FURTHER EXAMPLES 
93 
having excavated it, again to fill it up to the very roof, 
is little less than absurd." With every word of which, 1 
am sure, the reader will agree. Nor will he more easily 
believe that Neolithic man would take the labour to cut 
through the thick stalagmitic floors of such caves to 
bury his dead in a stratum with extinct animals and 
Palaeolithic flints, and take pains to cover up the date of 
his deed in order to deceive his cave-hunting descendants. 
No human remains were found at Wookey Hole. To 
reach the cave which disclosed the remains of Palaeolithic 
man himself, we have to follow the Axe along the 
southern foot of the Mendips until it guides us to 
the village of Cheddar, halfway between Wells and the 
coast. The caves at Ch^d^iar have been famous for a 
long time, and, with the museum attached to them, form 
a popular resort for summer visitors. The proprietor, 
Mr R. C. Gough, began the excavation of a " new " cave 
in 1892. In the debris at the entrance were found, as at 
Wookey Hole, traces of all the cultures which succeeded 
the Neolithic period. The floor of the cave had the 
usual structure — a superficial stratum of recent deposit 
2 to 4 feet thick. Then followed a layer of stalagmite, 
5 to 12 inches (10 to 25 cm.) thick. Beneath the 
stalagmite lay a stratum of red cave earth, 6 to 8 feet in 
depth, containing abundant remains of extinct Pleistocene 
animals. There were also found the hearths, the flint and 
bone work of, not the Aurignacian, but — as Mr H. N. 
Davies was the first to recognise — a later Palaeolithic 
period, the Magdalenian, the culture found in its re- 
presentative form~in the station of La Madeleine in the 
ravine of the lower Vezere, France. 
In December 1903, Mr Gough, to secure better 
drainage for the central chamber of the cave, began to 
open up a side recess or fissure. It was filled with the 
usual red cave earth and capped by a layer of stalagmite. 
Under the stalagmite, and embedded in the cave earth 
to a depth of i^ feet ('450 m.), he exposed a human 
skeleton, lying back down, and the thighs partly drawn 
upwards, as if it had been placed in the partially con- 
