8 THE ANTIQUITY OF MAN 
trace of any object belonging to a culture later than that 
of the Neolithic age came to Hght. 
There is not any doubt in my mind that the bones 
thus discovered by Mr Bennett were those of the people 
primarily interred in this Megalithic tomb. Once chalk 
has permeated the porous texture of bones, preservation 
is secured. The Coldrum bones ring like porcelain when 
they are struck ; the tongue adheres to the freshly 
fractured surface, showing that the bones no longer 
contain animal matter. In this manner we came by the 
material which provides us, for the first time, with the 
means of forming a true picture of what the Neolithic 
people of Kent must have looked like in the flesh — the 
people whose beliefs were centred round the Megalithic 
monuments. I do not propose to weary the reader with 
the details of my examination of the bones ; they are 
already on record ; ^ all I propose here is to give in 
outline the mental picture which my investigation led 
me to form of the people. 
When 1 had arranged all the fragments, I found that 
at least twenty-two individuals were represented ; they 
were of all ages, from newly born children to old 
men and women. Unfortunately the skulls, which give 
us the surest evidence of the racial nature of a past 
people, were few and fragmentary. There were only 
five, out of a group of nine, complete enough for our 
present purpose. But a certain feature of these skulls 
throws a curious sidelight on the nature of the monument. 
In a great number of them there were present peculiarities 
in their formation which could only be accounted for by 
supposing that the people buried in the tomb were of 
one family or of nearly related families. Three of the 
nine skulls had anomalous bones set within the joinings 
or sutures of the vault (see fig. 4) ; some of the others 
showed irregularities in the manner in which the sutures 
between the skull bones became closed. 
They were people of short stature ; from the length 
of the thigh bones the stature of the men was estimated 
1 Journ. Roy. Anthrop. Insiif., 1913, vol. xliii. p. Zo. 
