302 THE ANTIQUITY OF MAN 
while the upper and looser strata he regards as having 
been disturbed and redeposited at a later date. 
As regards these more highly worked implements from 
the Piltdown gravel, there is room for a difference of 
opinion. No one has a better right to give an expert 
judgment on such implements than Mr J. Reid Moir. 
The result of a minute examination of the better 
worked flints from Piltdown led him to the following 
conclusions : — 
" These later and more Palaeolithic-looking specimens 
do not, however, appear to me to be of such definite 
forms as to be classifiable. They most certainly do not 
agree with the usual definition of a Chelles implement ; 
and by the large surface of fracture and irregularity of 
the secondary flaking 1 would place them in a' period 
preceding the Chelles phase. In fact, I have myself 
found implements very similar to these in deposits 
which, without doubt, considerably predate those con- 
taining the Chelles type. I therefore consider that, 
as these pre-Chellean implements are the latest con- 
stituents contained in the Piltdown gravel, the deposit 
must be very ancient. There is also no doubt that 
a very long period intervened between the time when 
the Eolithic implements and the later or pre-Chellean 
type were made. This intermediate period is apparently 
not represented by implements of the Piltdown gravel." 
We have thus evidence from two independent sources 
that the Piltdown gravel pockets contain animal remains 
and human artifacts of two different ages. The bottom 
layer, with its animal remains and eoliths, is apparently 
of Pliocene date ; the overlying beds belong to about 
the commencement of the middle third of the succeeding 
period — the Pleistocene.-^ 
1 In the summer of 1914 Mr Dawson made another remarkable dis- 
covery at Piltdown. He found a fossilised slab-like piece of an elephant's 
femur, showing the most indubitable evidence of having been worked into 
shape by human hands. It was found in the spoil-heaps and probably 
came from the upper layer of gravel, and may therefore be regarded as pre- 
Chellean in date. Until Mr Dawson's discovery we had supposed that 
man did not begin to fashion implements in bone until the Mousterian 
period. 
