The contracted attitude of the skeleton, and our familiarity of this as a feature of neolithic interments, taken together with the fact that the skeleton does not differ essentially from such as occur in interments of that antiquity, are points in favour of the neolithic age of the specimen. On the other hand, Mr Moir would urge that man certainly existed in an age previous to the deposition of the boulder-clay; that the implements discovered in that stratum support this claim; that the recent discovery of the bones of a mammoth on the same horizon (though not in the immediate vicinity) provides further support; that the state of mineralisation of the bones was the same in both cases, and that it is at least significant that they should be found on strata shewn (by other evidence) to have once formed a ‘land-surface.’
On the whole then, the view adopted here is, that the onus of proof rests at present rather with those who, rejecting these claims to the greater antiquity of this skeleton, assign it to a far later date than that to which even the overlying Boulder-clay is referred. And, so far as the literature is at present available, the rejection does not seem to have been achieved with a convincing amount of certainty.
It is to be remarked, finally, that this discovery is entirely distinct from those made previously by Mr Moir in the deposits beneath the Red Crag of Suffolk, with which his name has become associated.
Fig. 29. Human skeleton found beneath Boulder-clay near Ipswich in 1911. (From the drawing prepared by Professor Keith, and published in the East Anglian Daily Times. Reproduced with permission.)
REFERENCES TO LITERATURE
CHAPTER I