A NEOLITHIC COMMUNITY OF KENT 13 
not meet edge to edge as in primitive races ; like the 
blades of scissors, they overlap, the lower passing behind 
the upper. In the Neolithic people all these modern 
characters are absent. Abscesses or gumboils at the roots 
of the deeply ground teeth, however, were common ; 
but there is not a single carious tooth to be seen in the 
Coldrum . collection. The teeth are regular in their 
arrangement, the palates were well formed, but in actual 
size the teeth possess the same dimensions as those of 
modern English people. All these changes, which are 
appearing in the teeth and jaws of modern British people, 
arise, we suppose, from the soft nature of our modern 
diet. We believe that were modern men to resume a 
Neolithic diet their teeth and palates would again be 
moulded in the ancient manner. 
It is not only in face and mouth that well-marked 
changes can be recognised. The bones of the lower 
extremities of Neolithic people were shaped in a different 
mould. The upper parts of the shafts of the Coldrum 
thigh bones are flattened in their upper parts, as if they had 
been compressed from front to back ; the bones of the leg 
or shin are much more flattened from side to side, and the 
bones which form the ankle and foot are shorter, stouter, 
and show more extensive joint surfaces — evidence of 
freer movement. We cannot explain the disappearance 
of these characters. Perhaps the modern conditions under 
which we live— our clothing, our boots, our roads and 
streets — have brought about a remoulding of the lower 
limbs. The solution of those problems awaits further 
investigation. In the meantime we merely note the fact 
that the men of Kent do differ in certain bodily features 
from their predecessors of four thousand years ago. 
Time and environment appear to have worked certain 
changes in the structure of the human body. 
The Neolithic men of Kent were thus of short stature,' 
1 The standard article on the stature of prehistoric man is that by 
Prof. Karl Pearson in the Philosophical Transactions, 1898, vol. cxcn. 
p. 169. The stature of the modern Englishman he estimates at 1700 mm. 
The mean of the three Coldrum men I have calculated to have been 1645 
mm. — 2 inches less. 
