A MAN OF THE CHELLEAN PERIOD 185 
skeleton are found, with all the parts in close proximity, 
it is almost certain that the remains have not been 
entombed by Nature, but by the hand of man. When 
Mr Newton read his paper before the Geological Society, 
Sir John Evans, who took part in the discussion which 
followed, said that " the occurrence of a nearly perfect 
skeleton was suggestive of an interment," and " ventured 
to maintain an attitude of doubt regarding the antiquity 
of the remains." At that time, twenty-six years ago, 
the custom of burial was supposed to have been intro- 
duced at a comparatively late stage of human evolution. 
Since then, the discoveries in France have revealed 
deliberate burials as long ago as the Mousterian and 
Aurignacian periods. If we accept the discovery at 
Galley Hill as authentic, we must also accept the great 
antiquity of the human custom of burying the dead. 
We hardly do justice to the men who shaped the 
Chellean weapons if we hold them incapable of showing 
respect for their dead. Certain it is that the remains 
found at Galley Hill are not those of a low type of man. 
In size, and in the richness of its convolutions, the brain 
of the Galley Hill man does not fall short of the average 
man of to-day. 
We must admit, then, that a burial had been made at 
Galley Hill — but when ? It was before the Thames had 
laid down the final series of deposits in the 100-foot 
terrace. Mr Elliott, Mr Heys, and Jack Allsop saw that 
the overlying, stratified deposits were unbroken. They 
showed no trace of having been broken by a burial made 
from the present land surface. As at Hailing, we must 
search for an old land surface, such as may be repre- 
sented in the Barnfield pit by the stratum of gravel, 
containing implements of the Chellean type, and lying 
over the lower stratum of loam — the one in which the 
human remains were apparently embedded. Weighing 
all the evidence, we are forced to the conclusion that 
the Galley Hill skeleton represents a man of the 
Chellean period, buried when the lower gravel formed 
a land surface. The land surface of Chellean times 
