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Many treasures compete for attention, but there is one sample, kept in a small plywood box, that deserves especial interest: the Swanscombe skull. Found near Gravesend last century, it is made up of three pieces of the brain case of a 400,000-year-old female and is one of only half-a-dozen bits of skeleton that can be traced to men and women who lived in Britain before the end of the last ice age. Human remains do not get more precious than this. However, the Swanscombe find is important for another, crucial reason: the skull is that of a Neanderthal, that race...

ARCHAEOLOGISTS TO DRILL IN BEXLEY FOR EVIDENCE OF ANCIENT OCCUPATION By 24 Hour Museum Staff 29/02/2008 An illustration of Homo neanderthalensis at Swanscombe, Kent, one of the sites investigated in the AHOB project. © Natural History Museum Archaeologists from Durham University will be returning to a London borough site where a 19th century historian once found flint tools and animal bones. This time, however, the latest sonic drilling equipment will be used to take samples from the earth, for the ongoing Ancient Human Occupation of Britain II project (AHOB). Initial drillings were carried out at Holmscroft Open Space in September...

John Wymer, who died on February 10 aged 77, was Britain's foremost authority on early Stone Age settlement and had a major impact on the development of Stone Age studies in Western Europe. His career as an archaeologist began with the discovery in 1955 of Swanscombe Woman, the fossil remains of a skull of a woman who lived in the Thames Valley around 400,000 BC; they are among the oldest human remains ever discovered in Europe... He also carried out major programmes of research in South Africa, most notably at Klasies River Mouth, west of Port Elizabeth, where a remarkable...

Delving deep into Britain's past By Paul Rincon Science reporter, BBC News Neanderthals probably made this hand axe from Swanscombe in Kent Scientists are to begin work on the second phase of a project aimed at piecing together the history of human colonisation in Britain. Phase one of the Ancient Human Occupation of Britain project (AHOB) discovered people were here 200,000 years earlier than previously thought. Phase two has now secured funds to the tune of £1m and will run until 2010. Team members hope to find out more about Britain's earliest settlers and perhaps unearth their fossil remains. They...