EARLY MAN 



It has been stated that the ridge on which lie the various gravels 

 with which we are dealing runs from south to north ; is bounded on the 

 east by a side valley of the Lark river-system, and on the west slopes down 

 to the plain of Cambridgeshire and of the Fens. This plain was obviously 

 excavated after the deposit of the gravels ; and after this excavation the 

 whole district must have gone under water, probably that of a lagoon ; 

 for a deep hollow which was made in the side of the ridge where High 

 Lodge now stands became filled with brick-earth, which during the past forty 

 years has been worked for commercial purposes. The brick-earth would 

 seem to have been of slow formation, and during this period the banks 

 of the lagoon were inhabited by a race of men who made their imple- 

 ments on the spot where they are now found, the implements being 

 subsequently buried in the slow deposit from the water of the lagoon, 

 and there they have remained to this day. That the implements are 

 lying where they were dropped by their makers and users seems clear 

 from the fact that they are as sharp and fresh as the day they were 

 made ; and having been protected from atmospheric conditions they are 

 for the most part wholly unpatinated — as black and as dull as if made 

 yesterday ; so much so that archaeologists unacquainted with the circumstances 

 have found it difficult to believe that they are not modern forgeries. This 

 view that the implements have never been moved since they dropped from 

 the hands of their makers is borne out by the fact that in addition to the 

 perfect implements there are in the brick-earth large numbers of flakes and 

 rough pieces, just as one would expect to find on the site of a workshop of 

 flint implements, all of them as sharp and as fresh and as unpatinated as 

 the implements themselves. But now comes the interesting point. These 

 implements are not ' drift ' implements. They are wholly unlike the 

 implements found in the neighbouring gravels, or in fact in any gravels. 

 On the other hand they resemble in the closest possible way the implements 

 found in such large numbers in the rock-shelter of Le Moustier in the valley 

 of the Vezere in Dordogne, which have become the prototypes for the 

 great ' Mousterian ' division of palaeolithic time. Implements of definite 

 ' Mousterian ' type have now been found in various parts of Europe and 

 elsewhere ; the latest great discovery of the kind having been in the ' Grotte- 

 du-Prince ' at Mentone, where more than 60 vertical feet of deposits of this 

 age were carefully excavated. To show the vast length of time that this 

 particular civilization must have lasted, reference need only be made to the fact 

 that in the lower strata of the ' Grotte-du-Prince ' the Mousterian implements 

 were associated with the bones of sub-tropical animals — a sub-tropical elephant 

 and rhinoceros and the hippopotamus ; whilst in the upper strata the same 

 class of implement was associated with the bones of sub-arctic animals — a 

 sub-arctic elephant the mammoth, a sub-arctic rhinoceros, and the reindeer. 

 We need not be surprised, then, that our Mousterian man at High Lodge 

 lived on the side of our ridge for a time sufficient for the level of the lagoon 

 waters gradually to rise, slowly burying the handiwork of generation after 

 generation until the brick-earths had accumulated to a depth of more, probably 

 much more, than 30ft., implements being found at all depths in the brick-earth. 



It is a curious fact that except for this rich deposit at High Lodge, the 

 Mousterian Age is practically unrepresented in England ; and the deposit 



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