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ANCIENT MAN IN BRITAIN
[Illustration:
Copyright, 1915, by Charles Scribner's Sons
HEAD OF A CRÔ-MAGNON MAN
After the restoration modelled by J. H. McGregor. Reproduced by
permission from _Men of the Old Stone Age_ by Henry Fairfield
Osborn.]
ANCIENT MAN IN BRITAIN
by
DONALD A. MACKENZIE
Author of "Egyptian Myth and Legend"
"Myths of Crete and Pre-Hellenic Europe" "Colour Symbolism" &c.
With Foreword by G. Elliot Smith, F.R.S.
Blackie And Son Limited
50 Old Bailey, London; Glasgow, Bombay
Printed in Great Britain
1922
FOREWORD
In his Presidential Address to the Royal Anthropological Institute
this year the late Dr. Rivers put his finger upon the most urgent
need for reform in the study of Man, when he appealed for "the Unity
of Anthropology". No true conception of the nature and the early
history of the human family can be acquired by investigations,
however carefully they may be done, of one class of evidence only.
The physical characters of a series of skulls can give no reliable
information unless their exact provenance and relative age are known.
But the interpretation of the meaning of these characters cannot be
made unless we know something of the movements of the people and the
distinctive peculiarities of the inhabitants of the foreign lands
from which they may have come. No less important than the study of
their physical structure is the cultural history of peoples. The
real spirit of a population is revealed by its social and industrial
achievements, and by its customs and beliefs, rather than by the
shape of the heads and members of its units. The revival of the
belief in the widespread diffusion of culture in early times has,
as one of its many important effects, directed attention to the
physical peculiarities of the mixed populations of important foci
of civilization throughout the world. Such inquiries have not only
enabled the student of human structure to detect racial affinities
where he might otherwise have neglected to look for them, but on the
other hand they have been able to give the investigator of cultural
diffusion evidence of the most definite and irrefutable kind in
corroboration of the reality of his inferences.
At the present time students are just awakening to the fact that no
adequate idea of the anthropology of any area can be acquired unless
every kind of evidence, somatic and cultural, be taken into account,
and the problems of the particular locality are integrated with those
worldwide movements of men and of civilization of which the people
and culture of that locality form a part.
The great merit of Mr. Donald Mackenzie's book is due in the main
to the fact that he has taken this wider vision of his subject and
interpreted the history of early man in Britain, not simply by
describing the varieties of head-form or of implements, customs and
beliefs, but rather by indicating how these different categories of
information can be put into their appropriate setting in the history
of mankind as a whole. There is nothing of technical pedantry about
Mr. Mackenzie's writing. He has made himself thoroughly familiar with
the customs and beliefs of the whole world, as his remarkable series
of books on mythology has revealed, and in the process of acquiring
this mass of information he has not sacrificed his common sense and
powers of judgment. He has been able to see clearly through this
amazing jumble of confusing statements the way in which every phase
of civilization in all parts of the world is closely correlated with
the rest; and he has given luminous expression to this clear vision
of the history of man and civilization as it affects Britain.
G. ELLIOT SMITH.
The University of London.
PREFACE
This volume deals with the history of man in Britain from the
Ice Age till the Roman period. The evidence is gleaned from the
various sciences which are usually studied apart, including
geology, archæology, philology, ethnology or anthropology, &c.,
and the writer has set himself to tell the story of Ancient Man
in a manner which will interest a wider circle of readers than
is usually reached by purely technical books. It has not been
assumed that the representatives of Modern Man who first settled
in Europe were simple-minded savages. The evidence afforded by the
craftsmanship, the burial customs, and the art of the Crô-Magnon
races, those contemporaries of the reindeer and the hairy mammoth
in South-western France, suggests that they had been influenced by
a centre of civilization in which considerable progress had already
been achieved. There is absolutely no evidence that the pioneers were
lacking in intelligence or foresight. If we are to judge merely by
their skeletons and the shapes and sizes of their skulls, it would
appear that they were, if anything, both physically and mentally
superior to the average present-day inhabitants of Europe. Nor were
they entirely isolated from the ancient culture area by which they
had been originally influenced. As is shown, the evidence afforded by
an Indian Ocean sea-shell, found in a Crô-Magnon burial cavern near
Mentone, indicates that much has yet to be discovered regarding the
activities of the early people.
In writing the history of Ancient Man in Britain, it has been found
necessary to investigate the Continental evidence. When our early
ancestors came from somewhere, they brought something with them,
including habits of life and habits of thought. The story unfolded
by British finds is but a part of a larger story; and if this larger
story is to be reconstructed, our investigations must extend even
beyond the continent of Europe. The data afforded by the "Red Man of
Paviland", who was buried with Crô-Magnon rites in a Welsh cave, not
only emphasize that Continental and North African cultural influences
reached Britain when the ice-cap was retreating in Northern Europe,
but that from its very beginnings the history of our civilization
cannot be considered apart from that of the early civilization of
the world as a whole. The writer, however, has not assumed in this
connection that in all parts of the world man had of necessity to
pass through the same series of evolutionary stages of progress,
and that the beliefs, customs, crafts, arts, &c., of like character
found in different parts of the world were everywhere of spontaneous
generation. There were inventors and discoverers and explorers in
ancient times as there are at present, and many new contrivances
were passed on from people to people. The man who, for instance,
first discovered how to "make fire" by friction of fire-sticks was
undoubtedly a great scientist and a benefactor of his kind. It is
shown that shipbuilding had a definite area of origin.
The "Red Man of Paviland" also reveals to us minds pre-occupied with
the problems of life and death. It is evident that the corpse of the
early explorer was smeared with red earth and decorated with charms
for very definite reasons. That the people who thus interred their
dead with ceremony were less intelligent than the Ancient Egyptians
who adopted the custom of mummification, or the Homeric heroes who
practised cremation, we have no justification for assuming.
At the very dawn of British history, which begins when the earliest
representatives of Modern Man reached our native land, the influences
of cultures which had origin in distant areas of human activity came
drifting northward to leave an impress which does not appear to be
yet wholly obliterated. We are the heirs of the Ages in a profounder
sense than has hitherto been supposed.
Considered from this point of view, the orthodox scheme of
Archæological Ages, which is of comparatively recent origin, leaves
much to be desired. If anthropological data have insisted upon one
thing more than another, it is that modes of thought, which govern
action, were less affected by a change of material from which
artifacts (articles made by man) were manufactured than they were by
religious ideas and by new means for obtaining the necessary food
supply. A profounder change was effected in the habits of early man
in Britain by the introduction of the agricultural mode of life,
and the beliefs, social customs, &c., connected with it, than could
possibly have been effected by the introduction of edged implements
of stone, bone, or metal.
As a substitute for the Archæological Ages, the writer suggests
in this volume a new system, based on habits of life, which may
be found useful for historical purposes. In this system the terms
"Palæolithic", "Neolithic", &c., are confined to industries.
"Neolithic man", "Bronze Age man", "Iron Age man", and other terms of
like character may be favoured by some archæologists, but they mean
little or nothing to most anatomists, who detect different racial
types in a single "Age". A history of ancient man cannot ignore one
set of scientists to pleasure another.
Several chapters are devoted to the religious beliefs and customs of
our ancestors, and it is shown that there is available for study in
this connection a mass of evidence which the archæological agnostics
are too prone to ignore. The problem of the megalithic monuments must
evidently be reconsidered in the light of the fuller anthropological
data now available. Indeed, it would appear that a firmer basis than
that afforded by "crude evolutionary ideas" must be found for British
archæology as a whole. The evidence of surviving beliefs and customs,
of Celtic philology and literature, of early Christian writings, and
of recent discoveries in Spain, Mesopotamia, and Egypt, cannot, to
say the least of it, be wholly ignored.
In dealing with the race problem, the writer has sifted the available
data which throw light on its connection with the history of British
culture, and has written as he has written in the hope that the
growth of fuller knowledge on the subject will be accompanied by the
growth of a deeper sympathy and a deeper sense of kinship than has
hitherto prevailed in these islands of ours, which were colonized
from time to time by groups of enterprising pioneers, who have left
an enduring impress on the national character. The time is past for
beginning a history of Britain with the Roman invasion, and for the
too-oft-repeated assertion that before the Romans reached Britain our
ancestors were isolated and half civilized.
DONALD A. MACKENZIE.
CONTENTS
CHAP. Page
I. BRITONS OF THE STONE AGE 1
II. EARLIEST TRACES OF MODERN MAN 8
III. THE AGE OF THE "RED MAN" OF WALES 19
IV. SHELL DEITIES AND EARLY TRADE 35
V. NEW RACES IN EUROPE 49
VI. THE FAITHFUL DOG 61
VII. ANCIENT MARINERS REACH BRITAIN 67
VIII. NEOLITHIC TRADE AND INDUSTRIES 79
IX. METAL WORKERS AND MEGALITHIC MONUMENTS 87
X. CELTS AND IBERIANS AS INTRUDERS AND TRADERS 109
XI. RACES OF BRITAIN AND IRELAND 121
XII. DRUIDISM IN BRITAIN AND GAUL 140
XIII. THE LORE OF CHARMS 157
XIV. THE WORLD OF OUR ANCESTORS 167
XV. WHY TREES AND WELLS WERE WORSHIPPED 176
XVI. ANCIENT PAGAN DEITIES 195
XVII. HISTORICAL SUMMARY 209
INDEX 231
LIST OF PLATES
Page
HEAD OF A CRÔ-MAGNON MAN _Frontispiece_
EXAMPLES OF LOWER PALÆOLITHIC INDUSTRIES FOUND IN
ENGLAND 12
WESTERN EUROPE DURING THE THIRD INTER-GLACIAL EPOCH 16
EXAMPLES OF PALÆOLITHIC ART 56
FLINT LANCE HEADS FROM IRELAND 80
CHIPPED AND POLISHED ARTIFACTS FROM SOUTHERN ENGLAND 80
THE RING OF STENNIS, ORKNEY 96
MEGALITHS--KIT'S COTY HOUSE, KENT; TRETHEVY STONE,
CORNWALL 100
ENAMELLED BRONZE SHIELD 116
EUROPEAN TYPES 124
RUINS OF PICTISH TOWER AT CARLOWAY, LEWIS 128
A SCOTTISH "BROCH" (MOUSA, SHETLAND ISLES) 132
A SARDINIAN NURAGHE 136
MEGALITHS--DOLMEN, NEAR BIRORI, SARDINIA; TYNEWYDD
DOLMEN 160
ONE OF THE GREAT TRILITHONS, STONEHENGE 172
BRONZE URN AND CAULDRON 204
BRONZE BUCKLERS OR SHIELDS 224
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Page
CHELLEAN _COUP DE POING_ OR "HAND AXE" 14
UPPER PALÆOLITHIC IMPLEMENTS 21
SKULL OF A CRÔ-MAGNON MAN: FRONT AND SIDE VIEWS 24
OUTLINE OF A MAMMOTH 33
NECKLACE OF SEA SHELLS 39
GEOMETRIC OR "PYGMY" FLINTS 54
A NOTABLE EXAMPLE OF LATE MAGDALENIAN CULTURE 58
HORN AND BONE IMPLEMENTS 59
SKETCH OF A BOAT, AND CRUDE DRAWING OF A SIMILAR BOAT 75
MAP OF ENGLAND & WALES 82
LONG-HEAD (DOLICHOCEPHALIC) SKULL 88
BROAD-HEAD (BRACHYCEPHALIC) SKULL 88
BEADS FROM BRONZE AGE BARROWS 105
WEAPONS AND RELIGIOUS OBJECTS 114
CULT ANIMALS AND "WONDER BEASTS" 154
DIAGRAM OF THE GAELIC AIRTS 169
SEAL OF CITY OF GLASGOW 185
ANCIENT MAN IN BRITAIN
CHAPTER I
Britons of the Stone Age
Caricatures of Early Britons--Enterprising Pioneers--Diseases
and Folk-cures--Ancient Surgical Operations--Expert
Artisans--Organized Communities--Introduction of
Agriculture--Houses and Cooking Utensils--Spinning and
Weaving--Different Habits of Life--The Seafarers.
The Early Britons of the Stone Age have suffered much at the hands
of modern artists, and especially the humorous artists. They
are invariably depicted as rude and irresponsible savages, with
semi-negroid features, who had perforce to endure our rigorous and
uncertain climate clad in loosely fitting skin garments, and to go
about, even in the depth of winter, barefooted and bareheaded, their
long tangled locks floating in the wind.
As a rule, the artists are found to have confused ideas regarding the
geological periods. Some place the white savages in the age when the
wonderful megalithic monuments were erected and civilization was well
advanced, while others consign them to the far-distant Cretaceous Age
in association with the monstrous reptiles that browsed on tropical
vegetation, being unaware, apparently, that the reptiles in question
ceased to exist before the appearance of the earliest mammals.
Not unfrequently the geological ages and the early stages of human
culture are hopelessly mixed up, and monsters that had been extinct
for several million years are shown crawling across circles that were
erected by men possessed of considerable engineering skill.
It is extremely doubtful if our remote ancestors of the Stone Age
were as savage or as backward as is generally supposed. They were, to
begin with, the colonists who made Britain a land fit for a strenuous
people to live in. We cannot deny them either courage or enterprise,
nor are we justified in assuming that they were devoid of the
knowledge and experience required to enable them to face the problems
of existence in their new environment. They came from somewhere, and
brought something with them; their modes of life did not have origin
in our native land.
Although the early people lived an open-air life, it is doubtful if
they were more physically fit than are the Britons of the twentieth
century. They were certainly not immune from the ravages of disease.
In their graves are found skeletons of babies, youths, and maidens,
as well as those of elderly men and women; some spines reveal
unmistakable evidence of the effects of rheumatism, and worn-down
teeth are not uncommon. It is possible that the diseases associated
with marshy localities and damp and cold weather were fairly
prevalent, and that there were occasional pestilences with heavy
death-rates. Epidemics of influenza and measles may have cleared
some areas for periods of their inhabitants, the survivors taking
flight, as did many Britons of the fifth century of our own era,
when the country was swept by what is referred to in a Welsh book[1]
as "the yellow plague", because "it made yellow and bloodless all
whom it attacked". At the same time recognition must be given to
the fact that the early people were not wholly ignorant of medical
science. There is evidence that some quite effective "folk cures"
are of great antiquity--that the "medicine-men" and sorcerers of
Ancient Britain had discovered how to treat certain diseases by
prescribing decoctions in which herbs and berries utilized in modern
medical science were important ingredients. More direct evidence is
available regarding surgical knowledge and skill. On the Continent
and in England have been found skulls on which the operation known
as trepanning--the removing of a circular piece of skull so as to
relieve the brain from pressure or irritation--was successfully
performed, as is shown by the fact that severed bones had healed
during life. The accomplished primitive surgeons had used flint
instruments, which were less liable than those of metal to carry
infection into a wound. One cannot help expressing astonishment that
such an operation should have been possible--that an ancient man who
had sustained a skull injury in a battle, or by accident, should
have been again restored to sanity and health. Sprains and ordinary
fractures were doubtless treated with like skill and success. In
some of the incantations and charms collected by folk-lorists are
lines which suggest that the early medicine-men were more than
mere magicians. One, for instance, dealing with the treatment of a
fracture, states:
"He put marrow to marrow; he put pith to pith; he put bone to
bone; he put membrane to membrane; he put tendon to tendon; he
put blood to blood; he put tallow to tallow; he put flesh to
flesh; he put fat to fat; he put skin to skin; he put hair to
hair; he put warm to warm; he put cool to cool."
[1] _Book of Llan Daf._
"This," comments a medical man, "is quite a wonderful statement
of the aim of modern surgical 'co-aptation', and we can hardly
believe such an exact form of words imaginable without a very clear
comprehension of the natural necessity of correct and precise
setting."[2]
[2] Dr. Hugh Cameron Gillies in _Home Life of the Highlanders_,
Glasgow, 1911, pp. 85 _et seq._
The discovery that Stone Age man was capable of becoming a skilled
surgeon is sufficient in itself to make us revise our superficial
notions regarding him. A new interest is certainly imparted to
our examination of his flint instruments. Apparently these served
him in good stead, and it must be acknowledged that, after all, a
stone tool may, for some purposes, be quite as adequate as one of
metal. It certainly does not follow that the man who uses a sharper
instrument than did the early Briton is necessarily endowed with a
sharper intellect, or that his ability as an individual artisan is
greater. The Stone Age man displayed wonderful skill in chipping
flint--a most difficult operation--and he shaped and polished stone
axes with so marked a degree of mathematical precision that, when
laid on one side, they can be spun round on a centre of gravity. His
saws were small, but are still found to be quite serviceable for the
purposes they were constructed for, such as the cutting of arrow
shafts and bows, and the teeth are so minute and regular that it is
necessary for us to use a magnifying glass in order to appreciate the
workmanship. Some flint artifacts are comparable with the products of
modern opticians. The flint workers must have had wonderfully keen
and accurate eyesight to have produced, for instance, little "saws"
with twenty-seven teeth to the inch, found even in the north of
Scotland. In Ancient Egypt these "saws" were used as sickles.
Considerable groups of the Stone Age men of Britain had achieved a
remarkable degree of progress. They lived in organized communities,
and had evidently codes of laws and regularized habits of life. They
were not entirely dependent for their food supply on the fish they
caught and the animals they slew and snared. Patches of ground were
tilled, and root and cereal crops cultivated with success. Corn was
ground in handmills;[3] the women baked cakes of barley and wheat
and rye. A rough but serviceable pottery was manufactured and used
for cooking food, for storing grain, nuts, and berries, and for
carrying water. Houses were constructed of wattles interwoven between
wooden beams and plastered over with clay, and of turf and stones;
these were no doubt thatched with heather, straw, or reeds. Only a
small proportion of the inhabitants of Ancient Britain could have
dwelt in caves, for the simple reason that caves were not numerous.
Underground dwellings, not unlike the "dug-outs" made during the
recent war, were constructed as stores for food and as winter
retreats.
[3] A pestle or stone was used to pound grain in hollowed slabs
or rocks before the mechanical mill was invented.
As flax was cultivated, there can be little doubt that comfortable
under-garments were worn, if not by all, at any rate by some of
the Stone Age people. Wool was also utilized, and fragments of
cloth have been found on certain prehistoric sites, as well as
spindle-whorls of stone, bone, and clay, wooden spindles shaped so
as to serve their purpose without the aid of whorls, bone needles,
and crochet or knitting-pins. Those who have assumed that the
Early Britons were attired in skin garments alone, overlook the
possibility that a people who could sew, spin, and weave, might also
have been skilled in knitting, and that the jersey and jumper may
have a respectable antiquity. The art of knitting is closely related
to that of basket-making, and some would have it that many of the
earliest potters plastered their clay inside baskets of reeds, and
that the decorations of the early pots were suggested by the markings
impressed by these. It is of interest to note in this connection
that some Roman wares were called _bascaudæ_, or "baskets", and
that the Welsh _basged_--_basg_, from which our word "basket" is
derived, signify "network" and "plaiting". The decoration of some
pots certainly suggests the imitation of wickerwork and knitting,
but there are symbols also, and these had, no doubt, a religious
significance.
It does not follow, of course, that all the Early Britons of the
so-called Stone Age were in the same stage of civilization, or
that they all pursued the same modes of life. There were then, as
there are now, backward as well as progressive communities and
individuals, and there were likewise representatives of different
races--tall and short, spare and stout, dark and fair men and women,
who had migrated at different periods from different areas of origin
and characterization. Some peoples clung to the sea-shore, and
lived mainly on deep-sea fish and shell-fish; others were forest
and moorland hunters, who never ventured to sea or cultivated
the soil. There is no evidence to indicate that conflicts took
place between different communities. It may be that in the winter
season the hunters occasionally raided the houses and barns of the
agriculturists. The fact, however, that weapons were not common
during the Stone Age cannot be overlooked in this connection. The
military profession had not come into existence.
Certain questions, however, arise in connection with even the most
backward of the Stone Age peoples. How did they reach Britain, and
what attracted them from the Continent? Man did not take to the sea
except under dire necessity, and it is certain that large numbers
could not possibly have crossed the English Channel on logs of wood.
The boatbuilder's craft and the science of navigation must have
advanced considerably before large migrations across the sea could
have taken place. When the agricultural mode of life was introduced,
the early people obtained the seeds of wheat and barley, and, as
these cultivated grasses do not grow wild in Britain, they must have
been introduced either by traders or settlers.
It is quite evident that the term "Stone Age" is inadequate in
so far as it applies to the habits of life pursued by the early
inhabitants of our native land. Nor is it even sufficient in dealing
with artifacts, for some people made more use of horn and bone than
of stone, and these were represented among the early settlers in
Britain.