PRE-PAL.EOLITHIC MAN IN ENGLAND 471 



beds may outcrop at a very low level, while much newer strata 

 may occur at a considerable height above sea or river-level. 

 I mention this to demonstrate that the antiquity of the Pilt- 

 down gravel cannot be determined by reference merely to the 

 height at which it occurs. 



It is necessary, therefore, to examine the actual strata 

 composing the gravel-bed. Mr. Dawson, in his very accurate 

 and careful examination of this deposit, recognised four well- 

 defined strata, 1 and it was in the lowermost but one of these, 

 resting upon " a pale-yellow finely divided clay and sand," 

 that the human remains were found. With these remains 

 were found fragments of the bones and teeth of six different 

 animals, two, and most likely three of which can be referred 

 with certainty to the Pliocene period. The three other mam- 

 mals, red deer, horse, and beaver, may or may not be of 

 Pliocene date. 



Of the beaver Dr. Smith Woodward states 3 that it is 

 " most probably Pleistocene," while of the red deer he 

 remarks that typical specimens " have never hitherto been 

 found below the Pleistocene." The discoverers of these various 

 relics at Piltdown draw attention to, and seem to lay stress 

 on, the fact of the difference in condition of the specimens as 

 regards the amount of rolling by water to which they have 

 been subjected, and apparently attempt to draw conclusions 

 regarding their respective ages from such differences. My 

 experience, however, has led me to place little value on the 

 condition of any constituents of a deposit of gravel, and I have 

 frequently found specimens of contemporaneous date and 

 lying in close proximity to each other, some of which are rolled 

 while others exhibit scarcely any signs of their transport. 

 And if one attempts to envisage the multifarious varieties of 

 treatment to which specimens in a gravel would be subjected 

 during its deposition, such apparent paradoxes are not very 

 difficult to understand. 



I cannot but think that had no human bones been found 

 in the Piltdown Gravel there would not have been such an 

 evident attempt to place it in the Pleistocene period, and 



1 " Supplementary Note on the Discovery of a Palaeolithic Skull and Man- 

 dible . . ." Q.J.G.S. April 1914, vol. lxx. p. 83. 



* " On the Discovery of a Palaeolithic Skull and Mandible . . ." Q.J.G.S. 

 March 1913, vol. lxix. p. 148. 



