preview

Kent Cavern

Satisfactory Essays

entrance to Kents Cavern. While thus engaged he exposed a human skull which was recovered from fragments. Apparently the skull had been laid in a fissure or recess of the rock which in the course of time had become build up am buried beneath the debris which had fallen from the face of the cliff. Nothing was found with the skull to assist the archaeologist in assigning a date to its in entombmentbut,at the same level,shells ofmolluscs off to species whichMr. A. S. Kennard has identified as belonging to a past-the pleistone-period. The fragments of the skull are covered with a fine wash of red cave-earth ; when a fragment is broken, the porous parts of the fractured surface are stained a pinkish red while the solid outer and inner layers have the colour and somewhat consistency of chalk. And The condition of the bone fragments is such as is usually met with in skulls found in or under this stalagmitic floor but the …show more content…

Te delicate operation of reconstruction was carried out byMr. E. Smith, the parts which contain the brain being successfully assembled, all save the hinder part of the head, a defeat which did not prevent exact estimates being formed as to the original shape and size of the skull. Fortunately too, it was possible to restore the greater part of the face. The lower jaw and part of the nose are missing-but enough has been preserved to give an exact picture of the original features of the face.

When the reconstruction was effected it was at once seen that the Kents Cavern skull was of exactly the same type as the remarkable skulls discovered four years ago by the Spelaeological Society of the University of Bristol in and under the stalagmitic floor of the Aveline’s Hole, a limestone cave in the

Get Access