174 THE ANTIQUITY OF MAN 
from the weathered, rounded edges of the specimen, 
that only a fragment had been present in the pit ; the 
workmen had not detached it from a complete skull. It 
may have been the stray part of a skull, lying on the 
surface of the land in Acheulean times, and washed, with 
other surface deposits, into the pit. At the present time 
the Lark is lOO feet below the level of the pits. 
Unfortunately, the fragment is not sufficient to permit 
one to reconstruct the original skull with any degree of 
certainty. A short time ago ^ an opportunity was given 
me of making a minute examination of this fragment of 
a human skull. From the appended illustrations the 
extent of the fragment will be seen. The upper two- 
thirds of the frontal bone, and about the anterior third 
of the right and left parietal bones are preserved. In 
attempting to reconstruct the original, I first searched for 
an English skull showing, in the fronto-parietal region, 
the same form and proportion of parts, the same kind of 
sutural lines between the bones. Its prototype I found 
in a skull obtained from a gravel deposit in the east 
end of London — of uncertain antiquity. I next tried to 
find a counterpart for it amongst all known examples 
of Neanderthal skulls. The male crania, such as the 
Neanderthal calvaria itself, the specimens from Spy or 
from sites in France, were altogether different. The 
only crania, presumably Neanderthal in nature, which 
at all resembled the Bury St Edmunds specimen were 
those fragmentary skulls of women and children found 
at Krapina. In none of those, however, was the sharp, 
frontal bend present which is to be seen in the upper 
region of the forehead of the Bury St Edmunds fragment. 
The frontal bone, at this bend, is remarkably thin — only 
3-6 mm. ; I cannot believe that on such a forehead great 
simian eyebrow ridges were implanted. In the upper 
part of the frontal bone, and in the parietals, the bones 
thicken to the moderate dimensions of 6 to 8 mm. The 
characters, so far as we have examined them, clearly 
indicate a person with a head of the modern type. 
1 'Se.&Jonrn. Anat. and Physiol.^ 1913, vol. xlvi. p. 7^. 
