MOUSTERIAN PERIOD 103 
buildings. The scene of our search for the records 
of his predecessor — Mousterian man — lies also in the 
Thames valley, on the south bank of the river, ten or 
twelve miles below London. In this region the North 
Downs invade the valley of the Thames, exposing their 
flanks to the enterprise of the makers of cement who have 
attacked them from the strips of flat land bordering the 
river. We may complain of the pestilence of smoke 
with which these manufacturers — both of brick and 
cement — fill the valley below London, but as students 
of ancient man we are deeply indebted to them. Without 
them, we should never have known that in the stretch of 
bank which faces the full tide of traffic on the Thames, 
early man has left his records more abundantly than in 
almost any other part of the world. The manufacturer 
has exposed the ancient work-floors and the scattered stone 
implements, but the recognition of their nature and 
significance has been the work of an army of voluntary 
students and collectors who, in a brief history like this, 
scarcely receive the mention their labours have well 
earned. 
The records of the Mousterian period — the one which 
is to engage us in this chapter — lie in this stretch on the 
south side of the Thames valley, especially in a side recess 
where the Darenth, breaking through the North Downs 
from the Weald of Kent, receives a tributary — the Cray — 
and joins the Thames (see fig. ^6, p. 161). On the 
western or London side of the Darenth estuary have been 
deposited the Crayford brick earths, rising 60 feet (18 m.) 
above the level of the river. Those brick earths, deposits 
of the ancient Thames in times of flood, have been studied 
by many men, but the authorities who are to be our chief 
guides are two in number : firstly, Messrs Hinton and 
Kennard,^ and secondly, Mr R. H. Chandler.- In fig. 37, 
I have combined the diagrams those authorities have 
drawn embodying observations which they have made 
at Crayford. We see, in the first place, the submerged 
Neolithic surface, with the horizon of Tilbury man 
' See reference, p. 107. 2 See reference, p. 105. 
