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Archiver > GENBRIT > 2006-01 > 1137474992


From: "Roy Stockdill" <>
Subject: Re: Most recent common ancestors
Date: Tue, 17 Jan 2006 05:24:59 +0000
In-Reply-To: <dqh5rc$2v3$2@news6.svr.pol.co.uk>


> From: "Rob" <>

> One skull doesn't make a burial ground Roy. In fact the burial practices of
> Neolithic man are so well known now that one skull would be called a chance
> find and nothing more>

Surely you cannot be implying that the discovery in 1894 of
the flat-headed Heckmondwike Man was an archaeological fraud and a
hoax? Sir Arnold Hardwick-Shufflebottom, who unearthed the skull
behind the Heckmondwike Municipal Gasworks, was one of the most
eminent anthropologists and archaeologists of the Victoria era and
the man who also discovered the more famous One-Legged Man of
Doncaster on an earlier dig in 1882.

His academic qualifications and credentials were impeccable, apart
from which my great-grandfather used to drink with him in the back
bar of the Rat and Strumpet in Heckmondwike High Street and always
said he was "a grand fellow, the salt of the earth, who always bought
his round and never boasted about his title".

I do not know what more to say, except possibly that you may be
hearing from lawyers for the Hardwick-Shufflebottom estate, not to
mention the Trustees of the Alderman Clogferret Memorial Museum, who
have had the skull of Heckmondwike Man in their safe keeping ever
since Sir Arnold found it.

Roy Stockdill
Web page of the Guild of One-Name Studies:- www.one-name.org
Newbies' Guide to Genealogy & Family History:- www.genuki.org.uk/gs/Newbie.html

"Familiarity breeds contempt - and children."

Mark Twain

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