Page:Palæolithic Man and Terramara Settlements in Europe.djvu/161

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FOSSIL MAN (BRITAIN AND BELGIUM)
107

and small trochanters. The tibiae are platycnemic, i.e., unusually flattened along the antero-posterior diameter a feature which, if characteristic of any people, has been more frequently observed in Neolithic than either in modern or Palæolithic races. Upon the whole, there is nothing in the osteological characters of the Tilbury skeleton sufficiently pronounced, independent of the circumstances under which it had been found, which entitles us to relegate its original owner to any particular stage in the Prehistoric period.

Having occasion some years ago to make inquiry as to the date of upheaval of the last raised beaches represented by

Figure(s): 20

FIG. 20. Outline of Human Skull found at Tilbury. (After Owen.)

the 25-feet terraces, so well known to geologists as fringing the winding shores of the firths of central Scotland, I came to the conclusion that the process of elevation had ceased about the beginning of the Bronze Age (Proc. Roy. Soc., Edinburgh, vol. xxv., pp. 242-272, 1904). When it commenced there is little evidence to show, beyond the fact that it was "posterior to the stranding of the school of whales on the tidal shore of the shallow inland sea which then covered the Carse lands to the west of Stirling."

The only implements associated with the skeletons of these whales were perforated axe-hammers or clubs (Fig. 118), made of stag's horn, indicating the transition period between the Palæolithic and Neolithic civilisations. Contemporary with this elevation in North Britain there was a corresponding sub-