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The Red Lady of Paviland is a fairly complete Upper Paleolithic-era human male skeleton dyed in red ochre. Discovered in 1823, at 33,000 years old it is one of the oldest ceremonial burials of a modern human discovered anywhere in Western Europe. The bones were discovered between 18 and 25 January 1823, by Rev. William Buckland during an archaeological dig at Goat's Hole Cave, one of the limestone caves between Port Eynon and Rhossili, on the Gower Peninsula, south Wales. Buckland believed the remains to be those of a female, dating to Roman Britain. However, later analysis of the remains showed them to have been of a young male, and the most recent re-calibrated radiocarbon dating in 2009 indicated that the skeleton can be dated to around 33,000 years before present (BP). ==Discovery== In 1822 Daniel Davies and the Rev John Davies, respectively surgeon and curate at Port Eynon on the south coast of Gower, explored the cave and found animal bones, including the tusk of a mammoth. The Talbot family of Penrice Castle was informed and Mary Theresa Talbot, then the oldest unmarried daughter, joined an expedition to the site and found "bones of elephants" on 27 December 1822. William Buckland, Professor of Geology at Oxford University and a correspondent of that well-connected family, was contacted. He arrived on 18 January 1823 and spent a week at Goat's Hole, during which his famous discovery took place.〔http://www.britarch.ac.uk/ba/ba61/feat3.shtml〕 Later that year, writing about his find in his book ''Reliquiae Diluvianae'' (Evidence of the Flood), Buckland stated: "I found the skeleton enveloped by a coating of a kind of ruddle ... which stained the earth, and in some parts extended itself to the distance of about half an inch (mm ) around the surface of the bones ... Close to that part of the thigh bone where the pocket is usually worn surrounded also by ruddle () about two handfuls of the ''Nerita littoralis'' (shells ). At another part of the skeleton, ''viz'' in contact with the ribs () forty or fifty fragments of ivory rods () some small fragments of rings made of the same ivory and found with the rods ... Both rods and rings, as well as the ''Nerite'' shells, were stained superficially with red, and lay in the same red substance that enveloped the bones." When Buckland first discovered the skeleton in 1823,〔Sommer, Marianne ''Bones and ochre: the curious afterlife of the Red Lady of Paviland'' (2007) p. 1〕 he misjudged both its age and its gender. As a creationist,〔() www.oum.ox.ac, accessed August 3, 2008〕 Buckland believed no human remains could have been older than the Biblical Great Flood, and thus wildly underestimated its true age, believing the remains to date to the Roman era. Buckland believed the skeleton was female in large part because it was discovered with decorative items, including perforated seashell necklaces and jewellery thought to be of elephant ivory but now known to be carved from the tusk of a mammoth.〔Sykes, Brian, ''Blood of the Isles'' pages 15-17 (Bantam, 2006)〕 These decorative items, combined with the skeleton's red dye, caused Buckland to mistakenly speculate that the remains belonged to a Roman prostitute or witch. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Red Lady of Paviland」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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