112 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL.83 



Even before this, however, while handhng the dusty bones in the 

 designer's office and in the tool house, the writer had found among 

 them in the former place a large portion of the distal end of a human 

 humerus, and in the hut a piece of a human parietal. Both of these 

 specimens showed the same mineralization as the rest of the numerous 

 bones and were plainly parts of the same lots. As there is not the 

 slightest intimation that these many scores of animal bones, some 

 of them very conspicuous, were found anywhere near the Rhodesian 

 skull, they probably all proceed from other parts of the cave ; and as 

 the human bones among them were of the same color and mineraliza- 

 tion, there is a strong probability that they were with these bones 

 where they lay. Which means that human bones were found also else- 

 where in the crevice, a fact having an important bearing on some at 

 least of the human bones brought to England with the skull. 



The total of several hundreds of animal bones proved to be of 

 very considerable interest, and established in a short time the true 

 nature of the bone cave. As they were sorted, bone by bone, it was 

 seen first of all that they represented a very large variety of mammals 

 with some birds and possibly one or two larger reptiles. The mass 

 of the bones belonged to ungulates, but there were also a few carniv- 

 ora. Nearly all the bones, however, showed characteristic old breaks 

 and cleavings. The skulls and even the horns were all broken into 

 large pieces ; the hip bones and shoulder blades were broken much 

 and irregularly ; while the long bones, even those of the larger birds, 

 were generally broken at or near their middle, in addition to which 

 a number of the extremities of the tibia and femur were cleft in 

 two longitudinally so as to exjMse the whole cavity. There were no 

 marks of teeth on the bones, not even of the teeth of rodents, and 

 little of damage outside the main breaks. But these breaks were 

 produced, it was seen again and again, not accidentally or by the 

 teeth of animals, but l)y man ; and not by sharp cutting and cleaving 

 tools, but evidently by stone implements. 



The lesson was clear. These were the bones of animals utilized for 

 food by some native group of men, and the bones had been purposely 

 and systematically broken by these men to get at the marrow. The 

 horns were broken for the same purpose. Moreover a number of the 

 bones showed more or less the etTects of fire ; and in several instances 

 there were found two or three pieces of what was originally the same 

 bone, or again two bones proceeding plainly from the same animal. 

 The lower halves of the two humeri of a young hyena, broken in the 

 same manner as the other bones, were among the collection. 



