Richard Owen

“ It is true that remains of Roman magnificence are occasionally brought to light some ten feet or more beneath the present level of a city which has been successively sacked and more or less ruined by Saxon and Danish invaders, and has been a prey to subsequent conflagrations. ”

“ The existence of Mankind in what now is insular Britain, at a period which Geology teaches to have keen prior to its severance from the great Europæo-Asiatic continent by the "English" and "German" channels or seas, when our present Thames bore a larger stream of water probably to join some greater continental river, has been evidenced by the discovery of stone implements and weapons of the rude manufacture which has suggested the term "palæolithic" for such tools and the men who fashioned them. ”

“ The muscles known as "gluteus maximus" in man are those that mainly move or work the trunk upon the legs, and, reciprocally, the legs upon the trunk. The unusual addition of insertional leverage to these muscles in the skeleton under description bespeaks a power and frequency of locomotion, and especially of actions of trunk and of upper limbs, requiring an adequate support and fulcrum in the lower limbs. ”

“ Corresponding bones of a recent human skeleton accompanied the exhumed remains. The following is Dr. Flight’s "Report":—
"The bone is considerably altered in appearance and character; it is of a fine dark brown colour, and is readily reduced to a powder in an iron mortar. When heated, water and only oily matter are evolved, and it turns black or nearly so; treated with soda-lime, a large quantity of ammonia is given off. The density of the bone is 2⋅138, that of the recent tibia was found to be 1⋅985. ”

“ Portions of decayed blackened wood were found in the uppermost part of the sandy stratum, 9; and this stratum has been excavated to a depth of 10 feet since the discovery of the skeleton, and been found to rest upon the gravel known as "ballast" ("Section," no. 10) .
The oldest known tool fashioned by human hands—the unpolished adze of flint—is, so far as I can learn, the sole evidence of a British palæolithic riverside man which has yet been recorded, at least on the Thames’ banks, including the Tilbury locality whence the subject of the present tract was exhumed. ”

“ Smaller Mammals, such as rhinoceros, horse, bison, megaceros-deer, primigenial ox, lion, bear, hyæna, wolf—remains of all which I have received from formations on the banks of the Thames, corresponding with, or analogous to, those at Tilbury—were objects of exciting chase or trap-capture, doubtless attended with frequent combat. ”

“ Let any equal mind, receptive of evidence to be judged on its own, exclusive, merits, without prepossessing bias, attempt to conceive the difference between the recorded lapse of time since the actual surface was first trod by a Roman soldier and the lapse of unrecorded time since the sandy soil, eight strata and thirty feet lower down, was trod by the man whose osteological characters are given above. ”

“ Our most experienced Antiquaries are "at one" in the conclusion that these rudely fortified structures were "pre-Roman"; but the period of the antecedent existence of such ancient Britons, who have left evidences in their entrenchments of cooking-fires as well as tools, remains conjectural. It can hardly give them better claim to a Palæolithic date than may be attached to the Tilbury skeleton. ”

“ But no bodily evidence of the fabricators of the Palæolithic tools rewarded this persevering series of researches.
"Human bones and teeth I have never been able to light on. The reasons why human bones are not found amongst the fossils of mammoth, horse, bison, and reindeer are many. Human bones are very liable to decay; few bones so small as human bones are ever found. ”

“ There is no labourer at the true and firm foundations of zoology who would more honestly welcome unquestionable evidences of such transitional forms revealed by those Tertiary formations than myself.
The testimony of the Abbé Bourgeois was but coolly received by those who might have been expected most warmly to welcome it, when he pronounced a formation in which flint tools had been found as of Miocene age. Such evidence was superfluous to the Transmutationist [20] . ”

“ The mammals which had been cooked for food, every bone of which, containing marrow, had such medullary cavities exposed, included those of reindeer, bouquetin, chamois, primigenial ox, wild horse, besides birds and river-fish, those of the reindeer being by far the most abundant. ”

“ On the inner surface of the occipital bone the fossae for the hind lobe of the cerebrum and that for the cerebellum are well marked; but there is no depression answering to that noted as the "torcular Herophili" in modern European skulls.
The contraction and slope of the forehead and the prominence of the frontal sinuses are matched by low Australian and Andamanese skulls; but I have not found in these so definite a channel between the prominences. The depression between the frontal and nasal bones is nearly the same; but the nasals are narrower in the Australian skulls compared. ”

“ Smith repeats, "when we shall know much more of Palæolithic men than we now know. At present we only know that such men once existed, and made weapons and tools of stone during long periods of time." "Up to the present time there has not been a fragment of man's bony fabric that can with positive certainty be referred to a man of the River-Drift (p. 142) . "It must be understood that I do not refer to men of the Caves, but to the far older tribes who lived on the river-margins and others who lived before the present rivers flowed." ”

“ Below the incisors the origin of the "levator menti" muscle is neatly defined by a low and narrow ridge. From the above details it may be inferred that the individual, though aged, was robust, and worked the jaw strongly in mastication.
In the cranial part of the skeleton the indications of strong muscular characters (Plate III. fig. 3) contrast with the low cerebral ones (ib. fig. 1) , and like indications of brute force are given by the rest of the skeleton.
In the best-preserved humerus the ridge from the ectotuberosity subsides upon the middle third of the shaft ”

“ The general movement of subsidence being resumed, no. 8 is overflowed by waters which leave upon it nearly two feet of pure mud, no. 7. Then a retreat of the overflowing waters with exposure of the surface allows of successive growths and decadence of the plants constituting peat, of which the stratum no. 6, nearly four feet thick, exclusively consists. I need hardly remark that the species of Sphagnum, a genus which contributes most to bog-formations, are mosses that grow in air; they send their roots most abundantly in swampy, clayey soils. ”

“ Not only were the molars wanting, but their sockets had been absorbed and the tract of jaw which they had occupied was reduced to the diminished vertical diameter characteristic of the close of active life. More or less of the sockets of the two premolars, the canine, and the two incisors of the left ramus remained, indicative of such teeth not having been shed.
It exemplifies the pains taken to discover whatever parts of the skeleton had been dispersed in the excavation of their bed, that three teeth were found fitting the sockets at the fore part of the mandible (ib. i, c, p) . ”

“ The prehistoric existence of Mankind, generically and specifically identical with those now living has been confirmed by his remains found in caves and by Ins tools of flint and bone found there and elsewhere. ”

“ On the inner surface of the frontal the "sulcus longitudinalis" is feebly and irregularly indicated where the inner table begins to project before being continued into a strongly developed "frontal crest," which terminates at its forward subsidence in a small "foramen cæcum." ”