506 
their proper position one to the other. It 
rested on its right side with the head bent for- 
ward, so as almost to reach the knees. .The 
right arm was flexed beneath the body, the 
right hand resting under the right leg. The 
left arm was even more acutely flexed, with 
the elbow gripped between the knees and the 
left hand turned against the left shoulder. 
That the position of the Ipswich skeleton re- 
sembled somewhat the contracted posture so 
common to neolithic burials was recognized 
by Professor Keith, who believes, however, that 
this position does not necessarily mean 
burial; in other words, that it could have been 
assumed by the body at death without the 
intervention of intentional forces. 
The right side of the skeleton in contact 
with the glacial sands was much better pre- 
served than the left. The latter being em- 
bedded in the boulder clay, was most sub- 
jected to the destructive effects of roots as 
well as the action of the clay itself. The roots 
even penetrated the glacial sands and their 
effects on the skull and pelvis were marked. 
The corroding effects of the boulder clay 
(sandy, chalky loam) played havoe with the 
soft spongy portions of the skeleton, which 
are now represented by dense clay with here 
and there fragments of bone. The only com- 
plete bones recovered were those of the right 
hand. 
The skeleton is that of a man about five 
feet ten inches in height and forty to fifty 
years of age. In addition to the complete 
brain cast (of boulder clay) there remain a 
“fragment of the frontal bone sufficient to 
show the characters of the forehead, parts of 
both temporal bones, with the joints of the 
mandible, and fragments of the parietal and 
occipital bones.”* Nine of the teeth were re- 
covered; these differ in no way from the teeth 
of neolithic man. Judging from the skull 
fragments and the brain cast, Keith concludes 
that the head did not differ essentially from 
that of modern Europeans except that the 
From the report of an ‘‘inquest’’ in Ipswich 
February 21, which according to Mr. Moir gives 
‘fa very good account of the human remains’’ he 
had found. 
SCIENCE 
[N.S. Vou. XXXV. No. 900 
maximum width of the skull is situated 
rather far back, recalling in this respect alone 
the Neanderthal race. With the exception of 
the lower leg bones (tibia and fibula) and the 
upper arm bone or humerus, the limb bones 
are of the modern European type. The tibia 
lacks the sharp anterior crest or shin of mod- 
ern man, and in this suggests the Neanderthal 
type, but not in respect to size and general 
shape. 
If the skeleton does not represent a burial 
and if the chalky sandy loam at this point is 
a part of the original mantel of boulder clay, 
then the man of Ipswich is the earliest yet 
found with the exception of Homo heidel- 
bergensis (Pithecanthropus not being consid- 
ered as Homo). It would correspond to the 
latest eolithic horizon, the so-called Mes- 
vinian, and would thus be somewhat older 
than the man of Galley Hill, provided the 
latter is properly dated. But as I pointed out 
in a recent article’ there is room for doubt as 
to the age of the Galley Hill skeleton. From 
the foregoing account it would seem that the age 
of the Ipswich skeleton is also still an open 
question. The importance of having expert 
witnesses present at the disinterment in discov- 
eries of this class was perhaps never better ex- 
emplified than at Galley Hill and Ipswich. 
Their absence will, it is feared, always leave the 
shadow of a doubt as to the age of the skeletons 
in question; and doubt is a serious handicap 
in matters of such scientific import. If both 
these specimens are correctly dated, then 
there lived as contemporaries in Europe for a 
long space of time two somatologically dis- 
tinet races—a primitive type represented by 
the Mauer mandible, Neandertal, Spy, Cha- 
pelle-aux-Saints, La Quina, etce.; and a mod- 
ern type represented by Ipswich, Galley Hill, 
and possibly Bury St. Edmunds. This is by 
no means impossible, in fact might have been 
the case. Hither Ipswich or Galley Hill would 
alone be sufficient to prove it so, if all doubt 
as to age were removed. Until the full re- 
ports of Professor Keith, Mr. Moir, and the 
three geologists have been published, final 
2¢“Somatology and Man’s Antiquity,’’ Records 
of the Past, X., 329, November—December, 1911. 
