V.—On the Discovery of Human Bones and Ornaments in a Cave in the Great Ormes Head

Abstract

A Cave in the south escarpment of the Great Ormes Head has been in gradual processof exploration by a person named Kendrick. In its silt and breccia he has discovered fragments of human skeletons, indicating by their dimensions that the individuals to whom they belonged were about five feet six inches in height. Some of their tibiæ are still to be seen imbedded in situ. There has also been found a considerable quantity of swine's teeth, each marked on the fang with fromfour to six transverse lines, and perforated at the extremity with a hole throughwhich ran probably a tendon of a reindeer or some other ligament stringing them together as a necklace. There is a similar one, composed of human teeth, in the Christie Collection in the British Museum, worn by the inhabitants of the Solomon Islands. From the same cave deposit there have been extracted several bears' teeth, with a hole in each of them for their suspension as ear-rings, and two lower equine jaws with the enamel of the four incisors highly polished, and with zigzag marks on the surfaceof the maxillary bone. These were probably hung also from the necks of the cave-men as ornaments. The wholecavern, or a portion of it, has been considered to have formed a burial-place for someIberian tribe; but the careless and irreverent manner in which the dead in it appear tohave been disposed of seems to indicate that it might have been the habitation of a raceof cave-men akin to the Eskimos, whom Professor Boyd Dawkins, in his“Early Man in Britain,” describes as so indifferent to the sepulture of their deceased relatives that they sometimes cover up their bodies with snow and leave them to be eaten by dogs or foxes.The cave, which contains a natural reservoir of water, has only been partially excavated, and further researches seem most desirable, as they might lead to the finding of very important relics of its original inhabitants, as well as settleany doubts which may have arisen as to the accuracy of the present explorer's statement, on which the truth of the discovery of the above-mentioned remains in that particular cave rests.