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The Cornish Pasty

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Cattedown Man

Not to be confused with Piltdown Man

 

A remarkable event 'appened during the writing of some of this web site, as shown in these photos:


Copyright: These images are presented with kind permission from The Herald

 

The Plymouth Herald for Friday 13th April 2007 had a caveman on the front page! And - two full pages devoted to the story inside, on pages 4 & 5.

Caves were discovered in 1886 in Cattedown, Plymouth, that contained fossil skeletons of 15 early men, women and children. There were also remains of Ice Age woolly rhinoceros, reindeer, cave lion, hyena, wolf, bison and a woolly mammoth. The last ice age ended about 11,000 years ago.

The caves are now threatened by development.

The remains are dated to between 10,000 and 140,000 years old, meaning they are from the Pleistocene to the Holocene periods. They are potentially the oldest found in Britain and certainly the earliest evidence of man in the south-west area.

One human tooth was successfully dated and turned out to be from between the mesolithic and neolithic - the middle and new stone ages.

Mesolithic - began in Europe at the end of the Pleistocene epoch around 8000 BC and ended with the introduction of farming. Neolithic - in southeast Europe agrarian societies first appeared by ca. 7000 BC, and in Central Europe by ca. 5500 BC.
(source: Wikipedia - Geologic timescale).

The "Worth's Cattedown Bone Caves" were given scheduled ancient monument status by English Heritage (see also HERE).

These are not the earliest ancient Britons. The famous Red Lady of Paviland remains found on the Gower coast in South Wales, have been dated as 29,000 years old, from the late Palaeolithic era.

Why is this page on this web site?

Because there is now the exciting possibility of finding even more ancient remains of the early pasty, back to early man in the southwest - 10,000 years ago .....

Also - this is local to Devon and Cornwall and there may be more remains waiting to be found in Cornwall and Scilly and Lyonesse ..... ..... .....