CHAPTER II
THE FIRST INHABITANTS OF CELTIC LANDS
OF the earliest inhabitants of Celtic lands we know little or nothing. We have, it is true, a number of tools made of flaked flint, but they tell us little of the men who fashioned them. In spite of the recent admissions by the eminent French archæologists who have examined the new discoveries at Foxhall,[2] there is still no little difference of opinion as to the human workmanship[3] of rostro-carinates, eoliths and such like early attempts, and no human remains have come to light which can be attributed with any probability to this horizon.
When we come to what is usually termed the lower palæolithic period we are on surer ground, for no one now denies the origin of implements of the Chelles and St. Acheul types. But the only skeletal remains which can with certainty be attributed to this period are the human jaw from the Mauer sand-pit near Heidelberg,[4] and the famous Piltdown skull.[5] Few people now believe that the Galley Hill skeleton dates from so remote a time,[6] while the discoverer himself has disclaimed so early an origin for the Ipswich man.[7]
To attempt to reconstruct a human type from a mandible alone would be indeed to carry far the principle of ex pede Herculem, and as yet there is little agreement among anthropologists as to the exact date, or for that matter the exact reconstruction, of the Piltdown skull,[8] though the ingenious hypothesis that a unique human cranium without a jaw, was found in close association with a unique troglodyte mandible has now, I understand, definitely been abandoned.[9]
Thus little or nothing is known of the first inhabitants of Celtic lands, beyond their tools, but when we come to the middle palæolithic period the case is different. While some difference of opinion still exists, the view advanced by Obermaier[10] and others seems to be gaining ground, that in Celtic lands the industry of Le Moustier first appeared as the climate was becoming colder on the approach of the last or Würm glaciation, though it is thought by some that it had flourished in an earlier and warmer time in the regions lying to the east.[11] This industry is believed by most authorities to have survived the first Würm maximum and to have lasted through the temporary amelioration of the Laufen retreat. Whether it survived, too, the second maximum, and lasted until the climate definitely improved is more doubtful, but many archæologists of great repute believe that it did so,[12] and unless this was the case it will be difficult to explain certain features of the Audi flints.[13]
Though there is as yet no general agreement as to the duration of the Mousterian industry, it is different when we come to consider the type of man who was responsible for this work. Everyone is agreed that the authors of this culture were of the type known as Neanderthal man, for several skeletons of this type, or parts of them, have been found associated with flint implements of Le Moustier design, and none have as yet turned up under conditions which make this correlation impossible.[14]
A considerable number of skulls and skeletons, about two dozen in all, of Neanderthal man have been found, the great majority in Celtic lands; but, though there is a general resemblance between all the members of the series, sufficiently strong to mark them off from the Piltdown skull on the one hand and from modern men on the other, the type is in many respects very variable. There are vast differences observable between the skull from Chapelle-aux-Saints,[15] the highest form yet discovered, and that of the Gibraltar man,[16] or rather woman, which is the most primitive yet found in Europe. As far as one can judge from the descriptions which have appeared as I write, the skull recently found at Broken Hill in Rhodesia differs from that of Gibraltar hardly if at all more than the Gibraltar skull differs from that found at Chapelle-aux-Saints. In the latter case there are several intermediate forms, in the former such may yet turn up, for Africa has, as yet, produced but one other skull of this type, that found not long ago near Constantine in Algeria, no description of which has, I believe, yet been published.
Skulls of this type have been so frequently described,[17] individually and collectively, that it is unnecessary to give another detailed account. It will be sufficient to say that they are large and massive, the vault is low, and they are specially distinguished by having over the eye sockets a heavy and continuous projecting ridge, known as a torus, which is one of the distinguishing features of the large anthropoid apes. Another point of importance is that the head was so attached to the body that it could not have been held absolutely erect, and must have produced a slouching gait, though the degree of this slope varied considerably in different specimens, and in the case of the Rhodesian skull was quite halfway between the slope of the Gibraltar skull and that of the gorilla.[18]
But it is unnecessary for our purpose to pursue this question further, for with the arrival of modern man, after the last glaciation was past, Neanderthal man disappeared. That the two races met, though not necessarily in this continent, seems clear from the fact that at Audi, near Les Eyzies, in the Dordogne, we find a culture, which in some respects resembles that of Le Moustier, and in others the succeeding culture of Aurignac.[19] That these two races interbred is unlikely, for Neanderthal man must have appeared an unsightly beast to his modern successor. In any case, if mating did take place, the union must have been sterile, for, in spite of much that has been written to the contrary,[20], there is no clear evidence of the survival of any distinctive Neanderthal traits in the men of later days.[21]