38 THE ANTIQUITY OF MAN 
front. The skull is that of a man. Its maximum length 
is 196 mm., somewhat longer than is usually the case in 
the river-bed type. The height of the vault is 116 mm. 
above the ear-holes. In all its markings it is modern in 
shape and size. There are thousands of men in England 
to-day with skulls of the same size and form. 
We owe many of the discoveries of ancient man to 
industrial enterprises. The mining operations of the 
Cornish engineers brought them face to face with the 
records of the Neolithic period ; house-builders revealed 
the submerged forest and Neolithic flints in the foundations 
of St Helier's ; the Tilbury man came to light because 
deep docks were needed for great steamships. Along 
the south coast of Wales, which forms the northern 
shore of the Bristol Channel, the dock engineer has 
brought traces of the submerged forest and of Neolithic 
man to the light of day. It is to this region we are now 
directing our steps. At various points along the coast 
of South Wales, as on the opposite or southern side of 
the Bristol Channel, remnants of the submerged forest 
are exposed when the tide is low, especially after a storm. 
At various points along the coast, docks have been cut 
and the land surfaces of Neolithic times exposed. There 
seems to be no doubt that subsidence has been in 
progress along this coast since the Roman period. Major 
Thomas Gray has supplied me with evidence that the 
land has sunk at least 8 feet, perhaps more, since the 
Roman occupation — quite as much as at Tilbury and 
Rochester on the east side of England. Four years ago, 
Dr Arnalt Jones presented to the museum of the Royal 
College of Surgeons the frontal part of a skull which was 
found when docks were being made at Aberavon on the 
South Welsh coast, a few miles east of Swansea. This 
fragment came from a submerged layer of peat, ^ide by 
side with it was the pelvis of an Irish elk, which became 
extinct in England before the end of the Neolithic period. 
The layer of peat, 2 J feet thick, lay at a depth of 15 feet, 
beneath strata of sand and clay. The peat may represent 
the submerged-forest zone, or one of the later land 
