CASTENEDOLO— MODERN MAN 247 
of a human skull. It was coated and impregnated by 
the clay and shells of the strata between which it lay. 
Ragazzoni examined the overlying strata — one of yellow 
sand, another of grey sand — above the clay, and could 
see no trace of a disturbance at their lines of junction. 
He searched further and found a few other cranial frag- 
ments near the same site. He took his " finds " home, 
and showed them to some of his colleagues at the 
Technical Institute. His discovery was received with 
incredulity. 
Until 1880 — twenty years after the first discovery — 
nothing further was found in the pit. In that year, 
however, a friend of Ragazzoni's — who believed in the 
first discovery — commenced to excavate in the pit about 
twenty paces from the site at which the human remains were 
found. In two months he exposed, at the same horizon, 
between strata 8 and 9, numerous and scattered fragments 
of the skeletons of two children. The fragments were 
left in situ until seen and examined by Professor 
Ragazzoni. Again the overlying strata were found intact. 
Then a further discovery was made — the skeleton of a 
woman in the contracted posture, compressed and dis- 
turbed by earth-pressure. The woman's skeleton lay 
within the clay stratum — a little over 3^ feet from the 
surface of the bank. The other human remains lay at a 
depth of 6^- feet from the top of the bank — the surface 
level of the soil. 
In 1883, Professor Sergi,^ then a rising anthropologist, 
visited Ragazzoni at Brescia and saw the human remains 
found in the Pliocene strata at Castenedolo — still covered 
by fragments of the original matrix in which they had 
been embedded. He found that the remains were those 
of people of the modern type. Two children, a man, and 
a woman were represented by the fragments, but only 
the skull of the woman was complete enough for a re- 
1 Professor Sergi has kindly supplied me with copies of the papers he 
has written on the Castenedolo remains. Sec Archivio per PAfitro/>. e 
rEtJwL, 1884, vol. xiv., No. 3. Ibid., iS86, vol. xvi., No. 3. Rivisia de 
Antropolfli^ia, 1912, vol. xvii., fas. iii. See especially his latest work, 
Le Origine Umane: Ricerche paleontologiche,l:Qx\xio. 19 13. 
