The natural fracture of flint and its bearing upon rudimentary flint implements / by J. Reid Moir. The occurence of a human skeleton in a glacial deposit at Ipswich / by J. Reid Moir. Description of the Ipswich skeleton / by Arthur Keith.

  • Moir, J. Reid (James Reid), 1879-1944.
Date:
[1912]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The natural fracture of flint and its bearing upon rudimentary flint implements / by J. Reid Moir. The occurence of a human skeleton in a glacial deposit at Ipswich / by J. Reid Moir. Description of the Ipswich skeleton / by Arthur Keith. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    show the characters of the forehead; parts of both temporal bones with the joints for the mandible and fragments of the parietal and occipital bones are also present. The face and jaws are gone, but fortunately nine of the teeth were found. The Chief Characters.—From the parts thus discovered it is possible to form a fairly accurate picture of the individual to which they belonged. He was a man, about 5-ft. 10-in. in height and probably between 40 and 50 years of age. He possessed none of the features of Neanderthal man, but on the other hand manifests all those characters which belong to the modern type of man. The teeth, the forehead, the thickness of the skull, the characters of the limb bones are those of the modern type of European—with one (or perhaps two) exceptions—namely, the leg bones (tibia and fibula), and perhaps the arm bone or humerus. Only the upper part of the left humerus is preserved, but so eroded is its condition that its original form cannot be quite judged. But enough remains to show that it differed in details of shape and character from the corresponding bone in modern men. I am disposed to lay great weight on the characters of the tibia and fibula. These are exactly opposite in type to the same bones in Neolithic man. The outstanding feature of the tibia is the absence of a sharp crest or shin; this is also the case in Neanderthal man, but in shape and size the tibiae of the Ipswich and Neanderthal men belong to different types altogether. Assuming that Mr. Moir and I are right in regarding this skeleton as representative of pre- boulder clay man, then it is a most interesting fact to find that the modern type of man—with the exception of certain features of the leg bones—was evolved at this early date, for we are dealing with a period which antedates by a long interval the Mousterian period when Neanderthal man flourished in France and Belgium. I estimate from the cranial cast that the brain capacity of the Ipswich cranium was 1430 cubic centimetres. An average modern man has a cranial capacity of about 1480; a tall man, such as this, should have a certain percentage more—a little over 1500 cubic centimetres. The cranial capacity, however, varies so from individual to individual that too much stress must not be laid on the small size of the brain of the Ipswich man. The Posture of the Skeleton.—We come now to discuss an important matter—the posture of the skeleton. The position of the body at death is easier of realisation than of description. If one squats so that the buttocks rest on the heels and so that the knees are pressed against the front of the body, the main posture of this skeleton will be repre- sented. Only instead of being in the squatting posture the skeleton rests on its right side with the head bent forward so as almost to reach the knees. Then the right arm is flexed and lies beneath the body so that the right hand rests under