Swanscombe Skull Site or Swanscombe Heritage Park is a geological Site of Special Scientific Interest in Swanscombe in north-west Kent, England. It contains two

Geological Conservation Review The Geological Conservation Review (GCR) is produced by the UK's Joint Nature Conservation Committee and is designed to identify those sites of national and international importance needed to show all the key scientific elements of the geological ...

sites and a National Nature Reserve. The park lies in a former gravel quarry, Barnfield Pit. Franks HouseDSCF7155

The area was already known for the finds of numerous

Palaeolithic The Paleolithic or Palaeolithic (), also called the Old Stone Age (from Greek: παλαιός ''palaios'', "old" and λίθος '' lithos'', "stone"), is a period in human prehistory that is distinguished by the original development of stone to ...

-era

handaxe A hand axe (or handaxe or Acheulean hand axe) is a prehistoric stone tool with two faces that is the longest-used tool in human history, yet there is no academic consensus on what they were used for. It is made from stone, usually flint or cher ...

s—mostly

Acheulean Acheulean (; also Acheulian and Mode II), from the French ''acheuléen'' after the type site of Saint-Acheul, is an archaeological industry of stone tool manufacture characterized by the distinctive oval and pear-shaped "hand axes" associated ...

and

Clactonian The Clactonian is the name given by archaeologists to an industry of European flint tool manufacture that dates to the early part of the interglacial period known as the Hoxnian, the Mindel- Riss or the Holstein stages (c. 400,000 years ago). C ...

artifacts, some as much as 400,000 years old—when in 1935/1936 work at Barnfield Pit uncovered two fossilised skull fragments. These fragments came to be known as the remains of Swanscombe Man but were later found to have belonged to a young woman. The Swanscombe skull has been identified as early

Neanderthal Neanderthals (, also ''Homo neanderthalensis'' and erroneously ''Homo sapiens neanderthalensis''), also written as Neandertals, are an extinct species or subspecies of archaic humans who lived in Eurasia until about 40,000 years ago. While the ...

or pre-Neanderthal, dating to the

Hoxnian Interglacial __NOTOC__ The Hoxnian Stage was a middle Pleistocene stage (Pleistocene from million to 11,700 years BP) of the geological history of the British Isles. It was an interglacial which preceded the Wolstonian Stage and followed the Anglian Stage. I ...

around 400,000 years ago. The skull fragments were found in the lower middle terrace gravels at a depth of almost 8 metres. They were found by Alvan T. Marston, an amateur archaeologist who visited the pit between quarrying operations to search for flint tools. A third fragment from the same skull was found in 1955 by Bertram and John Wymer. Swanscombe is one of only two sites in Britain that have yielded Lower Paleolithic human fossils, the other being

Boxgrove Quarry Eartham Pit is an internationally important archaeological site north-east of Boxgrove in West Sussex with findings that date to the Lower Palaeolithic. The oldest human remains in Britain have been discovered on the site, fossils of ''Homo heid ...

, West Sussex, where 500,000-year-old leg bones and teeth (" Boxgrove Man") have been found. Further excavations, carried out between 1968 and 1972 by Dr John d'Arcy Waechter, uncovered more animal bone and flint tools and established the extent of the former shoreline on which the bones were found. Most of the bone finds are now in the

Natural History Museum A natural history museum or museum of natural history is a scientific institution with natural history collections that include current and historical records of animals, plants, fungi, ecosystems, geology, paleontology, climatology, and more. ...

in London, with the stone finds at the

British Museum The British Museum is a public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is among the largest and most comprehensive in existence. It docum ...

. The other key paleolithic sites in the UK are

Happisburgh Happisburgh () is a village civil parish in the English county of Norfolk. The village is on the coast, to the east of a north–south road, the B1159 from Bacton on the coast to Stalham. It is a nucleated village. The nearest substantial to ...

Pakefield Pakefield is a suburb of the town of Lowestoft in the north of the English county of Suffolk. It is located around south of the centre of the town. In 1931 the parish had a population of 1774. Pakefield has boundaries with Carlton Colville and ...

Pontnewydd Pontnewydd is a suburb of Cwmbran in the county borough of Torfaen, south-east Wales. It should not be confused with Pontnewynydd in nearby Pontypool. An 18th century settlement within the historical parish of Llanfrechfa Upper, Pontnewydd bec ...

Kents Cavern Kents Cavern is a cave system in Torquay, Devon, England. It is notable for its archaeological and geological features. The cave system is open to the public and has been a geological Site of Special Scientific Interest since 1952 and a Schedule ...

, Paviland and

Gough's Cave Gough's Cave ( ) is located in Cheddar Gorge on the Mendip Hills, in Cheddar, Somerset, England. The cave is deep and is long, and contains a variety of large chambers and rock formations. It contains the Cheddar Yeo, the largest underground ...

References

External links

* {{Coord, 51, 26, 44.12, N, 0, 17, 56.80, E, type:landmark, display=title Borough of Dartford Stone Age sites in Kent Sites of Special Scientific Interest in Kent National nature reserves in England Paleoanthropological sites Neanderthal sites Homo heidelbergensis fossils Geological Conservation Review sites

See also

References

External links