Page:Palæolithic Man and Terramara Settlements in Europe.djvu/160

106 roof rises in an irregular manner. The contents were stratified, and among them were bones of man, horse, pig, ox, goat, red deer, Irish elk, grizzly bear, badger, wolf, fox, dog, marten, hare, rabbit, and hedgehog. The human remains were all much broken and scattered pell-mell, showing that they were not deposited in the flesh. The cave was inhabited up to the Early Iron Age, as proved by the discovery of the bone handle of a knife ornamented with incised concentric circles, and an amber bead. Among other relics are a polished stone celt, chisels of bone and stone hammers, but none of Palæolithic types.

The most interesting result of the excavations of the cave was evidence that the Irish elk was not extinct in this part of Ireland when Neolithic man appeared on the scene (Scientific Trans. Roy. Dublin Soc., vol. i., pp. 177-226).

In another cave at Shandon, near Dungarvan, remains of the brown bear (U. arctos], mammoth, reindeer, and horse were discovered in 1859 by Mr Brenan (Journ. Roy. Dub. Soc', vol. ii.).

The Tilbury Skeleton.

In 1883, parts of a human skeleton consisting of the skull, lower jaw, the femurs, tibias, the right humerus, the left radius and ulna, and portion of the pelvis, were disinterred from a bank of sand, at a depth of 34 feet from the surface, while excavating the Tilbury Docks. The bones were submitted to Professor Owen, who described them as the remains of a Palæolithic man (Owen, Antiqitity of Tilbury Man, London, 1884). They were embedded in the sand to the extent of 20 inches, and the superincumbent deposits consisted of a succession of strata of clay, mud, peat, sand, etc., which prove that a long time elapsed since the body became covered up by the sand. The skull (Fig. 20) is imperfect, the portion from the forehead to the mouth being absent, but sufficient remained to show that it is dolichocephalic, with length-breadth diameters of 186 and 141 millimetres (cephalic index 75.8). The forehead is slightly retreating and the superciliary arches heavy and prominent, but the chin is well formed. The olecranon fossa of the humerus is not perforated. The femurs are strong, thick bones, and the left has the peculiarity of having a tuberosity between the large