Report on the human and animal remains found at Halling, Kent / by Arthur Keith.

  • Keith, Arthur, Sir, 1866-1955.
Date:
1914
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Report on the human and animal remains found at Halling, Kent / by Arthur Keith. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    in which the remains were emhedded. The hearths indicate an old land surface— now covered hy three or four more recent strata, amounting to about 5 feet in depth. We may infer in the present case that the Hailing remains are those of a man buried when the level of the hearths was a land surface. How long ago that is must be determined by geologists and by those who have studied the formation of the deposits. The condition of the bones does not help us greatly in determining the age. The tibia of a rhinoceros from a brick-earth deposit regarded as of the same age as the formation at Hailing, shows a state of preservation similar to that of the human skeleton. They are not mineralized to the extent seen in early Pleistocene bones. They are brittle, brown in colour on the surface, but when broken across the interior is grey and chalky in appearance and texture. When one applies the tongue to the broken surface, it adheres. The bone contains so little animal matter that when placed in a weak solution of HCl it crumbles away, leaving no gelatinous outline of the fragment behind. The fragments of the skeleton give a metallic resonance when struck. The animal bones from the strata at Hailing are in three conditions : (1) some are brown in colour and very slightly mineralized ; (2) others are grey, hard and mineralized to the same extent as the skeleton; (3) one—the radius of a rhinoceros—is deeply mineralized and is presumably a re-deposit from an older stratum. No grave furniture of any kind was found. A fine flint flake was found with the skeleton. One other point may prove of some assistance in fixing the age. The material in which the ribs are embedded is typical of the stratum in which the skeleton was embedded—the stratum No. 5, described by Mr. Cook. The skull was almost completely filled with a brick-earth, which is similar to that in which the ribs are embedded, except that it contains very little and only fine grains of chalk. We may presume that the skull was filled from the stratum in which the body was buried, by two agencies : (1) the percolation of rain and water which carried in the finer surrounding grains from the brick-earth as the brain decayed, and before the skull walls yielded to the pressure of the overlying layer, and (2) by the agency of worms and worm casts. The matrix of the brain cast is such as we might expect to be formed from the stratum in which the skeleton lay. Apparently the cranial cavity was not quite filled. Dr. Edwards observed a space under the right frontal region, which was evidently the highest or most superficial part of the skull. There was no mark of cutting or of injury on the bones. Sex, Age, Stature. There is no doubt as to sex ; the massive size of the head of the thigh-bone (diameter 50 by 49 rnm.), the strongly developed Hmb-bones, the fragments of the pelvis and the characters of the skull leave us in no doubt that it is the skeleton of an adult man. The teeth are so worn that the dentine is widely exposed on the grinding surfaces, and many are lost by disease. From the wear of the teeth we