WHOLE VOL. SKELETAL REMAINS OF EARLY MAN HRDLICKA I09 



In 1922 I left Broken Hill and came to Australia. At the request of Professor 

 Burkitt I called at the Sydney University and gave him particulars of the find. 

 I left the sample to which you refer with him. It was not a bundle (I know noth- 

 ing of any bundle being found) ; it was part of a protective covering which com- 

 pletely encased the skull.^ This had been broken off before I arrived at the mine. 

 The importance I place on this is due to the fact that none of the other bones 

 in the vicinity had any such covering. 



In August, 1922, I went to London and called upon Professor Woodward at 

 the Kensington Museum. He showed me the skull and the various bones which 

 had been delivered to him by Mr. Macartney and I recognized the ones which he 

 stated were the lower [upper] jaw, and the leg bone and the lion's skull — these 

 were all discovered within a foot of the skull.^ 



I know little of anthropology, but from the geological point of view and from 

 close observation of the so-called " cave " in which the skull was found, I con- 

 sider there is proof of a much greater age than the estimate given by Woodward. 



Yours truly, 

 (Signed) A. S. Armstrong. 



The foregoing documents make it only too evident that the exact 

 details of the rare find were recorded by no one ; and that the re- 

 membrance of them has in the course of time become more or less 

 confused even in those who were on the spot soon after the discovery. 

 The statement of Mr. Harris in " The Illustrated London News " 

 (see Appendix) made five months after the event is doubtless no less 

 faithful but also no less defective than the others. 



Hoping that something more precise might have been given to the 

 British Museum (Natural History), the writer turned to Dr. Bather, 

 the present Keeper at that Museum of the Department of Geology 

 and Palaeontology, and was very kindly furnished with copies of all 

 the official entries relating to the find and an earlier collection from 

 the same cave. They read as follows : 



November 15, 1921 Franklin White, Esq., 



3379 iia Harrington Gardens, S. W. 7. 



Four stone implements and three pieces of worked bone collected by the donor 

 in a cavern in the Broken Hill Mine, N. W. Rhodesia. 



November 24, 1921 The Directors of the Rhodesia Broken Hill 



3382 Development Company, Ltd., 



(per Edmund Davis, Esq., Chairman), 



19 St. Swithin's Lane, E. C. 4. 



A primitive human skull, with part of maxilla of a second skull, a sacrum, 

 three pieces of femora, and a tibia ; also seven associated bones of mammals, and 

 two round pounding stones ; found in a cavern at the Broken Hill Mine, N. W. 

 Rhodesia. 



* Statements plainly somewhat erroneous. 

 ^ Error. 



