THE CHINA MAIL, NOVEMBER 5, 1988.
DENTIST EXTRACTED HER FROM A GRAVEL-PIT:
CLAIMS THE OLDEST BRITON
Smiling, he turned towards that Cambridge mustered the greatest brains at the British Association (unsmiling little man and shid gent- meeting to browbeat a Clapham ly:- dentist.
Five learned Fellows of the Royal Society, three Doctors of Science, -led the attack, and squabbled furi- ously over the skull of a Kentish girl who lived anything over 250,000 years ago.
"I shouldn't worry about, these details. I should be proud of what| I'd been able to do. It's a great find."
PILTDOWN CROWD IS WRONG' The audience murmured approval. Mr. Marston looked glum.
Sir Arthur Smith Woodward, who found the famous Piltdown skull in 1912, and from it built up Bri- tain's early story, was brief, a little impatient. He agreed that the new skull was most important, but scoff-
It the dentist is right, the whole of Britain's early history must be rewritten. Science will not admit that possibility. So the battle is on. As well as extracting teeth in Clapham, Alvan T. Marston picks up, fossila every week-end in aed Thames-side gravel pit, at Swans combe, near Dartford. His whole heart is in archaeology, he has been digging for five years.
To the learned men to-day he chanted:-
this
at the suggestion that young woman of. Kent could be any- thing like so old as his Piltdown man.
Oxford University's Professor W. E. LeGros Clark, brisk and business- like, was "willing to admit that "Way down upon the Swanee there may be something just a little
River.
"Tha't where I roam.. "That's where my heart is turn
ing ever.
"That's where I found my bone," Nobody smiled; this is a serious fight. But when the scientists had
exceptional about the Swanscombe skull," but said he had spent three weeks going over it with a magnify- ing glass and was absolutely "con- vinced, "on the evidence of the frag- ments that are available, that this is indistinguishable fossil skull
fired all their big guns Alvan Mars- from homo sapines."
That leaves the Piltdown man as ton was still undaunted. Clutching the plaster cast of his precious skull our oldest inhabitant. But Alvan (the original is in the Natural His-Marston,would not recant. tory Museum), his greying hair ruffled, a worried frown on his brow, he stuck out his jaw definantly and answered back again and again.
-
"Bunkum!" he said. "Bunkum! That Piltdown crowd are wrong, and I'll fight until they say so."
And, mysteriously, he told me of something else up his sleeve-a new FIGHT TO THE LAST DITCH' bone in his gravel pit which will give Miss. Swanscombe another leg "When I found this bone I let my-to stand on. self
whole pack me.
in for a of trouble," he said to
"They
think they know, JOLLY NIGHT
but I've done the work, and I'll fight to the last ditch.”
PROMISED AT K.C.C.
He believes this young woman to be the most ancient Briton we have heard about so far a girl who lived when elephants bathed in the
Saturday, November 19, has been Thames and elks ranged the Kentish selected as the date for the next Wealed stalked by hunters with dance on Kowloon Cricket Club's flint axes and dogs much like the Afghan wolf-hound.
Side by side with the skull, he found the bones of a mighty antler- ed stag, the back tooth of a rhinoceros, the tusk of an elephant. Old Father Thames had buried them. Centuries of time had laid ta pall of gravel above them..
Sir Arthur Keith, silvery-haired, rather apologetic, most famous of the learned men, looked kindly on this David among the Goliaths- of science and said:—
"I rather think Mr. Marston has made too many deductions from his -fint: You will remember Don Quixote, who thought his village- maiden sweet-heart was a princess? I rather think that with the Swans- combe skull, splendid thing as it is, Mr. Marston is inclined to ex- aggerate a bit,
"NIKS
Winter programme, and, if early reservations are any criterion, it should be a jolly night.
་
The last dance attracted over it is confidently 150 people, and believed that this number will be exceeded on the 19th, when the Band of 2nd Bn. popular Dance The Royal Scots, by kind permission of the Officer Commanding and Officers, will be in attendance from 9.30 pm. till 2 a. m.
for
Tables may be reserved parties of six or over, prices of tickets, including light refresh ments, being $2.00 Gentlemen and $1.50 Ladies,
NAVAL FUNERALS
A New Procedure
The Board of Admiralty have de- cided that at naval funerals the bugle call. "Rouse" will follow, after a short pause, the sounding of "Last Post."
Officers' salutes with the hand will be confined to the single occasion when the armed party "Present | Arms" - after fixing bayonets.
The position at the salute is to be held during the sounding of "Last Post" and "Rouse," which follow Immediately on the "Present Arms" The sounding of the "Commodore's salute" between volleys is to be dis- continued,
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