62 SCIENCE PROGRESS 



ANTHROPOLOGY. By A. G. Thacker, A.R.C.Sc. 



The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute is once more 

 the periodical which calls for the first notice in these notes. 

 The publication for the second half of 191 7 (vol. xlvii. pt. 2) 

 contains more than one contribution which should be of interest 

 to the ordinary educated reader as well as to the professed 

 anthropologist. Mr. J. Reid Moir, who is now so well known 

 as a pertinacious advocate of extreme views on the antiquity 

 both of the surviving species of man and of the human tribe as 

 a whole, contributes an article entitled " On some Human and 

 Animal Bones, Flint Implements, etc., discovered in two occupa- 

 tion-levels in a small valley near Ipswich," which should cause 

 widespread interest. Mr. Moir is one of those who believe that 

 there exist definite proofs that Homo sapiens was living in 

 Europe prior to the Aurignacian Age (the Aurignacian being 

 the oldest period in which it is universally agreed that sapiens 

 was inhabiting this continent), and a special section of the 

 evidence upon which he relies for the support of this thesis is 

 admirably described in this article. 



The excavations described were carried out in the brickfield 

 of Messrs. A. Bolton & Co., Ltd., Henley Road, Ipswich, and 

 the research extended over more than two years, from April 

 1 914 to May 1 91 6. The small valley in which the brickfield is 

 situated is now streamless, but is a tributary valley of the 

 River Gipping. Mr. Moir thinks that the little valley must 

 have been excavated by the melting of snow and ice which 

 accumulated on the small plateau at the head of the valley in 

 days when the climate was colder than it now is. " But what- 

 ever the cause, the valley, as now developed, has cut down 

 through the Chalky Boulder Clay, the Glacial Gravel, the Red 

 Crag, the London Clay, and into the underlying Woolwich and 

 Reading beds." Two occupation-levels " cut the surface some 

 feet (at about 80 O.D.) above the present valley-bottom." 



It is to be presumed that the floors on the two sides of the 

 valley were once continuous, each to each, and that subsequent 

 erosion has removed the intermediate portions of the floors. 

 Mr. Moir believes that the lower floor is Upper Mousterian and 

 that the higher occupation-level is Aurignacian. A typical 

 series of the flint implements was sent to Prof. V. Commont of 

 Amiens, and this scholar gave it as his opinion that the lower 

 floor was indeed Upper Mousterian, and that the upper floor 



