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A ‘carved’ shell from Red Crag, England

The Red Crag ‘face’

In 1881, the geologist Henry Stopes (father of the feminist and pioneer of birth control, Marie Stopes) described a curious shell, with a crude but recognisable human face on its surface. It had been found in the well known Late Pliocene shell-bearing deposits at Red Crag, Suffolk. This has been taken to be evidence for very early humans in England (Late Pliocene deposits date from between 2.1 and 1 million years ago, according to the conventional geological chronology).

The face resembles those carved into pumpkins at Hallowe’en by American children. It is a simulacrum, a natural object that nevertheless bears a resemblance – albeit slight – to a human face. A cursory glance at a photograph of the object reveals that there is no trace of deliberate carving and the overall impression is that it belongs to the same class of artefact as the ‘Face’ on Mars.

This pages was last updated on 7 May 2007
Written by Keith Fitzpatrick-Matthews