Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 83.djvu/19

Rh Across the Channel in the Ouse valley, at Piltdown, Fletching (Sussex), there has recently come to light a flint-bearing gravel with a remarkable association of human osseous and cultural remains with those of a Pliocene and Quaternary fauna (Pliocene elephant, Mastodon, Hippopotamus, Cervus elaphus, beaver, horse). The gravel bed is 80 feet above and a mile removed from the present bed of the Ouse. The physiographic features of this region have suffered no appreciable change since Roman times, hence the relation of the present Ouse bed to the one that existed when the Piltdown gravels were deposited indicates a great antiquity for the latter. All the relics in it are certainly

as old as the deposit. All or some may be older. The somatic characters of the human skull (Fig. 6), especially the lower jaw, postulate great antiquity, as does the nature of the rude flint implements. That the latter were found in association with a very primitive human type would seem to give such implements a standing hitherto denied them by some authorities; unless it can be proved that they were derived from a deposit antedating the one which originally contained the human remains. Their pedigree was needed in order to make industrial genealogy complete, just as the skull itself was needed to fill a gap in man's physical evolution. It remains for the geologists to determine whether in Piltdown the prehistorian's "Rosetta stone" has at last been found. Perhaps they will be able to tell us also whether a channel separated the man of Piltdown from his contemporaries in the near-by valley of the Somme. The present channel dates from the very close of the paleolithic period. That there was a channel in early paleolithic times is