title: The Archaeology of Human Bones
author:  Simon Mays 
description: Simon Mays is currently Human Skeletal Biologist for English Heritage, based in Portsmouth, UK, and is a Visiting Lecturer at the Department of Archaeology, University of Southampton, UK. His research interests span all areas of archaeological human skeletal remains. Previous books include Human Osteology in Archaeology and Forensic Science (2000), edited with Margaret Cox, and Advances in Human Palaeopathology (2008), edited with Ron Pinhasi.
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  # The Grisly Folk
  
  
  ### H. G. Wells
  
  
  This page copyright © 2002 Blackmask Online.
  
  
  http://www.blackmask.com  
    
    
  "Can these bones live?"
  
  
  Could anything be more dead, more mute and inexpressive to the
  
  
  inexpert eye than the ochreous fragments of bone and the fractured
  
  
  lumps of flint that constitute the first traces of something human in
  
  
  the world? We see them in the museum cases, sorted out in accordance
  
  
  with principles we do not understand, labelled with strange names.
  
  
  Chellean, Mousterian, Solutrian and the like, taken mostly from the
  
  
  places Chelles, La Moustier, Solutre, and so forth where the first
  
  
  specimens were found. Most of us stare through the glass at them,
  
  
  wonder vaguely for a moment at that half-savage, half-animal past of
  
  
  our race, and pass on. "Primitive man," we say.
  
  
  "Flint implements. The mammoth used to chase him." Few of us
  
  
  realise yet how much the subtle indefatigable cross-examination of the
  
  
  scientific worker has 