Abstract
THE question of the brain capacity of the Piltdown and other fossil skulls must be decided bv anatomists; but a sidelight may be thrown on the subject of the intelligence of early man by a consideration of the works of which he was capable. The most indestructible of these, and consequently the most frequently referred to, are worked flints. Upon their testimony Mr. Moir, and those who agree with him, would carry man's work back to the Pliocene period of the Suffolk Crag. Mr. Moir kindly allowed me to see a few of his specimens, and I am inclined to think that some of them show artificial chipping. The deposit in which the Piltdown skull was found is said to be early Pleistocene. Have we any indication of man's work between this and the Crag period? In my opinion we have. I refer to the remarkable trench at Dewlish, Dorset,1 which before it was excavated contained abundant remains of Elephas meridionalis and no other fossils, though Mr. Grist has found eoliths.2 It is difficult to account for the formation of I this peculiar trench in chalk by any natural process. Mr. Clement Reid, who spent four days to examine it, tells us that “the fissuie”, or rather trough, ended abruptly without any trace of a continuing joint. It was not a fault, for the lines of flint nodules corresponded on each side.3 Mr. Reid, at the British Association at Cambridge, described the termination of the trench as “apse-like.” It opened out diagonally at one end on to the steep slope of the side of a valley. It was 103 ft. long and 12 ft. deep The width, as the photographs show, was not quite uniform, and Mr. Reid said that in the narrow place he could just get along. It is remarkable that here the walls approach from each side—a feature apparently incompatible with any natural causation. After the trench had been refilled, I met with a description and photograph of a pitfall for elephants in Africa; and that led me to believe that this trench was artificial, and dug out for the same purpose.
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FISHER, O. The Elephant Trench at Dewlish—Was it Dug?. Nature 92, 6 (1913). https://doi.org/10.1038/092006b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/092006b0
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