136 



EARLY MAN IN BRITAIN. 



[CHAP. vi. 



Evidence of the Presence of Man. 



Man is proved to have belonged to this fauna by 

 the discovery, in 1872, in my presence, of a flint flake 



in the lower brick-earths at 

 Crayford, by the Eev. Os- 

 mond Fisher. 1 It was in situ 

 in No. 2 of Fig. 31, in the 

 same stratum of gravel in 

 which I discovered the skull 

 of the musk-bull in 1866, 

 now preserved in the Museum 

 of the Geological Survey. 

 Subsequently, in 1876, a 

 second implement 2 was found 

 in the same series of beds at 

 Erith, also in situ, at a point 

 about two inches above the 

 shell-band in the pits. It is 

 a roughly-chipped flake, con- 

 siderably worn by use (Fig. 

 27). It may be remarked 

 that this form of cutting im- 

 plement, so abundant, as we* 

 shall see, in the late Pleis- 

 tocene age, was used also in 

 the Neolithic and Bronze 

 ages, ultimately being employed within the Historic 

 period by the Egyptians and by the Komanised Britons 

 of Sussex and Kent, in whose tombs it was placed from 



1 Geol. Mag., 1872, p. 268. 



Messrs. Cheadle and Woodward, Proceed. West London Scientific Associ- 

 ation, Sept. 1876, "Notes on Pleistocene Deposits at Crayford and Erith." 



FIG. 27. Flint flake, Lower Brick- 

 earths, Erith, |. 



