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p. 36) also stated that many fragments of animal bones had been found in the sands and gravels at the Barnfield and Rickson’s pits (both are a half mile from Galley Hill), whereas no animal bones had been found at the Galley Hill pit. From these facts, they concluded that originally there may have been a substantial number of animal bones in the Galley Hill deposits. They hypothesized that later these animal bones were all decalcified, or dissolved away, by the groundwaters. Hence the Galley Hill skeleton must have been recently introduced into the Middle Pleistocene gravels, after all the genuine Middle Pleistocene bones had been dissolved away. If the skeleton were really of Middle Pleistocene antiquity, it should have been dissolved away like the rest of the bones.

According to Oakley and Montagu (1949, p. 36), “This point does not seem to have been considered by previous investigators.” That is not, however, accurate. E. T. Newton, the scientist who published the original report about the Galley Hill skeleton, was well aware of the significance of the absence of animal bones at Galley Hill and other places in the immediate vicinity. Newton wrote (1895, p. 524): “The rarity of bones in these high-level gravels suggests the possibility of their having been removed by the continued percolation of water during the long period which has elapsed since they were deposited. It still further suggests that, if any human bones had been deposited with the gravel in Paleolithic times, they would long since have disappeared. However bones of certain extinct mammals, Elephas, Rhinoceros, Hippopotamus, and Felis leo, have occasionally been found, although generally in a much decayed condition, and the circumstances sufficiently favourable for their preservation may have obtained in other places also.”

Elliott reported that when the Galley Hill skeleton was uncovered “the bones were so friable and fragile that many went to pieces as soon as touched” (Newton 1895, p. 518; Keith 1928, p. 253). The decayed condition of the human bones thus matches that of the other rare occurrences of genuinely old mammalian bones in the immediate vicinity of the Galley Hill site.

Oakley and Montagu considered the possibility that the Galley Hill skeleton had been protected from percolating groundwaters by the loam layer in which it was embedded, but they concluded that this loam layer was “permeable.” Yet Newton (1895, p. 524) stated: “it is clear from Mr. Elliott’s letter, and from my own observation in the pit, that patches of more clayey deposit do here and there occur, one such having been noticed very near where the skeleton was found.” Clay is less permeable to water than loam, and, as noted in Appendix 1, is responsible for many remarkable cases of organic preservation.

Oakley and Montagu argued that the relatively complete nature of the Galley Hill skeleton was a sure sign that it was deliberately buried. The postcranial bones found were two partial humeri, two partial femurs, two partial tibiae, and some small fragments of the ribs and hip. Completely missing were almost all of the ribs, the backbone, the forearms, hands, and feet. In the case of Lucy, the most famous specimen of Australopithecus afarensis, more of the skeleton was preserved (Section 11.9.3). And no one has yet suggested that Australopithecines buried their dead. Scientists have also discovered fairly complete skeletal remains of Homo erectus (Section 7.1.8) and Homo habilis (Section 11.7) individuals.

These cases, as all paleoanthropologists would agree, definitely do not involve deliberate burial. It is thus possible for relatively complete hominid skeletons to be preserved apart from burial.

Throughout their report, Oakley and Montagu returned to the suggestion that the Galley Hill skeleton must have been a burial, and this may in fact be true. But the burial may not have been recent. Sir Arthur Keith (1928, p. 259) suggested: “Weighing all the evidence, we are forced to the conclusion that the Galley Hill skeleton represents a man . . . buried when the lower gravel formed