Notes

Abstract

IN a letter to the Times of January 23 Mr. F. P. Mennell recalls his description of the bone-cave at Broken Hill, Rhodesia, published in the Geological Magazine in 1907, and adds some further details in reference to the recent discovery of Homo rhodesiensis in a deeper extension of the cave. He emphasises the fact that all the stone and bone implements found with this extinct cave man are such as are used to-day by the Bushmen and Hottentots in outlying places, while all the mammalian bones, evidently broken for food, belong either to living species or to species closely allied to those still existing in the neighbourhood. The Rhodesian man is therefore probably not so old as the primitive types of man who wielded the Palaeolithic implement in western Europe. We may add that Mr. Mennell's original paper was referred to in NATURE of November 17 last by Dr. Smith Woodward, who also expressed the opinion that Rhodesian man would prove to be of comparatively recent date.