huxley's River-bed type, which has recently been revived
by Professor Keith.
It was an interment made from the prehistoric surface
beneath the lowest peat of the Thames estuary. Although at a
lower level, the situation is essentially the same as that of the
Walton skeleton which I dug up some few years ago with the
assistance of Mr. Miller Christy.32 At the first glance, we
might well be led to exaggerate the importance of the difference
in the level of the two finds. This buried surface, which under-
lies the marsh deposits of our saltings, is by no means a level
30 H. Prigg, Journ. Anthrop Inst., vol. xiv., p. 51. W G. Smith, Man the Primeval
Savage, 1894, p 280.
31 R. Owen. Antiquity of Man as deduced from the discovery of a human skeleton
during excavations of the East and West India Docks at Tilbury, London, 1884
32 S. H Warren, Essex Naturalist, 1911, vol. xvi., p. 198; also Journ R. Anthrop. Inst.,
1912 vol. xlii . p 120. A. Keith, ibid., p. 128