THE RESULTS OF CAESAR’S INVASIONS OF BRITAIN
[Sidenote: 54 B.C.--A.D. 43.]
Caesar’s contemporaries and the Roman writers of succeeding [Sidenote:
The importance of Caesar’s British expeditions under estimated by his
contemporaries and by historians.] generations did not over-estimate
the results of his British campaigns. The well-known line of Lucan--
_Territa quaesitis ostendit terga Britannis_[1416]--
is only worth quoting as an instance of the poet’s animosity; but
the impression left by the various passages which refer to Caesar’s
expeditions is, that public expectation, having been wrought up to a
high pitch, had suffered disappointment.[1417] Everybody knew that
Caesar had not incurred the vast expense of his second expedition
merely for plunder or to deter the Britons from aiding the Gauls: they
gathered from his own book that he had aimed at conquest; and they
could see no more than that he had failed. Tacitus came nearest to the
truth when he said that ‘Julius, though by a successful engagement
he struck terror into the inhabitants and gained possession of the
coast, must be regarded as having indicated rather than transmitted the
acquisition to posterity’.[1418] But even this judgement was based upon
imperfect knowledge; and the tendency of modern historians, including
the greatest scholar of them all, has been to underrate the importance
of what Caesar had achieved.
For although Caesar had failed to achieve his aim, he had opened a new
world to his countrymen; had proved the facility with which it could
be conquered; and had done all that opportunity permitted to pave
the way for the conquest. He directed the course of British history
into a new channel. He forced the most civilized peoples of the island
to acknowledge the supremacy of Rome, and made it clear to those of
them who could read the signs of the times that the enforcement of
that supremacy would not be long delayed. He impressed upon them such
respect for the Roman power that the avowed object with which he had
invaded the country was effectually gained:--the Britons ceased to
abet the resistance of their kinsmen on the other side of the Channel.
He showed that the key to the conquest was to take advantage of the
jealousy between the family of Cassivellaunus and their rivals. In
the presence of these facts, the question whether the tribute which
he imposed was ever actually paid is merely academical; but the great
scholar who required us to believe that ‘it is certain that the
stipulated tribute was never paid’[1419] made an assertion which is not
only improbable but is opposed to such evidence as we possess. Mommsen
did not fully appreciate the severity of the punishment which had been
inflicted upon Cassivellaunus, or the hold over him which Caesar could
exert through his hostages. It is probable indeed that Diodorus,[1420]
when he said that Caesar forced the Britons to pay tribute, was only
putting his own construction upon Caesar’s words: but what is certain
is that the Britons, although in the reign of Augustus they were not
required to pay tribute, were obliged to pay duties at the Gallic
harbours upon the goods which they exported to and imported from Gaul;
and it is not unreasonable to conjecture that these charges may have
been imposed as an equivalent for a tribute which could no longer have
been collected except by an irresistible army.[1421] But the influence
which Caesar exercised upon the destinies of Britain was communicated
chiefly through Gaul. In the three years which followed his departure
the Britons saw the conquest of Gaul completed: while the civil war
ran its course they saw that Gaul made no effort to throw off the
Roman yoke; and as time passed and the provinces settled down in the
grasp of Augustus, they saw that Gaul was incorporated in the Roman
Empire. Meanwhile in Britain the history of Gaul was being enacted over
again. In the earlier half of the first century before our era Roman
traders, settled in Gallic towns, had prepared the way for the legions
of Julius: in the later half Roman or Romanized traders who found it
profitable to deal with Britain prepared the way for the legions of
Claudius.
[Sidenote: Development of British commerce.]
In Strabo’s time the Britons still imported ornaments of various kinds
from the Continent, vases of amber and glass, gold necklets, and ivory
for the decoration of horse trappings. Among their exports were slaves,
which shows that intertribal warfare was still rife, and, if Strabo’s
statement is to be taken literally, corn, cattle, and iron.[1422]
Representations of horned cattle, sheep, and pigs are found so often
upon British coins[1423] that we can easily understand how the graziers
should have been able to spare of their abundance; but, although ears
of corn are figured on some of Cunobeline’s coins,[1424] it requires
more faith to believe that the population by whose density Caesar was
amazed grew enough corn to satisfy not only their own requirements,
but those of their continental neighbours, and that the Gauls, whose
resources were sufficient to enable them to feed Caesar’s army, were
obliged to import grain. One would have supposed too that the output of
the Gallic iron mines, which Caesar mentions, would not have required
to be supplemented from Britain; and that the iron-workers of the Weald
had enough to do in supplying the wants of their own countrymen. But,
though Britain was not as opulent as Gaul, it would seem that some of
the chiefs in the southern and eastern districts amassed a considerable
amount of wealth. Tacitus[1425] tells us that Prasutagus, who was king
of the Iceni about 60 A.D., was renowned for his riches; and, like
Dumnorix the Aeduan, he may have acquired them in part from tolls.
It has been maintained that the tin trade, which had once been so
flourishing, and which certainly flourished during the later period of
the Roman occupation, ceased about the beginning of the Christian era,
and was suspended for the next two hundred years: but the mere absence
of ingots of tin bearing the Roman stamp is hardly sufficient to
establish a theory which, intrinsically, is so improbable; and it seems
more reasonable to conclude that the mines were continuously worked,
but not until the third century under Roman control.[1426]
[Sidenote: The British inscribed coinage and its historical value.]
But the notices of Britain which appear in the writings of Strabo
and Diodorus are the least important sources of our knowledge. More
valuable is the systematic classification of British coins which has
been accomplished during the last fifty years. They show how thoroughly
Roman ideas had permeated British civilization before the legions
returned to the island, and enable us to trace in outline the course
of British political history during the century that elapsed between
the departure of Julius and the invasion of Claudius Caesar. Soon
after the former event the numismatic art of Britain entered upon
its second period. Coins of silver, copper, bronze, and tin were now
coming into use;[1427] and the need that was beginning to be felt for
small change testifies to an advance in material civilization. On the
site of Verulamium have been found gold coins of two values, silver
of one, and bronze of three.[1428] Perhaps we must also regard as a
sign of progress increased ingenuity in fraud: at all events besides
the authorized mints there were forgers, who made a living by passing
coins of base metal thinly plated with gold.[1429] Uninscribed coins
were still struck, especially in the remoter districts,[1430] and
remained in circulation in the time of Claudius;[1431] but from about
30 B.C. the greater number of new coins bore the name either of the
prince or of the tribe in whose territories they were minted, and in
some cases also the name of the town in which the mint was situated.
This evidence shows that Verulamium and Camulodunum were the chief
political centres of Southern Britain;[1432] and it is remarkable that
the name of Londinium, although it may even then have been the chief
commercial town, as it certainly was from the very beginning of the
Roman occupation,[1433] does not appear upon any British coin which has
yet come to light.[1434] The earliest of the inscribed coins naturally
belonged to the south-eastern parts of the country:[1435] the northern
tribe of the Brigantes were the last to adopt them;[1436] and not
a single specimen has been discovered which can be assigned to the
Durotriges.[1437] Of the course of events in the northern and western
regions history tells us nothing, and coins but little: indeed there is
no evidence that the tribes of Scotland, Wales, Northumberland, Durham,
Cumberland, Westmorland, Shropshire, Devonshire, and Cornwall even now
had coins at all;[1438] and it was not until some time after Caesar’s
departure that the inhabitants of Gloucestershire, northern Wiltshire,
and Somersetshire began to use them.[1439] Probably the iron bars which
have been already described were still current[1440] in the midlands
and the west; and Solinus affirmed that in his time the people of the
Scilly Islands refused money and traded by barter.[1441] Coins bearing
the simple inscription, CATTI, which has been assumed to be that of a
tribe, have been found in Worcestershire, Monmouthshire, Somersetshire,
Devonshire, and Cornwall;[1442] and it has been hastily concluded
that some of the remoter British tribes, like many of those of Gaul,
had expelled their kings.[1443] But our most experienced numismatist
thinks that the inscription represents the name of the prince by whom
the coins were minted;[1444] and one would be inclined to believe
that the more backward north and west were then, as they were sixteen
centuries later, the strongholds of conservatism.[1445] The evidence
which relates to Southern Britain is less flimsy; and it points to the
conclusion that the course of events in that part of the country was
leading inevitably to the Roman conquest.
[Sidenote: The dynasties of Cassivellaunus and Commius.]
The history of Southern Britain in this period, if we disregard
Dorsetshire, Devonshire, and Cornwall, is the history of two
dynasties,--that of Caesar’s old antagonist, Cassivellaunus, and that
of his old ally, Commius. Of the later life of Cassivellaunus nothing
is known; but it would seem probable that the recollection of the
punishment which the legions had inflicted upon him and the knowledge
that his hostages were in Caesar’s power were sufficient to induce
him to obey Caesar’s last injunction and to leave the Trinovantes
[Sidenote: Tasciovanus.] and their king, Mandubracius, unmolested.
About 30 B.C., or perhaps a few years earlier, he was succeeded by his
son, Tasciovanus.[1446] The earlier coins of this prince were purely
British in character; but those of later date are adorned with the
figures of Pegasus and centaurs, while one of them is imitated from a
coin of Augustus, which was first struck in 13 B.C.;[1447] and their
number and variety are so great that the reign of Tasciovanus must
have extended over a long period,--not improbably until about A.D.
5.[1448] His dominions, which were perhaps originally confined to the
country of the Catuvellauni, in whose capital, Verulamium, most of
his coins were struck, ultimately included, it should seem, not only
those of the Trinovantes, but also of the [Sidenote: Epaticcus and
Cunobeline.] Segontiaci and parts of Northamptonshire.[1449] He left
several sons, among whom were Epaticcus and Cunobeline. The coins
of the former, which bear the abbreviated Latin inscription TASC.
FIL.--‘son of Tasciovanus’--have all been found either in the western
part of Surrey or the east of Wiltshire; and it has been inferred that
he either succeeded to the western portion of his father’s dominions
or conquered territory which had never been subject to him.[1450]
Epaticcus was, however, completely overshadowed by his brother, who,
under the name of Cymbeline, has been immortalized by Shakespeare.
There may perhaps be a kernel of truth in the statement of Geoffrey of
Monmouth, that he was [Sidenote: Cunobeline’s coins prove growth of
Roman influence in Britain.] educated by Augustus:[1451] at all events
his silver and copper coins bear witness to the growing influence of
Roman culture; and many of them must have been designed either by
Romans or by artists who had received Roman training. One of his silver
coins, in the opinion of the highest authority, is characterized by
exquisite workmanship, ‘worthy of a Greek artist;’[1452] and some of
them suggest that not long after the commencement of the Christian era
the worship of Hercules had been introduced into Britain.[1453] Not
one of the coins bearing his name which have so far been discovered
was struck at the mint of Verulamium, from which, as we have seen,
those of his father had mainly issued: the name of Camulodunum appears
upon them all; and the conclusion seems warranted that he inherited
the eastern part of his [Sidenote: His conquests.] father’s dominions,
and extended them by subduing the Trinovantes,--the hereditary enemies
of his family.[1454] It is not improbable that he had begun to reign
about 5 B.C., while his father was still alive; and that he conquered
the Trinovantes before his father died.[1455] The area which was under
his immediate rule when he was at the height of his power included
perhaps, besides their country and that of the Catuvellauni, a part of
that of the Dobuni, who inhabited what is now Gloucestershire;[1456]
but it would seem that he also exercised a general supremacy over
the whole of the south-eastern part of the island.[1457] Suetonius
was so impressed by the fame of his power that he described him as
_Britannorum rex_,--‘King of the Britons.’[1458]
[Sidenote: Flight of Dubnovellaunus and Tincommius(?), the son of
Commius, to Rome.]
Cunobeline’s conquest of the Trinovantes appears to have been
one of the causes which led to the flight, briefly chronicled by
Augustus on the monument of Ancyra,[1459] of two British princes
who sought for Roman aid. Their names, as recorded on the stone,
were DVMNOBELLAV[_nus_], and, if we are to accept the testimony of
Chishull,[1460] an antiquary of a past generation, TIM.... The name
of the former, as it is spelled on British coins, was Dubnovellaunos.
Those of his coins which appear to have been circulated earliest have
been found only in Kent, which he probably at one time ruled.[1461]
His later coins tend to show that he afterwards annexed the territory
of the Trinovantes, from which he was in his turn expelled by
Cunobeline.[1462] But who was the prince who with him undertook the
long journey to Rome? The letters TIM, if indeed M was really graven
upon the monument, were of course only the first three of another name;
and it is possible that Chishull may have mistaken one or perhaps
two broken letters for M, or, since M and N were often confused,
that the engraver may have been misled by his copy.[1463] Be this
as it may, there is only one known name with which TIM ... can be
identified,--that of Tincommius, who called himself on some of his
coins TINCOM[_mios_] COMMI FILI[_us_] REX[1464]--‘King Tincommius, son
of Commius.’ In order to understand the history of Tincommius, we must
trace the later career of the Commius who was, beyond all reasonable
doubt, his father,[1465]--the king of the Atrebates who had accompanied
Caesar to Britain.
[Sidenote: The later adventures of Commius.]
Commius had of course been liberally rewarded for his services:
but in the great Gallic insurrection of 52 B.C. he had thrown in
his lot with Vercingetorix; and he was one of the four generals to
whose joint direction was entrusted the command of the Pan-Gallic
host which marched to relieve the latter when he was beleaguered in
Alesia. ‘Caesar,’ we read in the seventh _Commentary_, ‘had found
Commius a loyal and serviceable agent in former years in Britain;
and, in acknowledgement of these services, he had granted his tribe
immunity from forced contributions, restored to it its rights and
laws, and placed the Morini under his authority. Yet so intense was
the unanimous determination of the entire Gallic people to vindicate
their liberty and recover their ancient military renown, that no
favours, no recollection of former friendship, had any influence with
them, but all devoted their energies and resources to the prosecution
of the war.’[1466] Patriotism, however, was not the only motive of
Commius: he had a reason for the bitterness of his hostility, which
Caesar does not mention, but which we learn from Caesar’s friend, Aulus
Hirtius, who wrote the last of the _Commentaries on the Gallic War_. In
the winter of 53-52 B.C., while Caesar was absent in Cisalpine Gaul,
Commius took an active part in forming the nucleus of the coalition
of which Vercingetorix was destined to be the leader; and Labienus,
who found out his designs, commissioned the tribune Volusenus to
assassinate him. Commius escaped with a severe wound; and in the year
which followed the overthrow of Vercingetorix he formed, in conjunction
with a chief of the Bellovaci, a fresh coalition against Caesar, who
was obliged to exert all his strength in order to subdue it. For
some time Commius led the life of a brigand chief, and succeeded in
capturing several convoys which were on their way to Caesar’s winter
camp in the country of the Atrebates. He made himself so formidable
that Mark Antony sent Volusenus to make a second attempt to kill him;
and although he again escaped, he ultimately surrendered on the express
condition that he should never again be brought face to face with any
Roman.
[Sidenote: His conquests in Britain.]
When and why Commius took up his abode in Britain is not known; but
some probability may be claimed for the conjecture that his motive was
to check the encroachments of the Catuvellauni.[1467] No coins have
been found which can with absolute certainty be ascribed to him:[1468]
but it is admitted that he issued coins before Tasciovanus, who, as
we have seen, began to reign at least as early as 30 B.C.;[1469]
and before his death he became overlord of the maritime tribes of
South-Eastern Britain on the right bank of the Thames.[1470] He
[Sidenote: Tincommius, Verica, and Eppillus.] left three sons,
Tincommius, Verica, and Eppillus; and almost all their coins have been
found in Kent, Sussex, Surrey, and Hampshire.[1471] Each of these
sons described himself on his coins as REX, and each of them appears
to have had a kingdom of his own, Tincommius ruling the Regni, who
inhabited Sussex, Eppillus the Cantii, and Verica the Atrebates.[1472]
The dominions of Verica cannot, however, be certainly defined. There
is some reason to suppose that he held sway over the Atrebates of
Belgium as well as over those of Britain; for certain coins found in
the north of France, and closely resembling others that are common in
the south-eastern counties of England, are inscribed with a monogram
which appears to denote the abbreviation VE.[1473] It should seem that
Eppillus, at some time, was king of the Atrebates, for some of his
coins have the legend CALLEV,--an abbreviated form of Calleva, the
chief town of that tribe.[1474] Certain coins, however, exist which
apparently bear the names of all the three brothers, a fact which
can only be explained on the theory that at one time they exercised
a joint sovereignty over the dominions which had belonged to their
father;[1475] while others are inscribed with the names of Verica
and Eppillus only.[1476] It has been assumed that these coins were
not struck until after the death of Tincommius;[1477] but another
explanation seems possible. Why did Tincommius, alone of the three
brothers, solicit the protection of Augustus, and why did he undertake
the journey to Rome in conjunction with Dubnovellaunus? Numismatic
evidence has led to the belief that Dubnovellaunus had once ruled over
the Cantii;[1478] and if so, Eppillus, who afterwards acquired dominion
over the same tribe, probably dispossessed him. Dubnovellaunus, as we
have already seen, appears to have once ruled over the Trinovantes as
well, and to have been expelled from their country by Cunobeline. These
successive reverses may have been the motive for the journey which
he undertook to Rome; and when we consider that certain coins bear
the names of Eppillus and Verica, without that of Tincommius, which
on others appears side by side with theirs, it seems possible that
Tincommius, finding that his brothers were leagued together against
him, threw in his lot with another prince who had been as unfortunate
as himself. This conjecture is perhaps somewhat strengthened by the
fact that one of the coins of Tincommius bears, along with TIN--the
abbreviated form of his name--the inscription DV,[1479] which has
baffled the acumen of numismatists, but which, on the analogy of
TC--one of the abbreviations of TINCOMMIOS[1480]--may possibly stand
for DUBNOVELLAUNOS.[1481]
How the fugitives were received we are not told; but it is certain
that Augustus did not grant them armed assistance; nor is there
any evidence that they ever recovered power. [Sidenote: Augustus
contemplates an invasion of Britain.] As early as 34 B.C. Augustus
had marched into Gaul with the intention, as was generally believed,
of invading Britain; but, owing to an insurrection in Dalmatia,
he was compelled to abandon his resolve.[1482] For several years,
however, it was expected that he would sooner or later complete the
work which his adoptive father had begun; and this expectation was
voiced in the poetry of the time. About the year 30 B.C. Vergil[1483]
prayed that ‘far off Thule’ might obey Augustus; and Horace, in odes
which seem to have been officially inspired, called upon Fortune
to preserve him in his expedition against the Britons, ‘remotest
inhabitants of the world,’[1484] and foretold that when they and the
Parthians were brought under the imperial sway he would be hailed a
god upon earth.[1485] In 27 and again in 26 B.C. Augustus marched
into Gaul with the ostensible purpose of invading Britain, but again
without result.[1486] But the latest of these dates was earlier
than the flight of Tincommius and Dubnovellaunus; and thenceforward
Augustus abandoned all thought of [Sidenote: Why he abandoned his
intention.] invading Britain.[1487] The cause of his inaction is
discernible in two passages of Strabo’s _Geography_,[1488] which
give the official explanation of the imperial policy. The conquest of
Britain would be very costly; and it was unlikely that the revenue
would be more than sufficient to defray the expense of the garrison
and the administration: the duties levied at the Gallic harbours on
goods imported from and exported to Britain were more productive than
any tribute; besides, Britain was too weak to be dangerous, and its
conquest was therefore unnecessary. Possibly we may gather from the
prominence which is given in the monument of Ancyra to the petition of
Tincommius and Dubnovellaunus that it was officially interpreted as a
sign of the virtual submission of the Britons.
[Sidenote: Continued growth of Roman influence in Britain.]
This confidence indeed is not difficult to understand. The conjecture
that at the courts of Commius, of Tasciovanus, and of Cunobeline
Latin was the official speech[1489] may perhaps be somewhat rash:
but at all events Latin was the language of the mint; and perhaps it
is not unreasonable to suppose that, as some Pannonian Celts were
versed in Latin literature,[1490] a Briton here and there was equally
accomplished. Roman silver coins were already eagerly accepted, on
account of their purity, in Southern Britain.[1491] And if Rufina, the
young British wife of a Roman, whose praises Martial sang,[1492] could
hold her own in Italian society, we may realize that before the Roman
conquest Britain had begun to be Romanized.
[Sidenote: Cessation of British coinage in certain districts which had
belonged to the sons of Commius.]
With the sons of Commius the British coinage in the districts which
they had ruled, with the sole exception of Kent, came to an end.[1493]
It may be that the inhabitants had begun, like the Gauls with whom they
traded, to use only Roman money; but, as the coinage of Kent continued,
the more probable explanation would seem to be that they were no
longer able to make head against the King of the Catuvellauni.[1494]
Tincommius and Dubnovellaunus were not the only British [Sidenote:
Relations of Cunobeline with Rome.] princes who paid their respects to
the emperor. ‘In our time,’ says Strabo, ‘various British chieftains
gained the friendship of Augustus Caesar by sending embassies and
performing services; placed votive offerings in the Capitol; and
made almost the whole island familiar to the Romans.’[1495] Among
them, we can hardly doubt, was Cunobeline, whose coins, like those of
his father, testify that Roman mythology had already taken root on
British soil,[1496] and who, according to Geoffrey of Monmouth,[1497]
voluntarily paid tribute to Rome. If there is any truth in Geoffrey’s
statement, the tribute must have been the price paid for moral support.
During the reign of Tiberius, who adhered to the conservative and
moderate policy of his stepfather, the relations of Cunobeline and of
Britain with Rome apparently remained unchanged: history only relates
that some soldiers of Germanicus, who had been shipwrecked on the
British coast, were sent back by British princes.[1498] It can hardly
be doubted, however, that the conquest of Britain was contemplated by
Roman statesmen as inevitable: to leave independent the Celtic island
which was so near the conquered Celtic mainland [Sidenote: His exiled
son, Adminius, takes refuge with Caligula.] was unnatural, and could
not be permanently safe.[1499] The latter part of Cunobeline’s reign
was clouded by domestic quarrels; and in A.D. 40, when he was an old
man, his son Adminius,[1500] whom he had driven into exile, threw
himself on the mercy of Caligula, who was at the time in Gaul, and
offered to surrender his father’s kingdom. The feather-pated emperor
sent messengers to Rome, who were charged to announce to the Senate in
the temple of Mars the submission of the whole island;[1501] but the
magniloquent and mendacious message testifies not only to his vanity
but to the fame of Cunobeline.
[Sidenote: Death of Cunobeline.]
Within the next three years the great king died, leaving, besides
Adminius, three other sons who still remained in Britain,--Caratacus,
Togodumnus, and, as we may conjecture, one Bericus, who fled over
sea. Caratacus, whose name is more familiar under the erroneous form
Caractacus, was the prince who in later years opposed a desperate
resistance to the Roman conquest of Western Britain. After Cunobeline’s
death he and Togodumnus assumed royal power, and perhaps combined
to exclude Bericus from any share in the [Sidenote: Unpopularity of
his dynasty intensified on the accession of his sons, Caratacus and
Togodumnus.] inheritance of their father’s dominions.[1502] It is
possible that Bericus had some influence with the Iceni, who were
bitterly hostile to the dynasty of Cassivellaunus and his successors,
and were prepared to join the Romans if they should invade the island.
But another explanation has been proposed. There are late coins of the
Iceni which bear the name of a prince named Antedrigus, who later still
issued coins which have been found in the territory of the Dobuni.
It has been suggested that, like the Treveran Indutiomarus and his
enemy Cingetorix,[1503] Antedrigus and Bericus were the leaders of
rival factions of the Iceni; that Antedrigus prevailed; that Bericus
thereupon determined to seek Roman aid; and that Antedrigus, when the
Iceni joined the Romans, sought an asylum among the Dobuni.[1504]
Anyhow Bericus fled to Rome.[1505] It would seem that Caratacus and
Togodumnus took offence when he and Adminius were not sent back, and
even committed, or threatened to commit, some act of violence against
the Roman power;[1506] and it may be that their attitude, combined with
the information which Bericus gave about the internal politics of his
country, was [Sidenote: Invasion of Britain by Aulus Plautius.] among
the motives that induced Claudius to dispatch the force which, under
Aulus Plautius, was to begin the Roman conquest of Britain.[1507]
[Sidenote: Review of British history from 54 B.C. to A.D. 43.]
Amid many uncertainties the facts of British history which stand
out prominently are these. The invasions of Caesar, supported by
his conquest of Gaul, stimulated trade between the Britons and the
Romanized Gauls, and thereby brought Britain within the sphere of Roman
influence; encouraged those British princes who needed protection or
support to turn to Rome, and made them all look up to the Emperor as
a patron, who might eventually be their sovereign lord. In the island
itself Commius and his sons made themselves supreme in the eastern
districts south of the Thames; but their power was overmatched and
perhaps finally absorbed by that of the family of Cassivellaunus, who
steadily augmented their dominion by conquest until under Cunobeline
it extended from the coast of Essex to the estuary of the Severn,
and from the Midlands to the English Channel. [Sidenote: The Roman
conquest and its results.] But the jealousy and the fear which this
ambitious dynasty aroused led directly to the Roman invasion, by which
the influences that had already begun were so developed that the upper
classes and the townspeople of Britain learned to speak Latin[1508]
and to adopt Roman customs, and in the end came, like their Gallic
neighbours, to regard themselves as Romans; that the Late Celtic art
which had flourished for centuries gave way to that of Rome, and even
in cottages and remote hamlets Samian pottery and rude hypocausts
were to be found;[1509] that by the fourth century a British church
had been fully developed, which continued to flourish after the Roman
administration had ceased, while even in the sixth century the forsaken
Britons gloried in the name of _Romani_;[1510] and that, in a word,
Britain, becoming completely Romanized, received an impress which has
not yet wholly faded away.[1511]
[Sidenote: Permanence in English history of prehistoric and Celtic
elements.]
But when the Roman had gone, when the Saxon, the Dane, and the Norman
had come, the descendants of neolithic aboriginals, of bronze-using
immigrants, and of Celts still lived on; and their composite influence
has ever since been helping to form the British character and to
determine the course of British history. The roads on which we travel,
the flocks and herds that feed us, the corn that grows in our fields,
the implements which we use,--all our industrial arts are inseparably
connected with theirs. Not only do their beliefs still survive, tinging
the faith which their successors have been taught, but their spirit has
lived again in the men who have done the deeds of which our nation may
be proud.
And perhaps the story which this book has told may lead a few to
become less self-complacent and to think more of those primitive
ancestors. In some things we have sunk below their level: in what have
we risen? Riches, luxury, the security that tends to make self-reliance
weak, the softening of manners, rapidity of communication, the
development of engines of destruction, medicine, and surgery--all that
appertains to material civilization--herein we have made giant strides.
But such improvements hardly enable men to bear up under burdens which
are ever increasing. The tourist in a Pulman car is not happier than
those who travelled in stage-coach or wagon, and speed deprives him
of as much as it bestows; machinery has but substituted fresh evils
for those which it destroyed. New superstitions, less gross but not
less false, have been engrafted upon the old; but ‘pure religion and
undefiled,’--how far has it strengthened its hold upon the hearts of
men? We have professed indeed to teach inferior races the gospel of
love; but in Australasia our mission has been not so much to evangelize
as to exterminate. Apart from the extirpation of the coarser forms
of inhumanity and from those other civilizing influences which may
operate even in a decadent society, the progress of which we may not
unreasonably boast has been in knowledge, which to the vast majority is
unattainable, and, in this island, unheeded or contemptuously rejected
by most of the few who have it within reach.
THE ETHNOLOGY OF ANCIENT BRITAIN
I. INTRODUCTION
The ethnology of ancient Britain has been studied from many points
of view. Writers of a past generation relied simply upon the notices
which are to be found in the works of Caesar, Strabo, Tacitus, and
other ancient writers. In the last century the science, if it may now
be so called, of physical anthropology came into being. The barrows
in which our prehistoric ancestors had buried their dead were opened;
and the skeletons which had been left in them by earlier explorers
were systematically measured. The physical characters of the living
population were noted as far as possible in the hope that they might
help to solve the problems of the past. Archaeologists collected
the pottery, the tools, the weapons, and the ornaments which were
found beneath the soil, in the beds of rivers, in barrows, cairns,
caves, earthworks, and elsewhere, described them, classified them,
and compared them with those of other countries. Philologists studied
the forms of the Celtic dialects, and endeavoured to discover in
them traces of dialects older still. Finally, folk-lorists formed an
association, and joined the army of inquirers. The united efforts
of all these seekers after truth have stored up a huge mass of
information; and those who may read this article will, I believe, agree
with me that there is no reason to expect that any additional facts
which may be ascertained will throw much new light upon the questions
which we are about to consider:[1512] but no serious attempt has yet
been made to co-ordinate the materials which exist. To do this is the
aim of the present article. If the problems of British ethnology can be
solved, history, physical anthropology, archaeology, and philology must
combine.
II. THE METHODS OF ANTHROPOLOGY
A lay reader who takes up a treatise on ethnology ought to understand
the methods by which anthropologists differentiate the various human
types. I may be allowed to reproduce a paragraph which I wrote a few
years ago in another volume, and to which I shall have something to add.
‘Anthropologists are obliged to make use of technical terms, more or
less uncouth; and they are guided in their observations by very precise
and minute rules, framed with the object of eliminating, as far as
possible, the chance of error. But it is unnecessary for my purpose to
trouble the reader with more than a few of these things. What I shall
have to say about stature, complexion, hair and eyes, will need no
explanation; and in regard to the skull I shall, as a rule, only have
to deal with that measurement which fixes the proportion between its
length and its breadth. In this measurement the length is represented
by 100; and the proportion which the breadth bears to the length is
called the cephalic index. Thus, if the breadth is four-fifths of the
length, the index is 80. According to the system formulated by the
great French anthropologist, Paul Broca,[1513] skulls are grouped,
according to the cephalic index, in five classes. Skulls whose index
exceeds 83·33 are brachycephalic; those whose index falls between
83·33 and 80 are sub-brachycephalic; those between 80 and 77·77
mesaticephalic; those between 77·77 and 75 sub-dolichocephalic; and
those below 75 dolichocephalic ... it is necessary to bear in mind
that measurements of living heads invariably yield a higher cephalic
index--the average difference being as much as 2--than those of
skulls[1514] [of the same form]. Another important character of the
skull or head is _gnathism_, that is to say, the degree of projection
of the upper jaw. The word _orthognathous_ denotes that this projection
is comparatively slight; for absolute orthognathism does not exist.
The remaining technical terms which it is necessary for general
readers to understand are those which describe the structure of the
nasal skeleton. _Platyrrhinian_ means that it is wide, _mesorrhinian_
intermediate, and _leptorrhinian_ narrow.’[1515] I should have added
that the orbital index, which is important, denotes the relation of
the breadth of the orbit to its length; and, since we are dealing
with the ethnology of Britain, it will be convenient to adopt for
cephalic indices the notation which is prevalent in this country,
and according to which skulls whose indices exceed 80 are called
brachycephalic, those between 80 and 75 mesaticephalic, and those under
75 dolichocephalic.
The value of the cephalic index was for many years taken for granted in
all ethnological treatises; and many anthropologists still lay great
stress upon it.[1516] But there has lately been a reaction.[1517]
Professor Sergi[1518] scoffs at ‘the old and discredited method of
the cephalic index, which only indicates artificial and conventional
distinctions’, and tells us that ‘it is the forms alone that we
have to take into consideration’,[1519] and that ‘indices may serve
to approximate the most diverse forms and to separate the most
homogeneous’.[1520] This last remark is unquestionably true; as
Huxley said, ‘in nine cases out of ten you may diagnose an Australian
skull [among other dolichocephalic skulls] with certainty.’[1521]
Nevertheless the cephalic index, used with discrimination, retains the
value which Broca, Beddoe, Collignon, Turner, and other anthropologists
ascribe to it; and those who are familiar with Sergi’s writings
will not be surprised to learn that, when it suits his purpose, he
lays great stress upon the distinction between dolichocephalic and
brachycephalic skulls.[1522] He considerably modifies his view when
he affirms the truism that ‘we cannot accept the evidence of the
cephalic index when that evidence is contradicted by other important
facts’;[1523] but if any one who has a taste for ethnology will
spend a few days in walking through the department of Jura or the
mountainous parts of Auvergne, the contrast between the round heads
which he will see everywhere and the totally different type which he
has been accustomed to in his own country will convince him that the
cephalic index has been ‘discredited’ in vain.[1524] Anthropologists
are, however, becoming convinced that the labour which has been spent
upon calculating the averages of tables of widely different indices has
borne little fruit.[1525]
When we consider the cranial forms, apart from measurements, we find
the same lack of unanimity. According to Sergi,[1526] ‘the _norma
verticalis_, or view from above,’ is ‘the most important of all’.
According to Rolleston,[1527] ‘the _norma lateralis_, or profile view
of a skull is the most important.’ The present tendency, however, of
British anthropologists is to follow the Italian professor.
The evidence of skulls will often mislead unless it is used with
caution and discernment, reinforced by collateral knowledge. Certain
British brachycephalic skulls of the Bronze Age closely resemble in
many respects those of the Maoris.[1528] Rolleston, remarking on
the likeness between a dolichocephalic skull of the Bronze Age from
Weaverthorpe and the famous Engis skull, observes that ‘resemblances so
strong ... should, as they are also so widely scattered over the globe,
make us careful not to speak as to the ethnological affinities of any
skulls, until we have a very considerable number of representatives of
both objects of comparison to place alongside of each other; and it
may be added until we have also succeeded in bringing other lines of
evidence to bear upon the question’.[1529]
Besides the various characters of the skull and face, and, when
they can be ascertained, the complexion, and the colour of the hair
and eyes, ethnologists have to take account of stature, because,
although it partly depends upon food and social environment,[1530]
it unquestionably varies in different races. Now the stature of
prehistoric men, when their skeletons are found, can only be estimated
by calculating the relations between the lengths of certain bones and
the actual height of the individual; and since these relations are
obviously variable, the calculation can only lead to approximately
true results. The error would no doubt be insignificant if the average
relations were certain; but various anthropologists have adopted
various methods of calculation, which have led to widely different
results.[1531] The most satisfactory, for our purpose,[1532] appears
to be that of Dr. Beddoe,--‘I take away from the length of the femur
[or thigh-bone] one-quarter of the excess over 13 inches up to 19, and
thereafter only one-eighth, and then multiply by four’.[1533]
III. EOLITHIC MAN(?)
Much controversy was excited in the last decade of the nineteenth
century by the announcement that stone implements, ruder than the
rudest of the Palaeolithic Age, had been discovered on the plateau
between the Medway and Caterham valleys: but even if it were possible
to convince sceptics that some of these flints were wrought by men’s
hands, the proof would not affect the present inquiry; for we should
have no means of ascertaining to what race (supposing that it differed
from that of the earlier palaeolithic hunters) those men belonged.[1534]
IV. PALAEOLITHIC MAN
1. The people who inhabited this island in the Old Stone Age appear
to have been confined to the south; for no palaeolithic implement
has yet been found further north than Lincoln, or, as some maintain,
the East Riding of Yorkshire.[1535] An attempt has indeed been made
to prove that such tools were used in Scotland;[1536] but the best
judges are unanimously of opinion that the contention has not been
established.[1537]
Little direct evidence exists as to the physical type of the
palaeolithic inhabitants of Britain. Only four human skulls have
been found in England which can be referred to that period,--one at
Galley Hill, near Swanscombe,[1538] one at Westley, near Bury St.
Edmunds,[1539] and two in the Cattedown cave near Plymouth:[1540]
but it is not certain that the first was contemporaneous with the
beds which contained it:[1541] of the second only fragments remained
from which it was impossible to determine the contour;[1542] and the
others could not be removed entire. Almost all the older palaeolithic
skulls, however, which have been discovered in Western Europe belong
apparently to the same race,[1543] which may have been represented
among the hunters who entered Britain when it still formed part of
the Continent. Indeed the Galley Hill skull, whether it belonged to
a palaeolithic man or not, has certain characteristics of the most
famous representative of the race,--the Neanderthal skull, which was
discovered about the middle of the last century in the valley of
the Neander in Rhenish Prussia.[1544] The skulls of this type are
extraordinarily dolichocephalic; and the people to whom they belonged
had extremely low and retreating foreheads, heavy and projecting lower
jaws, and amazingly prominent brow ridges, and were short, big-boned,
and muscular.[1545]
But what if the Neanderthal skull was not human? If that poor creature
had but known how famous he, or it, was to become! His broken cranium
has a bibliography of its own. Virchow, who, however, late in life
changed his mind, at one time regarded it as abnormal,--pathological.
Huxley and Broca vigorously defended its respectability; and at the end
of the nineteenth century the most eminent anthropologists of Europe
and America accepted it as the type of the most ancient of the known
races of men. But in 1901 a German anthropologist, Dr. G. Schwalbe,
wrote an article of appalling length,[1546] which disturbed settled
convictions. Huxley had pronounced the Neanderthal to be the most
ape-like of all known human skulls: Schwalbe refused to regard it as
human, in the accepted sense, at all. For him it represents a distinct
species, intermediate between the _Pithecanthropus_ of Java--the famous
‘missing link’, whose remains were discovered a few years ago by Dr.
Dubois--and man himself. In the same class Schwalbe places the skulls
of Spy, which have always been grouped along with that of Neanderthal;
and he insists that all the human palaeolithic skulls of Europe,
however closely they may appear to resemble these, are in reality
different.[1547] ‘In the Neanderthal skull,’ says Dr. Laloy, in a lucid
summary of Schwalbe’s article, which will satisfy all who are not
specialists, ‘the greatest length coincides with the “inio-glabellar”
diameter,’ that is to say, the diameter measured from the space between
the supraciliary, or brow, ridges and the sinus at the back of the
neck: this, he adds, is never the case in man. No, not in man as we
know him. But what sense are we to attach to the word ‘human’? Was
there ever a creature of whom it could be affirmed that he was the
first man?[1548]
Ten or twelve skulls, which, in dolichocephaly and prominence of the
supraciliary ridges, resemble those of the Neanderthal type, but,
unlike them, have high foreheads, and are said to have belonged to
tall men, have lately been found associated with tools of Mousterian
form,[1549] at Krapina in Northern Croatia.[1550] Fourteen skeletons,
which may evidently be assigned to the same group, have been found at
Předmost in Moravia,[1551] and another at its capital, Bruenn.[1552]
But the Palaeolithic Age, in Britain as in other parts of Europe, was
of such immense duration that it would be absurd to assume that it had
no other representatives than men of the Neanderthal type; and the
‘artists’ of the latest period, whose creations have been discovered
in the caves of La Madelaine and Les Eyzies,[1553] belonged to a
different race, represented by skulls discovered at Laugerie-Basse
and Chancelade in the valley of the Lozère. While these skulls are
hardly less dolichocephalic than those of the Neanderthal type, they
are in other respects strikingly different, being much more capacious,
and having high and broad foreheads, and brow ridges which are hardly
perceptible.[1554] Although no skulls of this kind have been found
in our own country, it is not improbable that men of the stock to
which they belonged penetrated into Britain; for in one of the caves
of Creswell Crags in Derbyshire there has been found a bone engraved
with the figure of a horse’s head,[1555] which reminds one of the
spirited designs of the artists of the Dordogne, and was associated
with implements of the kind which have been found in the caves of La
Madelaine and Les Eyzies and others of the Dordogne basin.[1556]
The recent systematic exploration of the Baoussé-Roussé caves near
Mentone is of the highest importance because it has demonstrated an
intimate connexion between palaeolithic and neolithic races in Southern
France. All the interments have been proved to be palaeolithic.[1557]
The newest skeleton in the Grotte des Enfants approximates to the
dolichocephalic type of the Neolithic Age.[1558] Beneath it, 5
metres 15 millimetres lower down, lay a gigantic skeleton, closely
resembling but far older than that of the famous ‘old man’ of
Cro-Magnon, which is commonly assigned to the earliest neolithic
times, but may possibly be as old as the period that in France is
recognized as transitional.[1559] This skeleton has certain negroid
characteristics,[1560] which, however, are more pronounced in the
two most ancient skeletons of the Grotte des Enfants, discovered
70 millimetres lower still and associated with the bones of a
rhinoceros.[1561] M. Verneau argues that the prognathism which appears
in certain skeletons of Western Europe of the early Bronze Age was
connected by atavism with these primitive denizens of the Riviera.[1562]
2. Professor Boyd Dawkins draws a sharp distinction between ‘the
River-drift men’ and ‘the Cave-men’. I must remark that the term
‘Cave-men’ is not happily chosen; for the professor himself assures us
that ‘the Cave-men did not always use caves’, and that ‘the habit of
camping in the open air must have been the rule ... because caverns and
rock-shelters are only met with in very limited areas’;[1563] while
on the other hand he points out that ‘River-drift men’ often lived in
caves.[1564] By ‘the Cave-men’ he means those who made implements of
what he terms ‘the higher types’, that is, the types which are called
after the caves of Le Moustier, Solutré, and La Madelaine. Observing
that there were ‘Cave-men’ not only in our own country and in France,
but also in Belgium, Switzerland, and Germany, he argues that ‘from
this distribution of the implements it is evident that the Cave-man
belongs neither to the southern group of the Pleistocene animals nor
to the temperate which found its way over the mountain barriers into
Spain, Italy, and Greece. On the other hand,’ he continues, ‘the
River-drift man must be considered as a member either of the temperate
or southern fauna of Europe, because his remains are met with in the
regions of the Mediterranean, north [and also south] of those mountain
barriers.’[1565]
Granting that no implements of the higher types have been discovered
in caves south of the ‘mountain barriers’, it is hardly safe to
conclude that the ‘Cave-men’ did not belong either to the southern
or the temperate group of mammals.[1566] The question is whether
the implements to which the professor refers were characteristic of
one palaeolithic race to the exclusion of others. Assuming that such
implements do not exist outside the area in which they have been
found--a very rash assumption--it does not follow that the men who
made them belonged to a race different from their contemporaries
whose tools have been discovered in the drift. Only one interment of
the Late Celtic Period has been found in Scotland, and that quite
recently;[1567] yet there were numerous Celts then in North as well as
in South Britain.
The professor also insists[1568] that ‘the absence of the higher
types of implement in the camping-places of the River-drift men
cannot be accounted for on the ground that they are smaller or ...
more perishable’; for, he says, ‘camping-places of the Cave-men have
been met with in France [for instance at Solutré] ... in which the
implements are associated in the same manner as in the caves’.
I reply, first, that it is begging the question to say that the men
who encamped at Solutré were ‘Cave-men’ as distinct from ‘River-drift
men’; secondly, that implements of Le Moustier type, which were
characteristic of the earliest French ‘Cave-men’,[1569] are common both
in France and Britain in the river-drift;[1570] and thirdly, with due
deference to the professor, that the absence ‘of the higher types of
implement’ from the river-drift is as easily explicable as the absence
of implements of bone or wood:--partly they were more perishable and
would be more difficult to find, and partly they were less likely to
be used in the field.[1571] Besides, is it not possible that none of
the very few palaeolithic ‘camping-places’ that have been found in
this country belonged to the Solutrean period? As we have seen, the
professor himself affirms that ‘the Cave-men’ encamped as a rule not in
caves but in the open air: they, like ‘the River-drift men’ were, as he
himself assures us, hunters: why then have hardly any of their ‘higher
types of implement’ been found in this country in the field? Simply for
the reasons which I have given. And since ‘the Cave-men’, like ‘the
River-drift men’, lived commonly in the open air, how could the latter,
even if they belonged to a different race, have escaped the influence
of the former or have failed to acquire their culture? And how could
the two races have escaped amalgamating?
The ‘Cave-men’, as Professor Boyd Dawkins himself admits,[1572]
undoubtedly used certain implements of river-drift type as well as
‘the higher types’; nor is there any reason to suppose that the
‘River-drift men’ did not use implements of ‘the higher types’ as well
as implements of river-drift type, except the fact, easily accounted
for, that the former are not found in the drift. Professor Boyd
Dawkins himself strenuously maintains that ‘River-drift men’ as well
as ‘Cave-men’ lived in caves.[1573] How then can he prove that the
two sets of occupants were ethnologically different? He insists that
‘the river-drift implements in the Caves of Creswell Crags, of Kent’s
Hole, and of the Grotte de l’Église, are found in the strata below
those with the implements of the Cave-men, and consequently that the
River-drift men lived in Britain and France before the Cave-men.’[1574]
But on his own showing the owners of both sets of implements did
live in caves; and so far nothing is proved except that those who
used one set were more ancient than those who used the other. ‘Some
caves also,’ he adds, ‘were inhabited by River-drift men, who have
left behind their implements without any trace of the higher types
of the Cave-men.’[1575] But here again nothing is proved save that
these particular ‘River-drift men’ had not yet learned to make ‘the
higher types’. The professor might have a good case if he could say,
River-drift implements have been found in the lower strata of caves:
in the upper strata none have been found, but only ‘the higher types’;
consequently the men who used the higher types were quite different
from those of the later Palaeolithic Age whose implements have been
recovered from river-drift. But this he could not truly say; for
implements of river-drift type have been found, although rarely, in the
highest strata of caves.[1576] Lastly, I would ask the professor, who
insists that ‘the Cave-men’ were ‘northern mammals’, and that they did
not enter Europe until long after the appearance of ‘the River-drift
men’, to tell us whence they came.
3. Are we to count the palaeolithic inhabitants of Britain among our
ancestors? ‘I do not consider,’ says Dr. Garson, ‘that there is any
evidence of the existence of the direct descendants of Palaeolithic
man among the osteological remains of Neolithic or subsequent date in
Britain.’[1577] On the other hand, Dr. Beddoe[1578] thinks that the
oldest inhabitants of this country may have left descendants, whom he
is inclined to identify with ‘some Mongoloid race’, traces of which,
he believes, are discernible in the population of the west of England;
while two distinguished French anthropologists, MM. de Quatrefages and
Hamy, affirm that the Neanderthal race ‘has left a permanent imprint
on the population of the three kingdoms’,[1579] and refer to various
skulls of the Neolithic and later periods which resemble more or less
closely that of Neanderthal.[1580] Moreover, it is generally admitted
that even at the present day a few individuals here and there belong
to the same type.[1581] But it does not follow that these persons or
those to whom Dr. Beddoe and M. Hamy refer were descended from men who
lived in Britain in the Palaeolithic Age. That palaeolithic man left
no descendants in any part of the world is of course not maintained
even by the most ardent supporters of the theory of the ‘Hiatus’:
somewhere or other there must have been a link; but Sir John Evans,
as I have observed in the first part of this book,[1582] argues from
the supposed absence of intermediate forms of implements that it did
not exist in this country; and Dr. Keane[1583] thinks that ‘the few
scattered palaeolithic hunters could scarcely have lived through the
last ice-age in a contracted region at one time reduced by subsidence
to a mere cluster of islets’, &c. The answer is, first that there
is no reason to believe that in ‘the last ice-age’ or at any time
between the dawn of the latest palaeolithic period and the arrival
of neolithic man Britain was ‘a mere cluster of islets’;[1584] and
secondly that, as Professor Boyd Dawkins assures us, out of forty-eight
species of mammalian fauna living in Britain in the Palaeolithic,
thirty-one survived in the Neolithic Age.[1585] Professor Boyd Dawkins,
however, insists that ‘the mere contrast between the Palaeolithic
and wild Neolithic faunas implies a zoological break of the first
magnitude’.[1586] I take leave to say that it implies no break at all,
seeing that thirty-one of the older species confessedly lived on: it
implies no more than is implied by the disappearance of the urus, the
wolf, the wild boar, and many other animals which were living in this
island at a time since which it has been continuously inhabited by
man. The professor triumphantly points out that in those caves which
were successively used as dwellings by palaeolithic and neolithic
people ‘the remains of the domestic animals are found _alone_ in the
upper Prehistoric [or neolithic] strata.’[1587] Undoubtedly. But what
then? The fact does not prove that palaeolithic man had become extinct
when neolithic man arrived: it merely proves that the latter had
domestic animals, and that the former had not. Arab horses, Siamese
cats, and many other animals have been introduced into this country
since the Christian era: yet the people who were here before their
introduction did not become extinct. And if ‘in a great many cases
the lower Palaeolithic strata [in caves] are sealed down, and mapped
off from the Neolithic, by a layer of stalagmite’,[1588] that only
proves ‘a break of continuity between the two periods’ as far as those
caves are concerned. The Palaeolithic Age, says the professor, ‘was
continental, the Neolithic insular in North-Western Europe.’[1589] He
means that in the Palaeolithic Age Great Britain was an outlying part
of the Continent, and that the neolithic invaders had to sail across
the Channel.[1590] But why should the formation of the Channel have
extinguished the palaeolithic race? ‘There is obviously,’ continues the
professor, ‘a great gulf fixed between the rude hunter civilisation of
the one and the agricultural and pastoral civilisation of the other.’
Obviously. But the gulf is not more obvious than that which separated
the civilization of the Red Indians from the civilization of the
Pilgrim Fathers. Yet the Red Indians still lived on.
It is true that if the professor has failed to show that the
Palaeolithic Age in Britain was abruptly terminated, he has no
difficulty in disposing of certain arguments which have been adduced
to show that it was not. When, for instance, Mr. Allen Brown points
to the implements of palaeolithic type which were found in the refuse
heaps of the neolithic settlement at Cissbury in Sussex, he replies
that ‘in the vast accumulation of refuse, representing every style in
the chipping, from the rough block of flint ... to the highly finished
axe, broken ... by an unhappy blow, it is obvious that there must
be some which would represent well-known Palaeolithic types.’[1591]
Nevertheless it remains true that not one of the facts which he has
stated is inconsistent with the hypothesis that men may have lived on
in Britain in the palaeolithic stage of culture until the time when the
first neolithic immigrants arrived. What his opponents suggest is that
certain types of palaeolithic implements survived into the Neolithic
Age;[1592] in other words, that implements of those types continued
to be manufactured or used then. That this was the case in Ireland is
certain;[1593] and, since there is no evidence of a Palaeolithic Age in
Ireland, it seems not unreasonable to conjecture that they were made by
descendants of palaeolithic refugees from Britain or Gaul. Mr. Allen
Brown may be wrong in maintaining that implements which he has found
‘at or near the surface’ at East Dean in Sussex are ‘mesolithic’, that
is, belong to a period of transition;[1594] but Sir John Evans himself
says[1595] of some of the implements, usually classed as palaeolithic,
which have been found in the cave earth of the famous Kent’s Cavern in
a position which authorizes us to assume that the people to whom they
belonged were not separated by any ‘hiatus’ from the palaeolithic race
whose remains were found immediately underneath, that ‘so far as form
is concerned, there is little or nothing to distinguish them from the
analogous implements of the Neolithic Period’. Is it not possible that
these and some of the ruder implements which have hitherto been classed
as neolithic may have been fabricated not by neolithic immigrants but,
after their immigration, by descendants of the palaeolithic race?[1596]
Those who deny that mesolithic implements have been found in Britain
deny also that they have been found anywhere else. Granted for the
sake of argument. But if their general absence does not weaken the
certainty that the supposed hiatus was not universal, how can their
absence in Britain prove that there was a hiatus here? In Part I I have
shown that it is impossible to frame any theory which shall account
satisfactorily for the assumed disappearance of British palaeolithic
man. Professor Boyd Dawkins asks us to believe that the ‘Cave-men’
fled in terror before the neolithic invaders and eventually settled
in Greenland, where they became the ancestors of the Eskimos; and in
support of this theory he assures us that ‘Palaeolithic man appeared
in Europe with the arctic mammalia, lived in Europe along with them,
and disappeared with them’; that the gloves of the ‘Cave-men’ were
‘similar to those now used by the Eskimos’; that their implements ‘are
of the same kind as those of the Eskimos’; that, like the Eskimos,
they did not take the trouble to bury their dead; and that ‘the most
astonishing bond of union between the Cave-men and the Eskimos is
the art of representing animals’.[1597] Judging from the specimens
of Eskimo art which the professor gives, I confess that what I find
astonishing is its inferiority to that of the Cave-men;[1598] there
is no evidence that the Cave-men of Britain wore gloves; and if they
did, may not the reason have been, not that there was any connexion
between them and the Eskimos, but that their hands were cold? Is the
professor sure that ‘the River-drift men’ did not also wear gloves? We
do not know whether palaeolithic man appeared in Europe with the arctic
mammalia: he certainly did not accompany them from the north; and it
is an article of faith with French anthropologists that he did not
disappear with them, but became the ancestor of neolithic man. There
is a general resemblance between the palaeolithic drift implements of
all countries; and in the earlier part of this volume many facts have
been noted which show how cautious one should be in inferring identity
of race from similarity in implements, weapons, or ornaments. There is
not the slightest evidence that ‘the Cave-men’ did not bury their dead;
and there is irrefragable evidence, as we have seen, that cave-men
in the Riviera and in Croatia did.[1599] Again, since the professor
differentiates the ‘Cave-men’ from the ‘River-drift men’ of Britain,
can he prove that the latter did bury their dead? If not, what becomes
of his argument? Finally, the theory that the Eskimos are descendants
of ‘the Cave-men’ of Western Europe has been rejected by every recent
inquirer.[1600]
How does Professor Boyd Dawkins account for the disappearance, which
he assumes, of palaeolithic man? ‘Simply,’ he says, ‘by assuming that
at the close of the Pleistocene age, when they came into contact
with Neolithic invaders, there were the same feelings between them
as existed in Hearne’s times between the Eskimos and the Red Indian,
terror and defenceless hatred being, on the one side, met by ruthless
extermination on the other. In this way the Cave-men would be gradually
driven from Europe.’[1601] That men who were ruthlessly exterminated
should have survived to become the ancestors of the Eskimos is
certainly remarkable. But seriously I would ask the professor whether
he has really succeeded in persuading himself that ‘the Cave-men’ were
one and all either exterminated or driven out of Europe. Did none
remain? He assures us that ‘the Cave-men’ migrated eastward; and he
still insists, in defiance of all French craniologists, that ‘neither
of the two races of Palaeolithic man have left behind any marks in the
existing population of Europe’.[1602] How they contrived to make their
slow progress across the Continent without leaving one descendant is
a problem which he does not attempt to solve. And since he himself
admits, or rather affirms, that they ‘came into contact with Neolithic
invaders’, it is difficult to see how he can maintain the existence of
a hiatus.
The professor has asserted that there is ‘no evidence in any part
of the world of a continuity between the Palaeolithic and Neolithic
ages’.[1603] Yet he of course admits that it must have existed
somewhere. Good reasons have been given for believing that it existed
in France.[1604] Why not also in Britain?[1605]
Such are the reasons by which I endeavour to justify myself in refusing
to believe that neolithic man, when he entered Britain, found none to
welcome or to oppose him save the thirty-one species of mammalian fauna
which Professor Boyd Dawkins has spared.
V. THE PYGMIES (?)
British pygmies are the creation of Celtic imagination. The evidence on
which we are required to believe that they existed is this. Professor
Rhys[1606] suggests that the name of the Coritani, a tribe mentioned by
Ptolemy,[1607] who inhabited the country between the Trent and the Nen,
is related to the word _cor_, a dwarf. ‘Then,’ the professor concludes,
‘we should have accordingly to suppose the old race to have survived
so long and in such numbers that the Celtic lords of Southern Britain
called the people of that area by a name meaning dwarfs.’ Afterwards,
referring to various articles by Mr. David MacRitchie, he observes
that in certain parts of Wales and Scotland there are mounds enclosing
cells, which are ‘frequently so small as to prove beyond doubt that
those who inhabited them were of remarkably small stature’;[1608]
and he finds in Welsh, Irish, and Scotch folk-lore traditions which
confirm him in the belief that these cells were inhabited by dwarfs,
whom he calls ‘the Mound Folk’. ‘This strange people,’ he tells us,
‘seems to have exercised on the Celts ... a sort of permanent spell
of mysteriousness and awe stretching to the verge of adoration ...
the Celt’s faculty of exaggeration, combined with his incapacity to
comprehend the weird and uncanny population of the mounds and caves
... has enabled him ... to bequeath to the great literatures of
Western Europe a motley train of dwarfs,’[1609] &c. The professor’s
conclusion[1610] is that the earliest people who inhabited these
islands [apparently after the Palaeolithic Age] were ‘the mound folk,
consisting of the short swarthy people variously caricatured by our
fairy tales’; and that they were conquered by neolithic invaders, who,
he tells us, ‘made slaves and drudges of the mound-haunting race.’
‘These,’ the professor warns us, perhaps superfluously, ‘are
conjectures which I cannot establish; but possibly somebody else may.’
I venture to hint a doubt. Not only is the derivation of _Coritani_
utterly uncertain,[1611] but it is safe to assume that the Celtic
tribe who undoubtedly conquered the country which belonged in
Ptolemy’s time to the Coritani would not have called its population,
themselves included, by a name which described not even the people
whom they found in possession, but the ‘slaves and drudges’ of that
people, or rather of their neolithic predecessors! The professor
indeed argued in _Celtic Folk-Lore_[1612] that the Coritanian dwarfs
‘may be conjectured to have had quiet from invaders from the Continent
because of the inaccessible nature of their fens’. How then did they
themselves and the non-dwarfish invaders of the Bronze Age get there?
It is almost superfluous to remark that in the year before and in the
year after the publication of _Celtic Folk-Lore_ the professor counted
the Coritani among the Brythonic ‘invaders from the Continent’.[1613]
The ‘mound-dwellings’ which Mr. MacRitchie describes[1614] belong to
the class of structures which are popularly known as ‘Picts’ houses’,
‘Earth-houses’, or ‘Weems’, and are immeasurably later than the period
to which Professor Rhys’s theory would compel him to assign them. The
mere fact, indeed, that many of them have been shown by excavation
to have been occupied in Roman times does not prove that they were
not constructed earlier; but I can find no evidence that any of them
belong even to the Neolithic Age. Mr. MacRitchie himself assures us
that one which was opened at Crichton in Mid-Lothian ‘was proved
to have been built not earlier than 80 A.D.’;[1615] and he assigns
the ‘mound-dwellings’ in general not to a pre-neolithic race but to
the Picts of historic times.[1616] He also says that one which was
explored in 1855 contained four chambers, of which the largest was ‘6
feet 2 inches long, 4 feet 6 inches in height, and 2 feet 6 inches
wide’, and, with a fascinating lack of humour, he adds that ‘while
the size of the stones used in its construction is evidence of great
personal strength on the part of the builders, the small and narrow
rooms seem to indicate a diminutive race.’[1617] When the reader is
invited to believe that ‘those who inhabited’ these ‘rooms’, which
were only built by the exertion of ‘great personal strength’, ‘were
of remarkably short stature’, he falls to calculating whether even
a race of Tom Thumbs, each of whom possessed the muscular power of
a Sandow, would not have used their strength to make their rooms
a little more comfortable.[1618] Mr. MacRitchie shows more acumen
when, after remarking that ‘two alleged Fairy Knowes in Shetland’
proved on investigation to be natural hillocks, and that another in
Stirlingshire ‘was only a sepulchral mound’, he concludes that these
instances are ‘sufficient to show the unreliable nature of popular
tradition’.[1619] If it was ‘the Celt’s faculty of exaggeration’ that
‘enabled him to bequeath to the great literatures of Western Europe a
motley train of dwarfs’, why should he not have exercised his faculty
upon the comparatively short neolithic population rather than upon the
imaginary pygmies whom Professor Rhys has appointed as their ‘slaves
and drudges’?[1620] And if the imagination which created ‘a motley
train of dwarfs’ had pygmies for its basis of fact, will the professor
tell us who were the originals of the ‘motley train’ of giants whom
the imaginations of various European peoples associated with the
dwarfs?[1621] I am aware that Professor Kollmann[1622] claims to have
proved that pygmies existed in prehistoric times in France, Germany,
Switzerland, and other European countries; but the fact remains that
no evidence has been produced that a race of pre-neolithic or even
prehistoric pygmies existed in this country save only that which is
furnished by ‘the Celt’s faculty of exaggeration’.
VI. NEOLITHIC MAN
The remains of neolithic man have been discovered in caves, in
cairns, in submerged forests, and in barrows in Essex, Wiltshire,
Gloucestershire, Somersetshire, Derbyshire, Staffordshire, Yorkshire,
Caermarthenshire, Denbighshire, the Isle of Man,[1623] Argyllshire
and the island of Arran, Caithness, and the Orkney Islands.[1624] The
neolithic population, however, it need hardly be said, were scattered
over many other parts of Britain in which their skeletons have not
come to light. Many anthropologists consider that all of them belong
to one race; but at all events the great majority represent men of
medium stature with long skulls; and it is a generally accepted article
of faith that no long barrow has ever yielded any article of metal
in association with a primary interment, and that no skull whose
cephalic index exceeded 79, belonging to a primary interment, has
ever been found in a long barrow since the time when anthropologists
first began to measure skulls in this country.[1625] According to a
table[1626] published by Dr. Beddoe in 1894, the value of which has
been confirmed by later measurements,[1627] the cephalic indices of 87
skulls belonging to the Neolithic Age ranged from 63 to 79; and, as Dr.
Thurnam points out,[1628] some of them are more dolichocephalic than
those of any modern European people.
When we come to examine the stature of the neolithic Britons, we
find that, according to Thurnam’s latest estimate,[1629] the average
height of 25 male skeletons found by him in long barrows was 5 feet
5·4 inches,[1630] or 1 metre 661: but Dr. Beddoe gives good reasons,
to which I have already called attention,[1631] for believing this
estimate to be too low; and his own is 5 feet 6.7 inches, or 1 metre
694.[1632] Recent measurements (although they include those of
individuals under 5 feet) do not invalidate the evidence of these
figures;[1633] and the few Scottish skeletons which undoubtedly belong
to the Neolithic Age have yielded practically the same results.[1634]
Dr. Garson, describing the dolichocephalic Long Barrow skulls, with
which anthropologists agree in associating those that have been found
in the ‘horned cairns’ of Caithness,[1635] in the neolithic cairns
of the isle of Arran,[1636] and in the caves of Oban,[1637] says
that ‘the superciliary ridges and glabella [the surface between the
superciliary ridges] are moderately or even feebly developed ... the
malar [or cheek] bones are never prominent ... there is no tendency
to prognathism ... as a whole the face is oval in form; the jaws
are small and fine ... the facial characters are mild and without
exaggerated development in any direction’.[1638] It may be added that
the Long Barrow skulls, as Thurnam pointed out, are ‘more or less
depressed--platycephalic’,[1639] and that the nose is usually aquiline.
The general truth of the foregoing descriptions will be apparent to
any one who examines the plates in _Crania Britannica_; but we must
take account of exceptions. As Dr. Davis pointed out,[1640] a skull
found in the Long Lowe barrow, near Wetton in Staffordshire, is very
different from another dolichocephalic skull from a chambered long
barrow at Uley in Gloucestershire.[1641] In the latter the brow
ridges are strongly marked, and the chin is comparatively broad and
square.[1642] Of another skull, found in a barrow near Littleton Drew
in North Wiltshire, Thurnam observes that the lower jaw is ‘thick and
heavy’.[1643] A third, taken from a barrow at West Kennet in North
Wiltshire, has an amazingly angular and square lower jaw, which, as
Thurnam truly says, ‘deviates considerably from the normal type.’[1644]
Again, while the average stature of the Long Barrow skeletons which
Thurnam examined was, according to the higher estimate of Dr. Beddoe,
only 5 feet 6·7 inches,[1645] and Rolleston affirmed that he had ‘never
found the stature to exceed 5 feet 6 inches ... in any skeleton from
a barrow which was undoubtedly of the stone and bone period’,[1646] a
skeleton found in the West Kennet barrow had a thigh bone 20 inches
long;[1647] and its possessor would therefore have stood 6 feet high,
or nearly 1 metre 830, on the lowest computation, and, according
to the estimate of Dr. Beddoe, 6 feet 1½ inch or 1 metre 867. Not
less remarkable is a dolichocephalic skeleton of almost identical
dimensions,[1648] described by Dr. Garson, which, although it was found
in a round barrow, undoubtedly belonged to the Neolithic Age.[1649]
It is evident, therefore, that although not one of the people,
so far as we can tell, who buried their dead in long barrows was
brachycephalic in index, yet not only was there a very wide range in
their indices, but some of them were strikingly different, both in form
of skull and feature and in stature, from the normal type. Were they
the result of crossing between individuals of the Long Barrow race and
tall brachycephalic invaders who will be noticed later? Thurnam himself
pointed out that a male skull, whose cephalic index was 79, found in a
primary interment in the long barrow of Charlton Abbot’s in Wiltshire,
was ‘unquestionably brachycephalous’.[1650] The mere fact that its
index was below the conventional limit did not blind him to its true
character.
Let us now see how far those skulls of the Neolithic Age which have
been found in other surroundings resemble the type which is associated
with long barrows.
Putting aside the Scottish skulls which have been already mentioned,
they comprise specimens found in the caves of Perthi-Chwareu in
Denbighshire and Cefn, near St. Asaph; in a chambered cairn at Tyddyn
Bleiddyn, near Cefn; in caves at Rhosdigre and Llandebie, and at
Uphill in Somersetshire;[1651] in the East Ham Marshes, along with two
‘chipped celts’, fifteen feet below the surface;[1652] in the bed of
the Trent at Muskham;[1653] and in a submarine forest, thirty feet
below the level of the sea, near the Land’s End.[1654] Skulls found in
tumuli at Keiss in Caithness,[1655] in a tumulus at Towyn-y-Capel in
Anglesey,[1656] and in ‘what seems to be an alluvial deposit formed by
the river Dove’, near Ledbury Hall in Derbyshire,[1657] may be added
doubtfully to the list;[1658] but, as we shall afterwards see,[1659]
there need be no doubt that certain brachycephalic skulls of the type
which is commonly associated with the round barrows belonged to the
Neolithic Age.
Professor Ripley[1660] holds that the Long Barrow people were ‘quite
similar to’ those whose remains have been found in caves, if ‘somewhat
less extreme in physical type’; and Huxley[1661] thought that all the
dolichocephalic and mesaticephalic British skulls of the Neolithic
Age belonged to the same race. Similarly Dr. Garson[1662] identifies
the river-bed type, represented in Britain by the Muskham skull, with
that of the long barrows; while, according to Professor Boyd Dawkins,
the skulls from the Welsh caves and from Tyddyn Bleiddyn ‘agree in
shape ... with some of those given in Tables i. and ii. of the “Crania
Britannica” as “ancient British”’,[1663] and ‘belong to that type
which Professor Huxley terms the river-bed skull’,[1664] and which,
according to him, was identical ‘in general characters’ with the Long
Barrow type.[1665] Dr. Beddoe,[1666] on the contrary, says that both
they and the Caithness skulls ‘depart considerably from the typical
long-barrow cranium’, and is inclined to regard them as belonging to a
distinct mesaticephalic race.[1667] The cephalic indices of the Welsh
skulls, which range from 74·3 to 80,[1668] are considerably higher than
those of the Long Barrow skulls in general; and (though this may be
unimportant) the average height of the men to whom they belonged was
‘little more than 5 feet’,[1669] or considerably below the average
height of the Long Barrow people. In my opinion neither they nor the
Land’s End skull, which resembles them,[1670] are pure specimens of
the Long Barrow type;[1671] and the same may be said of the East Ham
and Muskham skulls. The one from Towyn-y-Capel, on the other hand,
might be supposed to have come from a long barrow. The cephalic indices
of the Caithness skulls range from 73 to 78. Four of them[1672]
might, I think, pass muster as Long Barrow skulls; but the remaining
two[1673] appear to me different. Of the Ledbury skull, the cephalic
index of which is 77, Huxley himself says that ‘a little flattening
and elongation, with a rather greater development of the supraciliary
ridges would convert this into the nearest likeness to the Neanderthal
skull which has yet been discovered’.[1674] It may be that there was
some infusion of the blood of the Long Barrow race in all the people
to whom these skulls belonged; but I have little doubt that if, with
the few exceptions which I have noted, they were placed on a table
among those of the long barrows, a skilled craniologist could pick out
every one of them. The difference is easily accounted for when it is
remembered that the long barrows were almost certainly erected late in
the Neolithic Age,[1675] and that there were neolithic men in Scotland
when the estuary of the Forth extended 8 or 10 miles west of Stirling,
and when the sea relatively to the west coast was 25 feet higher than
it is now.[1676]
A female skull, belonging apparently to the Neolithic Age, was
discovered about the year 1891 ‘on the Batten promontory, near Plymouth
Sound’.[1677] According to the report of the discovery, it ‘approaches
dolichocephaly’. A photograph of this skull[1678] reminded me of some
of the illustrations of round skulls in _Crania Britannica_. To quote
from the report,[1679] ‘the most striking features of the face are
the great size of the orbits, the strongly marked superciliary ridge,
the lowness of the retreating forehead’; and all these features are
characteristic of some of the most typical Bronze Age skulls.
A few years ago Professor Macalister said that he had not recognized
any skulls of the Long Barrow type in Ireland,[1680] where no such
barrows exist; but several specimens have since been found.[1681]
There is, as we have seen, reason to believe that the neolithic
population of Britain were not homogeneous; but, with the
qualifications that have been already noted, it may be truly said that
the people of the long barrows present a uniform type. Whence did
they come, and what were their affinities? The view which may be said
to hold the field, although it is not universally accepted,[1682] is
that they belonged to the so-called ‘Iberian’ race. Before we discuss
this theory, it may be well to warn the reader that among those who
hold it are writers who have absolutely no knowledge of ‘the Iberian
question’ except on the side of physical anthropology. The word
‘Iberian’, as used by ethnologists, is not always confined to the
Iberians of history, that is, the inhabitants of the Spanish peninsula
and of Southern Gaul between the Pyrenees and the Rhône:[1683] it is
often loosely applied to a people, possessing certain common physical
features, who inhabited various parts of the Mediterranean basin, and,
according to some writers, notably Sergi,[1684] penetrated in late
quaternary and neolithic times into almost every country of Europe. And
when it is applied by ethnologists to the Iberians of history, it is
not applied to all of them, for the Iberians of history were of course
a mixed people: the ethnologists are thinking only of those Iberians
who belonged to the dolichocephalic Mediterranean stock.
The arguments which have been brought forward in favour of the theory
that the Long Barrow race belonged to the Iberian branch of the
Mediterranean stock may be summarized as follows:--First, according
to Tacitus,[1685] the Silures, a British tribe which in his time
inhabited what is now Monmouthshire, Glamorganshire, and Herefordshire,
were dark and had curly hair, from which fact, as well as from their
geographical position, he inferred that Iberians, that is inhabitants
of the Spanish peninsula, had migrated into Britain.[1686] But if the
dolichocephalic Iberians were dark, so were the brachycephalic people
who settled in Gaul in the Neolithic Age: Tacitus’s geographical
argument was based upon the notion, prevalent among the ancient
geographers,[1687] that Spain was ‘opposite’ and near Britain; and it
is of course incredible that people should have sailed in the Neolithic
Age from Spain to our island.
Secondly, much stress has been laid upon the alleged resemblance of
the Long Barrow skulls to those of the Basques, the assumption being
that the latter were Iberians, properly so called. Dr. Garson affirms
that there is ‘a strong similarity between Basque skulls and those of
the Neolithic people of Britain’;[1688] while Thurnam[1689] points
out that the skulls of the Basques are very ‘similar in many respects
to the skulls from chambered long barrows of South-West Britain’, and
that the Long Barrow skulls in general closely resemble ‘sixty Basque
skulls lately added to the collection of the Anthropological Society
of Paris’.[1690] Moreover, Dr. Beddoe[1691] says, ‘Many photographs of
Basques ... are recognized, both by myself and by an observant Welsh
anthropologist to whom I have submitted them, as being in no respect
different from some of the ordinary types of feature in South Wales.’
Now, as I have shown elsewhere,[1692] the investigations which have
been made regarding the cranial characters of the Basques have led to
widely different results; and Dr. Garson does not say to what group
of Basque skulls he refers. Both the Spanish and the French Basques,
according to Dr. Collignon,[1693] differ in certain respects from all
other European peoples; but they also differ from each other, the
former being generally dolichocephalic, while the latter are (according
to Broca’s notation)[1694] sub-brachycephalic, and their cranial
capacity is considerably less than that of their Spanish brethren.
Dr. Collignon is inclined to assimilate the Basques generally to the
Kabyle type.[1695] Assuming that the Long Barrow race resembled the
Spanish Basques in certain respects, the resemblance only tends to
show that the ancestors of the Long Barrow race came from the south.
The ancestors, or rather some of the ancestors of the Basques were
undoubtedly Iberians,--in one sense of the word: but the French
Basque type which Dr. Collignon has described, and which he regards
as original,[1696] is in many respects different from that of the
long barrows, which ethnologists call Iberian; and, as I have shown
elsewhere,[1697] the purest French Basques are generally fair, the
Spanish Basques are less dark than other Spaniards, and the Long Barrow
race were undoubtedly dark. Moreover, many ethnologists overlook the
fact that the language of the so-called Iberian inscriptions, which
have been found scattered over the territory that belonged to the
Iberians, cannot be interpreted by the aid of Basque,[1698] and shows
no trace of kinship with Basque.
Thirdly, Sergi, affirming that the Long Barrow people belonged to the
Iberian branch of the stock which he has taught ethnologists to call
Mediterranean, says,[1699] ‘I have compared the forms of the skulls
from British graves with ancient.... Mediterranean skulls, and have
found those characteristic of Spain, of Portugal ... of Greece, of
Hissarlik, and of East Africa.’ The fact is undeniable; but obviously
it does not tend to prove that the Long Barrow race belonged to the
Iberian rather than to the Ligurian branch, which, according to
Sergi,[1700] ‘extends from the Iberian peninsula as far as Italy,’ or
to any other branch of the Mediterranean stock. Moreover, when Sergi
affirms[1701] that ‘wherever the Mediterranean stock established
itself, it preserved its primitive burial custom of inhumation’,
and that ‘incineration was of absolutely Aryan [that is to say, on
his theory, Asiatic] origin’,[1702] he weakens his argument, for
it is certain that incineration was practised by many of the Long
Barrow people.[1703] Furthermore, Sergi tells us that skeletons of
‘the Mediterranean type’ are characterized by ‘slender and delicate
forms’,[1704] and doubtless most of the skeletons which have been found
in long barrows answer to this description; but thirteen skeletons
found in a chambered long barrow at Rodmarton, Gloucestershire, were
distinguished by ‘powerful and vigorous frames’.[1705]
I conclude that there is not sufficient evidence for referring the Long
Barrow people to the Iberian rather than to some other branch of the
Mediterranean stock.
It is generally admitted that the Long Barrow race closely resembled
in cranial characteristics, and to a lesser degree in stature, the
dolichocephalic neolithic population of Gaul, of whom the people whose
remains have been discovered in the caverns of l’Homme Mort[1706] and
Baumes-Chaudes[1707] were perhaps the most typical representatives;
and this resemblance confirms the truth of the theory that the Long
Barrow people were a branch of the ‘Mediterranean’ stock. But one
argument, upon which Thurnam[1708] laid great stress, should warn us
to be cautious in drawing conclusions from the skeletal characters
of prehistoric peoples of whose other characters we are necessarily
ignorant. About the middle of the nineteenth century several skeletons
were discovered in a neolithic barrow at Fontenay, near Caen. Their
skulls resembled those of the long barrows; and the height of the
tallest, according to Thurnam’s system of measurement, would not have
exceeded 5 feet 1 inch, or 1 metre 550. This, he triumphantly remarks,
confirms the opinion that the peoples who erected the sepulchral
chambers at Fontenay and in the south-west of England belonged to the
same race. But the average height of the Long Barrow people, according
to Thurnam, was 5 feet 5·4 inches,[1709] and the average height of
the brachycephalic Round Barrow people 5 feet 8·4 inches.[1710] This
difference of 3 inches is one of the facts upon which he relies to
prove the distinction--a distinction which is of course as certain as
it is universally admitted--between the Long Barrow people and the
brachycephalic Round Barrow people. Yet he regards the difference of
4·4 inches between the average height of the Long Barrow people and the
tallest of the men who were buried at Fontenay as sufficient to prove
the racial identity of the latter with the former!
Dr. Keane[1711] maintains that the route followed by the people who
introduced the neolithic culture into the British Isles is indicated
by the dolmens which abound in many parts of Northern Africa, and are
scattered along the western side of the Spanish peninsula and over
nearly the whole area of France. This is also the opinion of Professor
Flinders Petrie, who affirms that ‘the dolmens belong to one continuous
series, passing from Syria, along North Africa, and up Spain to
Western Europe’,[1712] of Montelius,[1713] Sophus Müller,[1714] and
Sergi.[1715] Penka, on the other hand (I quote from Mr. J. L. Myres’s
exposition of his views), ‘reads the series the other way,’ because
‘while on the north these monuments go back into the Stone Age, in
France and the south they belong to the Bronze Age’. He observes that
‘the discovery of dolmens in North Africa and Syria ... has proceeded
_pari passu_ with the discovery both of actual survival of a tall
blond dolichocephalic race in the same areas, and of evidence in
Egyptian portraiture of its wider extension in the second millennium
B.C.’ He maintains therefore that the earliest dolmen-builders were
dolichocephalic blonds, speaking an Aryan language, in Southern
Scandinavia and Denmark.[1716]
Now the ethnological problem presented by the distribution of the
dolmens is exceedingly difficult; and it is not certain that either
of the above-mentioned views is right. Dolmens are found not only in
the countries which have been already mentioned, but also in Japan,
India, Persia, Arabia, Syria, Palestine, Moab, Asia Minor, the Crimea,
the Netherlands, Northern Germany, and the Balearic Islands;[1717] and
it is possible that in certain other countries their non-existence
may be due simply to lack of the necessary stones.[1718] In the
territory which corresponds with ancient Gaul there are no dolmens
east of the line formed by the Jura and the Vosges;[1719] while the
departments in which they are most numerous form a band extending
obliquely from Finistère to Gard, that is, from the Channel to the
Mediterranean.[1720] The single department of the Morbihan contains
more megalithic monuments, including menhirs, or single standing
stones, than all the other departments put together; but in the list
of dolmens it ranks below Aveyron and Ardèche.[1721] In the Spanish
peninsula almost all the dolmens are concentrated in Portugal,
the north-eastern corner of Spain, and the southern and eastern
seaboard: in Southern Britain they are found in Cornwall, Devonshire,
Dorsetshire, Somersetshire, Wiltshire, Oxfordshire, Berkshire, Kent,
Derbyshire, Staffordshire, and Northumberland, in Monmouthshire,[1722]
Herefordshire, and Wales;[1723] while in Scotland they are represented
by the horned cairns of Caithness and the chambered cairns of Orkney,
Inverness, Argyllshire, Arran, and other islands.[1724] In Ireland they
are everywhere, but most numerous in the west.[1725]
There is a striking resemblance, which, in certain cases, amounts
to almost complete identity of form, between many of the dolmens of
Western Europe and some even of the Caucasus and India; although, as
might have been expected, local peculiarities exist everywhere.[1726]
Thus the chambered long barrow of West Kennet in Wiltshire is
identical in construction with the Hünebedden, or ‘Giants’ Graves’, of
Brandenburg, Mecklenburg, and Hanover;[1727] and close resemblances
have been noted between certain dolmens in Wales and others in Brittany
and Portugal,[1728] between some in Antrim and others in Denmark,[1729]
and between certain Irish dolmens and the peculiar ship-shaped
monuments of the Balearic Isles.[1730] It is of course true that in
sepulchres of such rude and simple construction general resemblance is
inevitable, and does not necessarily imply community of origin: but
when we find that in the Caucasus, in Syria and India, and in every
European country in which dolmens exist some few have one of their
stones pierced with a hole;[1731] that the covering-stones of certain
dolmens in Portugal, Ireland, Cornwall, Sweden, and elsewhere are
indented with small circular depressions,[1732] and that the sepulchral
customs discernible in the dolmens of widely separated countries are
virtually identical,[1733] it must be admitted that there is ground for
the opinion that the custom of dolmen-building originated with some one
people.[1734] On the other hand, it is easily conceivable that these
coincidences originated in customs and beliefs which may have been
common property before the first dolmen was set up, or which may have
been handed on at a later time from tribe to tribe. De Mortillet argued
that dolmens were not the exclusive creation of any one race because
in France skeletons of widely different races have been found within
them.[1735] But this fact only proves that an intruding race buried
their dead in dolmens built by others, or else adopted the custom
of dolmen-building from their predecessors. It has also been argued
that the differences in detail which are noticeable in the dolmens of
the various countries of Western Europe prove that they were not the
work of one migratory people but of various settled tribes; and that
this conclusion is borne out by the similarity between the culture of
the dolmen-builders of widely separated countries such as France and
Denmark.[1736] What is certain is that if the dolmens had been erected
successively by peoples who migrated westward from Syria or even
North Africa, and whose descendants moved on northward to the British
Isles, we should expect to find that the British dolmens belonged to a
period very much later than those of the Mediterranean. But the oldest
dolmens of North Africa are assigned by General Faidherbe to the very
end of the Neolithic and the commencement of the Bronze Age.[1737]
The arguments of Penka, whatever value they may have in regard to
the origin of dolmen-building, certainly do not prove that the Long
Barrow race were descended from Scandinavian ancestors: for their
skulls are easily distinguishable from those of Scandinavia;[1738]
the neolithic pottery of Britain is utterly different from that of
the north;[1739] and the distribution of the dolmens in the British
Isles, where they are most numerous in Western Britain and in Ireland,
is hardly consistent with the theory that the people who erected them
came from the north-east. Moreover, the remains which have been found
in the oldest Scandinavian dolmens indicate that the culture which they
represent was more advanced than that which is manifested in similar
tombs in Gaul or the British Isles.[1740]
On the question of the origin of dolmens I offer no opinion. But in
regard to those of Western Europe the least improbable theory appears
to be that which was first tentatively propounded by M. Cazalis de
Fondonce,[1741] and developed by Mr. Borlase,[1742] namely, that a
dolichocephalic people who were erecting dolmens in France and the
Spanish peninsula, where these monuments may have been evolved from
sepulchral caves,[1743] were forced westward by the brachycephalic
‘Grenelle’ race who invaded those countries in the Neolithic
Age;[1744] that some of them migrated into the British Isles, and
others into Holland and Northern Germany,[1745] whence the custom of
dolmen-building would have spread to Denmark and Scandinavia; and that
others [perhaps] moved southward into Africa. The earlier neolithic
dolmen-builders of Gaul, like the Long Barrow people of Britain,
belonged to the ‘Mediterranean’ type; and on the theory which I have
stated their ancestors might have migrated into Spain and Gaul from
Africa long before the first African dolmen was erected.
Lastly, linguistic arguments have been adduced to prove the African
origin of the Long Barrow race.[1746] Professor Morris Jones[1747]
endeavours to show that the Celtic language was modified, after it had
been introduced into Britain, by the language or languages which it
encountered;[1748] and he claims to have established the syntactical
similarity of the modern Celtic dialects to Egyptian and to the
Hamitic dialects generally, and to have demonstrated that ‘neo-Celtic
syntax agrees with Hamitic in almost every point where it differs from
Aryan’.[1749] This, he concludes, is ‘the linguistic complement of the
anthropological evidence, and the strongest corroboration of the theory
of the kinship of the early inhabitants of Britain to the North African
white race’.
I would not, however, venture to commit myself to the theory of Sergi,
that the cradle of the ‘Iberian’ race, or of the ‘Mediterranean’
race of which it was an offshoot, was in Northern Africa or
Somaliland.[1750] Professor Boyd Dawkins infers ‘from their range as
far north as Scotland, and at least as far to the east as Belgium, that
they travelled by the same paths that the Celtic, Belgic, and Germanic
tribes travelled ... coming from the East, and pushing their way to
the West; and that another [group] mastered Northern Africa’; and he
argues that this view ‘is confirmed by the examination of the domestic
animals which they possessed. The short-horned ox, the sheep, and the
goat, are derived from wild stocks that are now to be found only in
Central Asia.... None of these animals were known in Europe before the
Neolithic Age.’[1751] But any one who has read so far will have seen
that the range of the ‘Iberian’ race ‘as far north as Scotland’ lends
no support to the theory that it originated in Asia. In regard to
the argument which the professor derives from the examination of the
domestic animals, Rolleston[1752] inclined to the view that ‘though
coming in the ultimate resort from the east, [they] ... did not reach
the north of the Alps directly from the East, but only ... from the
Greek and Italian peninsulas’. But the truth is that we do not know
whether the _earliest_ neolithic invaders of the British Isles or of
Western Europe possessed short-horned oxen, sheep, or goats.[1753]
Supposing that these animals came from the East, is it not possible
that they were introduced into Europe not by the ‘Mediterranean’ race
but by brachycephalic neolithic immigrants? Moreover, Professor Boyd
Dawkins has himself admitted that ‘the common domestic hog, descended
from the wild boar, may have been originally tamed in Europe’,[1754]
and that the vegetables possessed by the Swiss lake-dwellers may have
been ‘derived from Southern Europe’;[1755] and it is now generally held
that the domestic animals of the neolithic inhabitants of Europe were
of European origin, and that there is no evidence that their plants and
cereals were derived from Asia.[1756]
On the whole the evidence shows that the neolithic inhabitants of
Britain, or at all events a large proportion of them, were descended
from ancestors who lived in the Mediterranean basin. But it does
not follow that they were more intimately related to the people
whom the ancient writers called Iberians than to some other branch
of the Mediterranean stock. It is certain that before the Romans
entered the Spanish peninsula two languages at least besides Celtic
were spoken there,--Basque and the language of the so-called Iberian
inscriptions.[1757] The latter has not yet been deciphered: but, as we
have seen,[1758] all attempts to explain it by means of Basque have
failed; and, as Professor Morris Jones admits, all attempts to discover
traces of Basque influence in the Celtic dialects have been equally
unsuccessful.[1759]
Therefore it should be distinctly understood that if the term ‘Iberian’
is to be applied to the neolithic inhabitants of Britain, it must be
taken in a purely conventional sense.[1760]
M. d’Arbois de Jubainville[1761] adduces various British place-names,
for example, _Sabrina_ (the Severn), Isca (the Exe), _Albion_, and
_Cantium_ (Kent), which he chooses to call Ligurian; but I am not aware
that he has made any converts. Little or nothing is known about the
Ligurian tongue;[1762] and even if M. d’Arbois’s conjectures could be
verified their ethnological value would be comparatively slight; for,
as I have shown elsewhere,[1763] there is some reason to believe that
the Ligurians, like the Iberians, belonged to the ‘Mediterranean’ stock.
It is perhaps hardly necessary now to insist upon the fact that the
Long Barrow race is not extinct. Not only have their remains been
found, as we shall presently see, in graves of the Bronze Age and
the Late Celtic period,[1764] but men of the same type, but little
modified, are still numerous.[1765]
It is often taken for granted that no round barrows were erected in
Britain before the close of the Neolithic Age, and that the earliest
of the brachycephalic invaders whose remains have been found in them
landed with bronze weapons in their hands.[1766] But these assumptions
are made in spite of conclusive evidence. There is not the slightest
doubt that most if not all of the circular chambered cairns of
Argyllshire, Caithness, Orkney, and Derbyshire were erected before
the Bronze Age in those parts began.[1767] Dr. Garson, speaking of
brachycephalic skulls which have been found in round barrows in Orkney,
says that ‘the fact that no metals of any kind were found, and that
all the implements were of the most primitive manufacture, points to
the people belonging to the unpolished stone period’, and concludes
that ‘we probably post-date the existence of the people who buried
in the round barrows of Orkney if we attribute them with (_sic_) the
same antiquity as those of the round barrows of England’.[1768] Dr.
Garson has also shown that the round barrow of Howe Hill in Yorkshire
was erected in the Neolithic Age, and that the skeletons found in it
belong to the Long Barrow type.[1769] The round-headed people who
introduced drinking-cups into our island brought no bronze with them.
According to Barnard Davis, a skull from a chambered round barrow
at Parsley Hay Low in Derbyshire, which had a cephalic index of 81,
‘without doubt belongs to the early “stone-period”’;[1770] and he
assigns to the same epoch another skull, the cephalic index of which
was the same, from Green Gate Hill barrow, Pickering, Yorkshire.[1771]
Canon Greenwell suggests that some of the round barrows ‘belong to an
age before bronze was discovered’; and it is certain that the round
barrows of this country were connected by evolution with the earlier
long barrows.[1772] Finally, if Sergi[1773] is right in maintaining
that ‘the new burial custom of cremation’ was introduced into Europe
by brachycephalic immigrants, it follows that they invaded Britain in
the Neolithic Age; for in this country, as in Gaul, cremation was then
practised.[1774]
VII. THE ‘PICTISH QUESTION’
A view which has become fashionable of late years, owing to the
influence of Professor Rhys and Professor Zimmer, is that the
[dolichocephalic] neolithic people of this country were identical with
the Picts,[1775] whose name first occurs in the panegyric addressed
about A.D. 296 to Constantius Caesar.[1776] To clear the ground, I
should say, first, that it is universally admitted that descendants of
the neolithic race survived not only in the part of Scotland which was
inhabited by the Picts but in most parts of Britain. The question is
whether the Picts represented that race in a special sense, and still
spoke the neolithic non-Aryan language. As we shall see, Professor
Rhys himself, who maintains that they did, emphatically affirms that
among the medley of tribes who were known as Picts some were Celtic
and spoke a Celtic tongue. Secondly, it may be well to state certain
elementary facts of Celtic phonology (although I dare say that to most
of those who may read these pages they are already familiar), without a
knowledge of which parts of the following discussion and of the later
section on the Celts would be unintelligible. The ancient Gauls, for
the most part,[1777] and the Brythons, from whose dialect modern Welsh
is descended, are commonly called the P Celts; while the Goidels, whose
dialect was the ancestor of Gaelic, Irish, and Manx, are known as the Q
Celts. The reason of this distinction is that the Gauls and Brythons
changed the original sound _qu_ into _p_, while the Goidels retained
it, and in the sixth century of our era modified it into _c_.[1778]
It has been affirmed, however, on the evidence of the formularies of
Marcellus of Bordeaux, that some of the Western Gauls in the fourth
century spoke a dialect which was akin to Goidelic;[1779] and Professor
Rhys and Mr. Nicholson[1780] regard the words _Sequani_ and _Sequana_
(the Gallic name of the Seine) as proving that this dialect was not
confined to the west: but M. d’Arbois de Jubainville refuses to admit
that these names are Celtic,[1781] and contemptuously denies that the
formularies are to be taken seriously.[1782] Professor Rhys[1783]
and Mr. Nicholson[1784] also infer from certain inscriptions found
in the departments of the Ain and Deux-Sèvres, which probably belong
respectively to the first and the fourth century of our era, that a
dialect akin to Goidelic was spoken in those localities: but here
again M. d’Arbois dissents;[1785] and he remarks that an inscription
found at Géligneux in the department of the Ain contains a word,
_petru-decametos_,[1786] which belongs to the language of the P Celts.
Professor Rhys urges that ‘the presence of monuments in the language
occupying the subordinate position may be taken as evidence presumptive
of its being the vernacular in the immediate neighbourhood’:[1787]
but, as we shall see hereafter,[1788] a pillar, bearing a Goidelic
inscription, has been found at Silchester, where the vernacular
was undoubtedly Brythonic; and the obvious explanation is that the
inscription was the work of a stranger. M. d’Arbois,[1789] moreover,
unlike Professor Rhys, maintains that when the Celts first invaded
Britain, the Celtic language everywhere was one and the same: according
to him, none of the Celts had then changed _q_ into _p_, but that
change was made at a later date by the Celts who conquered Gaul, and
some of whose descendants afterwards conquered Britain. Until near the
end of the nineteenth century Celtic scholars unanimously believed that
all the Celtic dialects had rejected ‘Indo-European _p_’, except, as
Mr. Nicholson says,[1790] ‘in borrowed words or in certain combinations
of consonants’; in other words, that wherever the Indo-European or
Aryan tongue from which Celtic was descended had the sound of _p_ the
Celtic dialects had all lost it: but Professor Rhys holds that Mr.
Nicholson has proved from the above-mentioned inscriptions, found in
the departments of the Ain and Deux Sèvres, that it was retained by the
Sequani and the Pictones.[1791] M. d’Arbois de Jubainville of course
rejects this conclusion; and he reminds his opponents that _p_ is
absent from all Ogam inscriptions.[1792]
1. In 296, when the panegyric addressed to Constantius was written,
the Picts to whom the writer referred were confined to the part of
Scotland which extends northward from the firths of Forth and Clyde;
but Professor Rhys and Professor Zimmer maintain that the habitat of
the Pictish people was once much more extensive. ‘Irish literature,’
says Professor Rhys,[1793] ‘alludes to Picts here and there in Ireland
... in such a way as to favour the belief that they were survivals of
a race holding possession at one time of the whole country.’ That the
Picts once inhabited the whole of Britain is proved, in the opinion
not only of the two professors but also of M. d’Arbois de Jubainville,
who differs from them on the question of Pictish ethnology, by the
following linguistic facts.[1794] The Irish name of the Picts was
_Cruthni_.[1795] Britain has, since the Middle Ages, been called in
Welsh _ynys Prydein_: _Prydein_ is the Welsh equivalent of _Cruthni_;
and _ynys Prydein_ means ‘the island of the Picts’. Now, as Professor
Rhys remarks,[1796] _Prydein_, with its cognate forms, _Prydain_,
_Prydyn_, and _Pryden_, represents an old Welsh word _Priten_; and
accordingly, the Brythonic or the Gaulish name of the Picts, when
it reached the ears of the Greeks, would have been written by them
Πρετανοί. It must of course be borne in mind that _Cruthni_, _Prydain_,
and _Priten_ did not appear in literature until long after Caesar’s
time; but the etymology which connects Πρετανοί and Πρεταν(ν)ικαὶ
(νῆσοι)--the name by which Ptolemy and other Greek writers call the
British Isles[1797]--with _Priten_ is accepted by Celtic scholars who,
on the question of the ethnology of the Picts, differ widely among
themselves. M. d’Arbois de Jubainville[1798] concludes that in the
time of Pytheas the masters of Britain were the Picts; while Professor
Rhys holds that when, shortly before that epoch, the Brythons first
landed in Britain,[1799] not the Picts but the Goidelic Celts were
the dominant race. In other words, he believes that the Goidelic Celts
called the island which they conquered by ‘some such a Goidelic name as
Inis Chruithni, “Island of the Picts”’.[1800] M. d’Arbois identifies
the Picts of the time of Pytheas with the ancestors of the Goidelic
Celts: like Professor Rhys he regards the word _Pretani_ as simply
the Brythonic, or Gaulish form of a Goidelic word _Qrtanoi_, of which
_Cruthni_ was the later Irish equivalent;[1801] but he holds that no
Brythons had set foot in Britain until after the time of Pytheas, and
that the word _Pretani_ was learned by Pytheas not in Britain but in
Gaul.
Both the views that have just been stated seem to involve difficulties.
If Professor Rhys is right in believing that the pre-Roman Goidelic
invaders of Britain (whose very existence, as we shall afterwards
see, is not universally admitted) called the people whom they found
in possession by some such name as Chruithni or Cruthni, the name
which, transformed by Brythons into _Pretanoi_, was applied by Pytheas
to the inhabitants of Britain generally, it would appear either
that the Goidelic invaders had no name of their own or that it was
suppressed.[1802] Moreover, Professor Rhys does not explain how it
happened that Pytheas never learned the name by which, as he tells us,
the Brythons called themselves, namely, Brittones. On the other hand,
M. d’Arbois’s view would compel us either to assign the first Brythonic
invasion to a date a century later than that which is now generally
accepted,[1803] or to assume that Pytheas, although he visited Britain,
learned nothing there of the name of its inhabitants. I confess that I
cannot suggest any satisfactory solution.
It remains to be inquired whether the Picts of history did really, in
a special sense, represent the neolithic population, and whether they
spoke a non-Aryan language.
2. Was the word _Pict_, in its original form, pre-Aryan or Celtic?
The answers that have been given to this question only serve to amuse
the ignorant scoffer, and to illustrate the truth that even if the
labours of Zeuss placed the study of the ancient Celtic languages
upon a scientific basis, Celtic scholars still know very little about
them. When we inquire of Professor Rhys, we are perplexed by the quick
changes of front to which his most devoted disciples have by this time
become accustomed. In the second edition of his _Celtic Britain_[1804]
he said that ‘neither the Picts nor the Scotti probably owned these
names, the former of which is to be traced to Roman authors’; and
he described the theory which ‘connected the Pict with the Gaulish
Pictones’ as a ‘clumsy invention’.[1805] In his Rhind Lectures he
assured us that ‘the principal non-Aryan name of the inhabitants
of both islands [Great Britain and Ireland] was some prototype of
the word Pict’,[1806] and gave reasons, which are now generally
accepted, for believing that that name was not connected with the
Latin _pictus_.[1807] At the same time he definitely committed himself
to the view which he had previously derided as a ‘clumsy invention’,
and affirmed that ‘the word Pict ... is hardly to be severed from the
Pictones of ancient Gaul’. In _The Welsh People_, which first appeared
in 1900, and in a later edition of the same work, dated 1902,[1808]
he argued that ‘_Ictis_ [the name of an island mentioned by Diodorus
Siculus[1809]] and _Icht_ [the old Irish name of the English Channel]
represent possibly a Celtic pronunciation of the same Aboriginal word
which the Romans made into _Pictus_ ... we must’, he added, ‘suppose it
an early name which the Aborigines adopted, while the Celts ... applied
another name _Qṷrtani_, _Pretani_, _Cruithni_,’ &c. But in the same
year in which the first edition of _The Welsh People_ appeared he told
the members of the British Association that ‘_pictos_ was a Celtican
word of the same etymology, and approximately, doubtless, of the same
meaning as the Latin _pictus_; that the Celticans had applied it at an
early date to the Picts on account of their ... tattooing themselves;
and that the Picts had accepted it’.[1810] It is not absolutely clear
whether by ‘the Celticans’ he means only those people of Gaul who spoke
a language akin to Goidelic or the first Celtic invaders of Britain.
As, however, we are told that the Picts accepted their name from ‘the
Celticans’, it would seem that those ‘Celticans’ were, or at all events
included, the British Goidels; and we ask ourselves in bewilderment
why, if the ‘Celticans’ applied the name _pictos_ to the Picts, they
also applied the name _Qṷrtani_.[1811] But when we open the latest
edition of _Celtic Britain_,[1812] we find that the professor’s views
are still in process of development, or of flux. He now reverts to the
theory that ‘the native name which suggested the Latin [_Pictus_] was
not of Celtic origin either, though only found treated as Celtic’. He
adds that ‘the term Pictones, as occurring in Gaul in Caesar’s time,
makes it probable that it was also a name of long standing in Britain’;
and finally he avows with characteristic candour that ‘we know not
from what language it comes’. Turning to our other authorities, we
learn from Zimmer that _Picti_ is obviously a Latin translation of
the name [the ancestor of _Prydain_] which the Romans learned from
the Britons.[1813] In other words, the German _savant_ holds that
the word Pictos [if it ever existed except as a Latin accusative
plural] was neither aboriginal in Britain, nor Celtican. It has been
suggested[1814] that _Picti_ is connected with the old Irish word
_cicht_,[1815] a carver or engraver, and is the Cymric form of a
Goidelic word _Qicti_;[1816] while Mr. Nicholson, who insists that
_Picti_ is not Cymric but Goidelic, claims to have ‘fully shown that
this name is ... from the root _peik-_ “tattoo”, with Ind.-Eur. _p_
preserved’.[1817]
The one absolutely certain conclusion to which the student of ethnology
can come is that the name of the Picts has not been proved to be of
pre-Aryan origin.
3. Still, Professors Rhys and Zimmer will have it that the Picts must
have been a non-Aryan people. Caesar,[1818] in a well-known passage,
states that among the Britons groups of ten or twelve men had wives in
common; in other words, that one of the British customs was polyandry.
It has generally been assumed that he meant to say that the custom was
prevalent among the Britons generally; but Zimmer, after reviewing the
whole chapter in which the passage occurs, concludes that it refers
only to _interiores_--the Britons of the interior[1819]--whom Caesar
contrasts with _maritimi_,--the descendants of the Belgic invaders. The
latter, he argues, according to Caesar’s express statement, differed
but slightly in their customs from the Gauls:[1820] therefore the words
in which Caesar describes the British custom of polyandry cannot refer
to them, but must refer to _interiores_.[1821] The two professors
agree in thinking that Caesar, owing to his ‘inability to realize a
state of society exclusively based on birth’,[1822] misunderstood
the institution which he tried to describe; in other words, that
that institution was not polyandry but matriarchy,--the rule of
succession by which rank and property are transmitted in the female
line; a king, for example, being succeeded not by his own son but by
the son of one of his sisters.[1823] Zimmer, referring to Schrader’s
_Prehistoric Antiquities of the Aryan Peoples_,[1824] remarks that
among all Aryan-speaking peoples and among the primitive Aryans the
custom by which a father is succeeded by his own son (_das Vaterrecht_)
was the foundation of social ordinance.[1825] Professor Rhys,[1826]
indeed, thinks that this generalization cannot be proved, and refers
to a well-known passage in the 20th chapter of the _Germania_ of
Tacitus,--‘Sisters’ sons are held in as much esteem by their uncles
as by their fathers: indeed, some regard the relation as even more
sacred and binding’,[1827] &c. (_Sororum filiis idem apud avunculum qui
apud patrem honor: quidam sanctiorem artioremque hunc nexum sanguinis
arbitrantur_); but he suggests that the tribe of which Tacitus speaks
may have been mixed with some ‘aboriginal race practising the same
institution as the aborigines of the British Isles’. And I suggest
that the Picts were Celts mixed with aborigines who practised this
same institution, and consequently that if it prevailed among the
Picts, its prevalence does not prove that they were in any special
sense representatives of the aborigines, or that they spoke a non-Aryan
language.[1828]
Having corrected Caesar’s narrative to his own satisfaction, Professor
Rhys sets himself to prove that matriarchy was a Pictish institution.
He observes[1829] that ‘a Pictish king [during the later period of the
Roman occupation and afterwards] could not be succeeded by a son of his
own, but usually by a sister’s son. The succession,’ he continues, ‘was
through the mother, and it points back to a state of society which,
previous to the conversion of the Picts to Christianity, was probably
based on matriarchy as distinguished from marriage and marital custom.’
To show that matriarchy had formerly prevailed in Britain outside
the territory within which the Picts of history were confined, he
adds[1830] that ‘the ancient literature of Ireland abounds in allusions
to heroes who are usually described with the aid of the mother’s name’,
and that ‘this kind of nomenclature implies the Pictish succession as
its origin’. Again, he quotes an inscription found at Colchester, which
ends with the words
DONVM. LOSSIO. VEDA. DE SVO
POSVIT. NEPOS. VEPOGENI. CALEDO.
(‘This gift has been dedicated at his own expense by Lossio Veda, the
son of the sister [?] of Vepogen, a Caledonian’), and remarks that
when Lossio calls himself a Caledonian, that ‘is for our purpose much
the same as if he had called himself a Pict’, and that, moreover, both
_Veda_ and _Vepogeni_ ‘may be said to occur in the list of Pictish
kings’, where the latter is ‘written _Vipoig_’. _Vepogeni_, indeed, is
a Celtic word, borrowed, the professor assures us, in accordance with
Pictish custom; but ‘the reduction of Vepogen to _Vepog_, which is what
underlies _Vipoig_, is impossible on Celtic ground ... while Pictish
offers a simple and natural explanation’.[1831]
Professor Morris Jones remarks, in support of Professor Rhys’s
argument, that ‘the Pictish succession’ has ‘come down to our own times
among the Berbers’[1832] (or rather Kabyles), who, he says, have been
shown, on craniological grounds, to be akin to our neolithic race.
Apparently Professor Rhys does not regard the custom of reckoning
descent ‘by birth alone’ as confined in these islands to the Picts,
or to the pre-Aryan aborigines: if, as he is inclined, like Professor
Zimmer, to believe, it was non-Aryan, ‘it must,’ he says, ‘have been
accepted by the Goidelic Celts from the aborigines.’[1833]
Now, in regard to this last observation, the comment suggests itself
that what Professor Rhys has not yet proved is that those aborigines
were Picts. The Picts, as we shall presently see, were, according
to some Celtic scholars, themselves Goidelic Celts (mixed of course
with aborigines whom they had subdued and Celticized); according to
others, their speech was akin to Brythonic.[1834] And if, as Professor
Rhys insists, matriarchy may have been accepted by the Celts from
the aborigines, it is perhaps not incredible that, as Mr. Sidney
Hartland suggests, the Celts themselves, in prehistoric times, may have
passed through the matriarchal stage,[1835] and that the survival of
matriarchy among the Picts is not necessarily attributable to pre-Aryan
ancestry.[1836] But, be that as it may, the survival of matriarchy
among the Picts proves nothing more than that among the Picts, as
among every other British people, the substratum of the population was
pre-Aryan: it does not prove that the dominant element among them was
pre-Aryan, or that they spoke a non-Aryan language.
As for Professor Morris Jones’s argument, it may perhaps raise a
probability that the ‘Pictish succession’ prevailed among the neolithic
race, although, if the argument is worth anything, the professor ought
to be able to show that the same institution belonged to the ‘Iberians’
of Spain, of Gaul, and of other countries who have also been shown ‘on
craniological grounds’ to be akin to the Kabyles: but at all events
it lends no support to the theory that the Picts were, in any special
sense, descendants of the neolithic aborigines; for, assuming that
they were Celts, they might have accepted the Pictish succession from
them. There remains Professor Rhys’s statement that ‘the reduction of
_Vepogen_ to _Vepog_, which is what underlies _Vipoig_, is impossible
on Celtic ground’. Is the professor quite sure? A few years ago he
would certainly have said that the retention of ‘Indo-European _p_’
was ‘impossible on Celtic ground’; but in 1900 he announced that the
‘Celtican language’ which was spoken in the country of the Sequani
‘preserves intact the Aryan consonant _p_’.[1837] He has himself
assured us that both the Celtic dialects spoken in the British Isles
were greatly modified by a pre-Aryan language.[1838] Assuming, for
the sake of argument, that the Pictish language was Celtic, is he
prepared to deny that it could have been so far modified by a non-Aryan
tongue that ‘the reduction of _Vepogen_ to _Vepog_’ would still have
been ‘impossible on Celtic ground’?[1839] Finally, when he tells us
that Lossio’s description of himself as a Caledonian ‘is for our
purpose much the same as if he had called himself a Pict’, we cannot
help recalling his own statement[1840] that ‘the Caledonians were,
as we understand their history, Goidels’; though, to be sure, in the
latest edition of _Celtic Britain_[1841] he expunges this compromising
sentence, and substitutes for it ‘the Caledonians were Picts’.
For my part I accept the professor’s emendation unreservedly. Picts
the Caledonians certainly were; for does not the author of the
panegyric addressed to Constantine speak of ‘the Caledonians and other
Picts’?[1842] But for me the Picts were a mixed people, comprising
descendants of the neolithic aborigines, of the Round Barrow race,
and of the Celtic invaders,--a mixed people who spoke a Celtic
dialect. And what puzzles me is that the professor should not have
been struck by the anthropological facts that are fatal to the theory
that the Caledonians were Picts in the sense which he attaches to the
word,--that is, pure survivors of the neolithic aborigines, who spoke
a non-Aryan language. For the neolithic aborigines, as we have seen,
were, speaking generally, small dark men of the ‘Iberian’ type: the
Caledonians were big fair or red-haired men. Doubtless there were, as I
have said, ‘Iberian’ survivors among them; but who will deny that the
powerful race whom Tacitus describes were predominant, or that their
Aryan tongue had prevailed?[1843]
4. It is usually inferred from statements in Claudian[1844] and
Herodian[1845] that the Picts tattooed themselves; and their testimony
is supposed to be strengthened by the etymology of the names by which
the Picts were known to the Irish and Welsh respectively,--_Cruthni_
and _Prydain_. The former is said to be derived from _cruth_,[1846]
the Gaelic word for ‘form’ or ‘shape’; and the latter from its Welsh
equivalent, _pryd_.[1847] Thus _Cruthni_ and _Prydain_ would mean
‘the people whose bodies were decorated with figures’; and, as we have
seen, Zimmer has no doubt that the Roman name for the Picts--_Picti_,
or ‘painted men’--was simply a translation of _Prydain_ or its older
equivalent. Professor Rhys, who, in one of his many and diverse
utterances on the subject, affirmed that _pictos_ was a Celtican
word,[1848] drew this conclusion from the fact, pointed out by Mr.
Nicholson,[1849] that a coin of the Gallic tribe of the Pictones[1850]
bears on the obverse a tattooed face; and he supposes that the reason
why the Celticans applied this word to the Picts was that the latter
tattooed themselves. ‘The Picts of Britain and Ireland,’ he remarks,
‘are found also called _Pictones_’; and ‘ancient Egyptian monuments
represent the Libyans of North Africa with their bodies tattooed’.[1851]
Now what does this community of custom prove about the ethnology
of the Picts? The inhabitants of the Tonga and Society Islands and
of New Guinea tattoo themselves: so do the Burmese, the Shans, the
Maoris, and the people of British East Africa;[1852] so do very many
Englishmen. All the available evidence tends to show that among the
ancient inhabitants of the British Isles tattooing was not confined to
the Picts. Herodian does not mention the Picts at all: he merely says
that the Britons tattooed themselves. Professor Rhys admits, or rather
strenuously maintains, that in the territory inhabited by the Picts in
Scotland there were also numerous Celts;[1853] and he would hardly deny
that they were included among the people whom Herodian describes. He
himself remarks that ‘the Scotti (that is to say the Goidels)’[1854]
practised tattooing.[1855] Mr. Nicholson, to whom he appeals, argues
from the evidence of coins that tattooing was customary not only
among the Pictones, but also among several other tribes of Gaul,--the
Ambiani, the Baiocasses, the Caletes, the Coriosopites, the Osismi, the
Sequani, and the Unelli. All these peoples were undoubtedly Celtic;
that is to say, they were Celtic-speaking tribes among whom the Celtic
element, ethnologically speaking, was, I do not say numerically, but
politically predominant. Professor Rhys would certainly not argue that
they were Picts: yet if he admits, as he does, that they were Celtic,
the argument which he bases on the practice of tattooing collapses.
5. Some years ago Professor Rhys attempted to prove that the Pictish
language was related to Basque;[1856] ‘but,’ he says, ‘whether it is
related or not, my attempt to prove that it is has been pronounced,
and doubtless justly pronounced, a failure.’[1857] At the same time,
however, pointing to a famous ogam inscription, he wrote, ‘my challenge
still remains, that if Pictish resembled Gaelic or Welsh, or in fact
any Aryan language, those who think so should make good their opinion
by giving us a translation of such an inscription, for instance, as the
following from Lunasting, in Shetland:--_Xttocuhetts : ahehhttmnnn :
hccvvevv : nehhtonn_.’[1858]
The lay reader will perhaps mentally endorse the comment of
another Celtic scholar, Dr. Alexander Macbain, who disposes of the
cacophonous puzzle by observing that ‘it is neither Welsh nor any
other language’.[1859] For the present, at all events, it is safe to
say that Dr. Macbain is as likely to be right as Mr. Nicholson, who,
having boldly accepted Professor Rhys’s challenge, first judiciously
reconstructed the text of the inscription, and then made an heroic
attempt to translate his own version. It is Goidelic, so he assures us;
and it means
‘Place of O’ Cuhetts
his place within:
CUAIBH of Nehton’.[1860]
On the other hand, the translation which Professor Rhys ‘provisionally’
offers of _his_ text runs
‘“Kin--Ahehhtmnnn King Nechtan”.
That is to say, King Nechtan of the kin of Ahehhtmnnn’.[1861]
Perhaps it shows a slight lack of humour to attempt, even
‘provisionally’, to translate an inscription assumed to be written
in a language the very existence of which is doubtful. Still it is
conceivable that Professor Rhys’s text means what he says. But,
supposing that it resembles neither Gaelic, nor Welsh, nor any Aryan
language, what does it prove? Not that the Picts represented the
neolithic aborigines, but simply that in the remotest of the British
isles there still survived the non-Aryan language which, as every
scholar admits, was once spoken in Britain.
But the truth is that the so-called Pictish inscriptions, even in
the hands of the philologist, are so intractable that for ethnology
they are practically useless. ‘I can hardly do more,’ says Professor
Rhys,[1862] ‘than pick from previous attempts by others and by myself
what seems to me the most probable reading.’ This is only one of
numerous instances in his well-known article on the inscriptions which
show how impossible it is to construct the text with any approach
towards certainty.
Professor Rhys remarks, further,[1863] that ‘we have indications in
Adamnan’s Life of Columba that [in the sixth century of our era] the
language of the aborigines was still a living tongue’. The indications
are that when Columba, who spoke Goidelic, visited the province of
the Picts, he preached ‘to peasants or plebeians by interpreter’. To
those who hold, with Dr. Whitley Stokes and Dr. Macbain, that the
Pictish dialect was akin to Brythonic, the fact on which Professor
Rhys lays stress presents of course no difficulty. M. d’Arbois de
Jubainville, however, while he agrees with Dr. Macbain,[1864] makes a
reply to Professor Rhys which might be used by those who hold, with Mr.
Nicholson, that Pictish was akin to Goidelic. He tells a story of a
Breton priest of the diocese of Quimper who assured him that he himself
could not understand the Breton dialect of a woman who belonged to the
diocese of Vannes.[1865]
Mr. Nicholson[1866] says that ‘we have abundant materials for deciding
whether Pictish was or was not (1) Aryan, (2) Keltic, (3) Goidelic, in
(_a_) the place-names recorded by ancient geographers and one or two
mediaeval documents, (_b_) the person-names given by one or two ancient
historians and in mediaeval chronicles, (_c_) the inscriptions’.
From these materials Mr. Nicholson undertakes to demonstrate that
Pictish was Goidelic, and that ‘it stands to Highland Gaelic in
exactly the same relation in which Anglo-Saxon stands to modern
English’;[1867] while Dr. Whitley Stokes[1868] and Dr. Macbain[1869]
undertake with equal confidence to demonstrate that it was related to
Brythonic. According to Bede,[1870] the place which marked the western
termination of the wall of Severus was called in Pictish _Peanfahel_.
_Pean_ is commonly identified with the Welsh word _penn_, ‘a head’;
and accordingly it has been inferred that Pictish was ‘a Kymric or
semi-Kymric dialect’.[1871] Mr. Nicholson, on the other hand, claims
to have shown that _Pean_ is ‘a Goidelic borrowing from the Latin
_penna_ or _pinna_’. Professor Rhys[1872] formerly clung to the view
that _Peanfahel_ was a Brythonic name, but was not in the least
disconcerted thereby; for, he explained, ‘the Picts must have learnt
it ... from the Verturian Brythons.’ On the question of etymology he
has now become a convert to Mr. Nicholson’s view:[1873] but on the
question of ethnology he retains his own opinion; for, he explains,
‘The non-Celtic Picts, when we find them coming southwards, seem to
have been fast adopting the idioms of their neighbours.’[1874] Mr.
Nicholson[1875] analyses with laborious ingenuity a large number of
names in Adamnan’s _Life of Columba_, of place-names in the _Pictish
Chronicle_, of Pictish historical names, and of words which occur in
the ‘Pictish inscriptions’, and insists that they are Goidelic: Dr.
Whitley Stokes[1876] and Dr. Macbain[1877] produce words from the same
sources, from Ptolemy’s Geography, and from Dion Cassius, and insist
that they are Brythonic. Dr. Stokes’s authority is so great that his
verdict is worth quoting:--‘The foregoing list of names and other words
contains much that is still obscure; but on the whole it shows that
Pictish, so far as regards its vocabulary, is an Indo-European and
especially Celtic speech. Its phonetics, so far as we can ascertain
them, resemble those of Welsh rather than of Irish.’[1878]
But the arguments for Brythonic, on the one hand, and for Goidelic, on
the other, leave Professor Rhys unmoved. Prove as many Pictish words as
you please to have been Goidelic, as many as you please to have been
Brythonic: he will regard them with serene indifference.[1879] For, he
tells you,[1880] ‘the Pictish language would seem to have been rapidly
becoming overloaded with loan-words from Goidelic or Brythonic when we
first hear anything about it. So, failing to recognize this borrowing
of words by the Picts, some have been led to regard Pictish as a kind
of Gaelic, and some as a dialect akin to Welsh. The point to have been
decided, however, was not whether Gaelic or Welsh explains certain
words said to have been in use among the Picts, but whether there does
not remain a residue to which neither Gaelic nor Welsh, nor, indeed,
any Aryan tongue whatever can supply any sort of key.’ The professor is
still thinking of that outlandish inscription which, according to Mr.
Nicholson, is Goidelic, and the professor’s reading of which, according
to Dr. Macbain, is no language at all. But, admitting provisionally
the existence of ‘a residue’ to which no Aryan language ‘can supply
any sort of key’, we should, I must repeat, only have to conclude that
in certain remote parts of the extensive territory occupied by the
Picts a non-Aryan language survived into the Christian era, just as in
a remote part of France a non-Aryan language survives at this day: we
should not have to conclude that that language was spoken by the Picts
in general. ‘La question,’ says M. d’Arbois de Jubainville, in a notice
of Professor Rhys’s article on the Pictish inscriptions,[1881] ‘la
question est de savoir si cette population [the pre-Aryan population]
est restée dominante. Les noms de peuples tels que _Smertae_ ... des
noms d’hommes tels que celui du Calédonien _Argentocoxos_ ... me
semblent décisifs.’ It is absolutely certain, and is insisted upon by
Professor Rhys himself, that in Roman times many of the tribes which
were included under the general designation of Picts bore Celtic names,
and that many of the geographical names in the country which they
inhabited were Celtic also. On the other hand, not a single Pictish
name, tribal, or geographical, or personal, not a single Pictish word
which has been preserved by Ptolemy or by our other authorities, has
been proved to be non-Celtic; and if, as Professor Rhys maintains,
Pictish was a non-Aryan language overlain by loan-words from the two
Celtic dialects, it was so buried beneath them as to be no longer
discernible. Argentocoxos,[1882] as the professor says, was a Pict, and
one of the many Picts whose names were Celtic: if the Picts had spoken
a non-Celtic language, however much overloaded with Celtic loan-words,
would not their own names have been non-Aryan? As their names were
Celtic, it is reasonable to infer that their language was Celtic also.
The professor, it is true, points out that ‘in Wales many a man has the
English name John Jones, though he cannot speak English’.[1883] Yes,
but the Welsh are a conquered or, let us say, absorbed people, whereas
the professor himself assures us[1884] that before the time of Ptolemy
‘the Goidels and the Picto-Brythons [of the North] had come under the
power of the more purely non-Celtic tribes beyond them’.[1885] But this
is of course a pure assertion. The professor fails to prove that any
Celtic people in Britain came under the power of non-Celtic tribes.
Many centuries before the time of Pytheas the neolithic population had
for the most part been reduced to subjection; and, although remote
clans may possibly have retained their individuality, in many parts of
the island the descendants of the aborigines had become intermingled,
first with the ‘Round Barrow’ invaders, the earlier of whom at all
events, as I shall presently show,[1886] were not Celts, and secondly
with the Celts themselves. Professor Rhys[1887] himself admits that
the name of the Picts ‘was never, perhaps, distinctive of race, as
Brythons and Goidels seem to have been sometimes included under it’;
and, although he goes on to say that ‘the term probably applied most
strictly at all times’ to ‘the non-Celtic natives’, it is not likely
that the name of non-Celtic natives should have prevailed over that of
the Celts.
For all these reasons it appears to me infinitely more probable that
in Pictland as, according to Professor Rhys himself, in the rest of
Britain,[1888] the non-Aryan language should have been absorbed by
Celtic than that Celtic should have been absorbed by the non-Aryan
language.
There is probably this grain of truth in Professor Rhys’s theory,
that the non-Celtic natives continued to exist in greater purity in
the country which was occupied by a group of tribes who, during the
latter part of the Roman occupation and afterwards, were called Picts,
than in any other part of Britain. But I doubt whether this eminent
scholar could have spent his time less profitably than in striving
to demonstrate, first, that the language of the Picts was related to
Basque, and, when he was forced to abandon this attempt, in clinging to
the theory that it was a non-Aryan tongue.
VIII. THE ROUND-HEADS
There is, as we have already seen,[1889] sufficient evidence that
round-headed immigrants had begun to appear in Britain towards the end
of the Neolithic Age; but the majority of the prehistoric skulls of
this kind undoubtedly belong to the Age of Bronze. Men of the same
type were living in England at the time of the Saxon invasion;[1890]
and their descendants may be recognized here and there at the present
day.[1891] The prehistoric skeletons have been found not only in the
round barrows of Yorkshire, Derbyshire, Staffordshire, Wiltshire,
Dorsetshire, Denbighshire, Man, and Orkney, and in secondary interments
in long barrows, but also in Welsh caverns and graves and in the
short cists of Scotland.[1892] The range of this people in Britain
was, however, it need hardly be said, far wider than that which the
discovery of a few skeletons has indicated.
The round-headed invaders are commonly described as physically finer
men than the neolithic population whom in most parts of Britain they
subdued;[1893] but the truth is that, both in respect of stature and of
cranial form, they belonged to two utterly different groups, though,
as might be expected, some exhibit characteristics of both.[1894] The
average height of 17 brachycephalic men whose skeletons had been found
in round barrows before 1865 would have been, according to Dr. Beddoe’s
estimate, 5 feet 9 inches, or almost 1 metre 753; while the average
height of 27 men of various cephalic indices, including the 17 just
mentioned, whose skeletons (described in _Crania Britannica_) have
been found in round barrows, would, according to the same authority,
have reached 5 feet 9⅖ inches,[1895] or approximately 1 metre 763.
Measurements of skeletons which have been discovered since the
publication of _Crania Britannica_ have yielded results virtually the
same.[1896] On the other hand two groups of skeletons have recently
been described which belonged to a much shorter race. Four, taken from
round barrows in Glamorganshire, showed, according to Dr. Beddoe’s
method, an average height of about 5 feet 5¾ inches;[1897] while 7 male
skeletons, found in short cists in and near Aberdeenshire, ranged,
according to Mr. Alexander Low, between 5 feet and 5 feet 7 inches, the
average being only 5 feet 3 inches.[1898] The skulls of these skeletons
will be presently described.
The cephalic indices of 103 male skulls, found before the year 1894 in
round barrows or in other interments of the Bronze Age,[1899] ranged
from 70 to 88, 55 of them exceeding 80; while those of 19 skeletons
from round barrows in which no bronze was found ranged from 68 to 88,
six of them exceeding 80.[1900] In both series a large proportion
of the skulls whose indices fell short of 80 belonged, wholly or in
part, to the Long Barrow race. Other skulls, however, which have since
been described and of the characteristics of which Dr. Beddoe, the
compiler of this list, may have been ignorant, yielded indices higher
still.[1901]
But it is not enough to describe the invaders of the Bronze Age as
brachycephalic: they shared that characteristic with peoples who were
otherwise markedly different from them. Let us first consider those
which belong to the so-called characteristic type, which, until a
recent date, received more than its share of attention,--that which is
seen only in the taller skeletons. Their foreheads, says Rolleston,
were ‘sometimes ... especially in cases where the whole skull and
skeleton are marked by great strength and even ruggedness, markedly
sloping’.[1902] Their supraciliary ridges were often extraordinarily
prominent. ‘The eyebrows,’ says the same authority, ‘must have given
a beetling and probably even formidable appearance to the upper part
of the face, whilst the boldly outstanding and heavy cheek bones must
have produced an impression of raw and rough strength.... Overhung at
its root, the nose must have projected boldly forward.’[1903] These
men were, in some instances, extremely prognathous:[1904] their teeth
were often extraordinarily large;[1905] and, to quote Thurnam, ‘the
prominence of the large incisor and canine teeth is so great as to
give an almost bestial expression to the skull.’[1906] The reader who
scans the illustrations in _Crania Britannica_ and in Canon Greenwell’s
_British Barrows_ will, however, see that the brachycephalic skulls
even of the taller skeletons are not all of the same type. Moreover,
some few of the Round Barrow skulls combine the contour of the
characteristic brachycephalic skull of the British Bronze Age with
dolichocephaly;[1907] and this is one of the facts which tend to
prove that in certain parts of England the brachycephalic invaders
intermarried with the people whom they found in possession. In the
East Riding of Yorkshire, indeed, it would seem that the old race and
the new were as completely intermingled as the modern population.
Dr. William Wright tells us that in a collection of 80 skulls, taken
from round barrows and preserved in the Mortimer Museum at Driffield,
‘almost all the varieties of cranial shape met with in Europe are
represented.’ Their cephalic indices ranged from 69 to 92; and, says
Dr. Wright, ‘it is doubtful if it is possible to find a materially
more mixed series of skulls in a community of to-day.’[1908] Dr.
Wright, however, does not believe that the skulls of apparently hybrid
form prove intermarriage between the invaders and the old neolithic
population, or that the former were purely brachycephalic. ‘To grant
this,’ he argues, ‘one must believe that a pure round-headed race could
have made its tardy progress across Europe unmixed,--an assumption
which to my mind is incredible.’[1909] Has the doctor forgotten that
ten male skulls, found in short cists in and near Aberdeenshire and
evidently assignable to the end of the Neolithic or the beginning of
the Bronze Age,[1910] were all brachycephalic, and that nine of them
belonged to the same pure type.[1911] Has he forgotten that the round
barrow skulls of Wiltshire were mainly brachycephalic? Has he ever
walked over the mountains of Auvergne? Very likely the round-headed
race which he has in mind did not make its way across Europe unmixed;
but the mixture did not greatly diminish the roundness. Very likely
when it reached Britain it included a few long-heads; but the contrast
between the uniformity in Wiltshire and the diversity in East Yorkshire
suffices to disprove the doctor’s theory.
Some of Dr. Wright’s brachycephalic specimens belonged to a type which
is quite different from the ‘characteristic’ Round Barrow type, and
is also common to almost all the short Welsh and Scottish skeletons
mentioned above.[1912] These skulls are generally broader than those of
the other kind. The ten found in Aberdeenshire and its neighbourhood
ranged between 80·8 and 92·3, their average index being 85·39;[1913]
while those of Glamorganshire ranged between 81·7 and 86, and yielded
an average of 84·2.[1914] Not one of these skulls is prognathous:[1915]
all are high as well as round and broad: the supraciliary ridges are
only slightly developed: the cheek bones are not prominent: the face is
both broad and short; and the lower jaw is small.[1916]
Who were the brachycephalic people of the round barrows and the short
cists, and whence did they come? Those who have attempted to solve
these problems have generally had in mind only the tall round-heads,
whether their skulls belonged to the characteristic type or showed
signs of crossing with the other. Wherever the short people came from,
their ethnical affinities are certain: they belonged to the so-called
Alpine type of Central Europe, of which the French Grenelle race were
a branch. Let us for the present confine our attention to the others.
To the questions which I have asked at least six different answers have
been given:--that they were Goidelic Celts; that they were Belgae;
that they were Finns; that they came from Denmark or the Scandinavian
peninsula; that their original home was Dalmatia; and, lastly, that
they may be traced back to the valley of the Rhine.[1917] But the view
which has been repeated by almost every recent writer is that they were
Goidels.[1918]
1-2. The Goidelic theory and the Belgic (which I ought perhaps to
apologize for noticing) may be considered together; for if any argument
tells in favour of the latter, it tells as much or more in favour of
the former.
Thurnam, who does not trouble himself about the distinction
between Goidelic and Brythonic Celts, points out that ‘extremely
brachycephalic skulls have been exhumed from many of the French
chambered tumuli’;[1919] that seven skulls with cephalic indices of 80
and upwards from a dolmen near Senlis, which is in the territory that
was occupied by the Belgae, ‘have much resemblance to those from the
round barrows’;[1920] and that three skulls with indices of 80, 80,
and 85 respectively from a sepulchral grotto in the Belgic department
of the Oise are ‘very similar in general character to the short skulls
from the round barrows’.[1921] He argues that of the cranial types
represented by the peoples of the long barrows and the round barrows
respectively ‘one at least must be Celtic’:[1922] he points out that in
the cremation interments which have been discovered in round barrows
‘the appearances are consistent with what we are told of the funerals
of the Gauls ... by Caesar and Pomponius Mela’;[1923] and his general
conclusion is that the Round Barrow people were ‘an offshoot through
the Belgic Gauls from the great brachycephalic stock of Central and
North-Eastern Europe’.[1924] Finally, Professor Rhys maintained in
1890[1925] (it would be rash to assume that his opinion is unchanged)
that the Round Barrow race belonged to the Brythonic group, who, he
asserted, being comparatively broad-headed, were less pure than the
Goidels.