Archaeology
Redhill Man - a human skull found on the riverbank.
The Gruesome Discovery
On 4th January 1975, an angler, fishing in the River Stour nearby at Redhill, noticed a human skull staring up at him from the reeds. He called the police. The skull was found to be incomplete, missing its mandible, or lower jaw. No other human remains were found with it. The police constable concluded that the cranium (a skull without its mandible) must have been dislodged from its original position and washed downstream by the river current.
Because the cranium appeared ‘ancient’ it was compared with another one, known as ‘Longham Man’, who had been found in 1932 in the River Stour. It was concluded that the two crania looked the same. As a result, Redhill Man was thought to be around 5,500 years old, from the Neolithic period - a man who lived in the New Stone Age.
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