Michael Pitts, Mark Roberts.
Fairweather Eden: life in Britain half a million years ago as revealed bythe excavations at Boxgrove.
Arrow. 1998
‘Europe’s oldest man has been found in southern England.’
Thus The Times broke the news of the discovery of a fossil shin bone,
at Boxgrove in Sussex, that went on to make headlines around the world.
This is the heady story of over ten years of excavation at the world’s best preserved early human site, told through the experiences of those who were there. Mark Roberts and his team opened a unique window on life in Britain half a million years ago. As the dig reached its thrilling climax, they uncovered evidence that questioned who we are and where we came from. Boxgrove Man lived in a warm period of the Ice Age, a ‘fairweather Eden’ with lions and elephants. Was he the simple-minded scavenger traditionally envisaged by archaeologists, or the primitive beast of popular imagination? The answers from Boxgrove astonished archaeologists.