MAN, HIS ENVIRONMENT AND HIS ART 



15 



Across the Chaniu'l in the Ousc valley, at Piltdown, Fletching 

 (Sussex), tliei'c has recently come to light a flint-bearing gravel with a 

 remarkable association of liuman osseous and cultural remains with 

 those of a Pliocene and Quaternary fauna (Pliocene elephant, Masto- 

 don, Hippopotamus, Cervus elaphus, beaver, horse). The gravel bed is 

 80 feet above and a mile removed from the present bed of the Ouse. 

 The physiographic features of this region have suffered no appreciable 

 change since Roman times, hence the relation of the present Ouse bed 

 to the one that existed when the Piltdown gravels were deposited indi- 

 cates a great antiquity for the latter. All the relics in it are certainly 



Fig. 6. Eoanthropus daivsoni. (J nat. size.) After Dawson and Woodward. 

 0. J. G. 8., LXIX., 141, 1913. 



as old as the deposit. All or some may be older. The somatic char- 

 acters of the human skull (Fig. 6), especially the lower jaw, postulate 

 great antiquit}', as does the nature of the rude flint implements. That 

 the latter were found in association with a very primitive human type 

 would seem to give such implements a standing hitherto denied them 

 by some authorities ; unless it can be proved that they were derived from 

 a deposit antedating the one which originally contained the human 

 remains. Their pedigree was needed in order to make industrial gene- 

 alogy complete, just as the skull itself was needed to fill a gap in man^s 

 physical evolution. It remains for the geologists to determine whether 

 in Piltdown the prehistorian's " Eosetta stone " has at last been found. 

 Perhaps they will be able to tell us also whether a channel separated the 

 man of Piltdown from his contemporaries in the near-by valley of the 

 Somme. The present channel dates from the very close of the paleo- 

 lithic period. That there was a channel in early paleolithic times is 



