Show iff fT 38 T afef isa I 1 y y of the remains the undisturbed condition of the ground precluding the idea ot burial at a date later than that in which they were deposited the remains lay in a stratum of what Is geologically known as brick earth though it will be readily inferred that bricks have nothing to do with it it Is but the rain 2000 OK IKS wash of centuries the fine inter HE village ot hailing situated on the banks of the medway some four miles above rochester eng land has sprung into fame through the discovery of a man henceforth the name ot hailing will be as full of mean ing to genealogists and anthro pol as that of galley hill or tilbury of neanderthal at first sight the finding of a human skeleton strangely like the human skeleton of the pres ent day some six or beven feet below the sur face does not appear an epoch making event but when the conditions under which it was found are carefully considered it la just this striking similarity to the living type that renders the hailing man so interesting and valuable an array of details has been unearthed which assures tho investigators that they have here the remains of an individual who long preceded the builders of stonehenge a man who dates back at least to what la vaguely known as the early neolithic period but who more probably lived his etrene ous life under tha severe conditions obtaining towards the end of the paleolithic age warring with the mammoth the woolly rhinoceros and other aggressive creatures of the pleistocene the famous skull discovered by mr charles dawson in tho weald of sussex last year belongs to the first chapter of the history of the future the discovery made recently at hailing yields materials for a much later chapter the one alv ing an account of englishmen towards the close of the pleistocene period between the sussex man and the hailing man lies an immensely long stretch of time the time necessary tor carving out the greater part of that wide and deep hollow between the north and south downs in that timo man shed the last of bis anthropoid features and assumed his modern form for the hailing man ie one of ourselves and the sussex individual most certainly ia not the imbor tance ot the present discovery Is that until now we knew very little of our british predecessors at the close of the pleistocene period the has played a part in carving out the weald of sussex it has cut the bottleneck bottle neck gorge in the borth downs at rochester to reach the valley of the thames on its western bank bome four miles above rochester stands the little village of hailing where the recent ery was made between the village and the river lies a stretch of marshland nearly halt a mile in but as the village Is approached the land rises sharply to form a terrace 15 feet above the level of the river the ferraco extends along both sides of the valley it is composed of strati ced brick eartra in this terrace between tho marshland by the river and aba village of hailing the skeleton was exposed the discovery was duo to a fortunate mischance during an excavation of some depth a elep of the friable earth occurred revealing the greater bartot a Bk eleton lying in situ as shown in the diagram this landslip also disclosed a fact of great importance namely that the strata above were unbroken and level aa when depoe ud in the course of many thousands of years there can thus be no que atlon as to the antiquity with larger which suggest pieces ot brick overlying this stratum was a layer of sand with a layer 0 more recent brick earth above it then red loam and finally the vegetable top eoll altogether four strata averaging about six feet in total thickness the top ot the stratum in which the remains were found appears to have been the land of the age in which the man lived this Is shown by the discovery some 30 yards away ot the charred and blackened remains ot prehistoric alre hearths fragments of burnt bones and wood worked flints and many animal bones the worked flints have been submitted to expert examination at the british museum where the balance ot opinion appears to be in favor 0 assigning them to the paleolithic period or at any rate to the time of transition between that and tha neolithic age which would place their age at some 15 years geological evidence however dates them belll further back tor the corresponding deposits on the opposite side of the medway have yielded fossils of pleistocene times when the hairy mammoth arctic fox rein deer and woolly rhinoceros roamed the land the inference therefore Is that w have here a paleolithic encampment and that the skeleton was one of the party who judging from the position of the remains was interred a short distance below tho then surface while some religious alg Is suggested by the body being burled with the head to the east how did the human remains come to lie in this stratum of brick earth dr edwards observed from the position 0 the bones which remained fast in place that the skeleton lay on its back that all parts of the skeleton were represented and that the whole did not occupy more than an extent of three feet in length evidence that the body was in the contracted posture at death A complete skeleton much weathered and fragmentary and in a contracted posture could only be explained by supposing that it had been burled the solution of the problem became apparent later at some distance from the site of the skeleton there were found extensive remains of ancient alre hearths these lay immediately over the stratum con the skeleton and under the overlying or fourth stratum this level represented an old land surface and the skeleton was probably one of the men who eat round the hearths on that old land surface that Is the explanation mr 1 cook suggested at a recent meeting of the royal anthropological institute when be gave an ac count of his discoveries mr A S kennard who Is our highest authority on the age of val ley deposits regards the strata over the hailing man as late pleistocene in date mr cook dew de w ascribed scribed the flint implements found on the old land surface but they belong to a type which was used by paleolithic as well as neolithic men the remains of the skeleton were forwarded to professor keith of the royal college of surgeons for expert examination and as he explained to tho writer a cload scrutiny revealed the ing tact that we have here a typo ot man who in every particular brain capacity conformation of skull long oval face pointed projecting chin stature five feet four inches and general build w sta beij Is practically identical with people one meets in the street every day and this notwithstanding tho great interval of time that must have elapsed ad the vastly different conditions of life now prevailing indeed he found that the brain capac ity some 1 cubic centimeters even exceeds the present day average in this respect the skull is analogous to that 0 the tilbury fossil man to which professor keith Is inclined to assign an age ot bears judging from the position in which it was found beneath 31 feet of strata he la also of opinion that the tilbury man and his hailing neighbor are members ot the bame race averaging over five feet in height strongly built with well formed skulls and a striking absence ot heavy ridges over the eyes a race which huxley described as the riverbed river bed type from its apparent haunts this type la known to have lived in paleolithic times since a skull was lately discovered in company with pleistocene fossils burled in a derbyshire cave the later portion of the paleolithic period Is estimated to extend back from some 25 for at least years this race of men was immeasurably superior in cranial development to the race represented by the supposing this to be human and unquestionably hundreds of thousands of bears intervened between the two in ing the great brain capacity of the hailing man with that of the neolithic skull discovered near V alton on the inaze which la estimated to bo at most not more than ears old we do not find the development expected since the latter possessed a brain capacity ot but 1260 cubic centimeters whereas the skull of the galley hill man regarded as the oldest british example ex the n i et discovered has a brain capacity of between 1350 and 1400 cubic cenal meters professor keith in his work on the ancient types 0 man notes that in an average modern man of the galley hill skeletons stature one should expect a brain of 1450 to 1475 cubic centimeters and there are many men in england today with smaller brains than the galley hill man these remarks will apply with still more force to the hailing man regarding such palmi alve types as the neanderthal gibraltar and allt down skulls their antiquity must be measured by many hundreds of thousands of years 1 we are to understand that a process of evolution has developed such high paleolithic types directly from these progenitors |