The Bronze Age and the Celtic World

by Harold Peake

It was between 7,000 and 6,500 B.C. that a fresh wave of Capsian people from North Africa began to invade Spain,[54] into which peninsula they introduced what is known as East Spanish Art.[55] By degrees they pressed the Magdalenian Cromagnons to the Pyrenees, where their culture declined to that which we know as Azilian.[56] The invaders passed on through Celtic lands, bringing with them a new culture, known as Tardenoisian,[57] and seem to have reached the British Isles before 5000 B.C.

These people seem to have been another variety of the same long-headed race, which had developed into a distinct type in North Africa, and had there, perhaps, mingled to a greater or lesser degree with the descendants of the Grimaldi men, whom we met with at the beginning of the period of Aurignac. If we may judge by those who seem to be their descendants, they were of rather short, slight build, with long narrow heads, brown skin, dark hair and eyes, the type which to-day is known as the Mediterranean race.[58] It is possible that the Grimaldi elements in their composition, and which are sometimes found comparatively pure, may account for that small dark type, often showing marked alveolar prognathism, which has been found in certain out of the way regions, such as Apulia and Sardinia, and which are known to some anthropologists as Iapygian,[59] and have been termed Ethiopic by Ruggeri.[60]

This new population seems to have been peaceably inclined and made no attempt to exterminate its predecessors, but settled down in the lower lands and by the sea shore, while the Cromagnon men remained in the mountain zones of the Pyrenees and the Dordogne, and the Combe Capelle type survived in Central Europe and among the hills of Wales. It seems almost certain that the newcomers were still hunters, quite ignorant of agriculture and the domestication of animals; as some of their settlements have been found by the sea shore and on the banks of streams, it seems likely that they lived to a considerable extent on fish and molluscs.

It would appear, then, that the type which we know as the Mediterranean race, and which has given to Wales, Scotland and Ireland the majority of their small brunette inhabitants, is made up of the descendants of all the types of long-headed men—except the Chancelade variety—which we meet with in the Celtic lands of western Europe during the upper palæolithic period. That the Combe Capelle type survives on the moorlands of Plynlimmon has been shown by Fleure: examples of an africanoid type with alveolar prognathism are not uncommon in Wales and in the poorer quarters of our big cities, and the Cromagnon type only seems to be missing or at any rate relatively scarce. The main element, however, which has gone to make up the Mediterranean race as we now know it, seems to be that which entered Europe through Spain, with Capsian culture, during the closing years of the Magdalenian period.

These people have left in the west, not only considerable vestiges of their blood, but no small amount of their language, or to state the matter more accurately the language of these people has left a marked effect upon the tongues which succeeded it in the west. More than twenty years ago Mr., now Sir John Morris Jones[61] pointed out that “the syntax of Welsh and Irish differs in some important respects from that of the languages belonging to the other branches of the Aryan family,” and suggested that these points, in which too the neo-celtic tongues differed from ancient Gaulish, were due to the influence of a language which had been spoken in these lands before the introduction of the Celtic tongue. He pointed out that many of these peculiarities, which occur also sometimes when the English tongue is spoken by Irishmen, were similar to the syntactical arrangements in force in the language of ancient Egypt and among the Berber dialects spoken by the natives of Algeria, the Kabyles, Shawiya and Tuaregs.

Now the Egyptians and other peoples of North Africa are considered by all anthropologists as typical members of the Mediterranean race, though the inhabitants of the western part seem, as we have seen, to have incorporated no small amount of Grimaldi blood; it would seem then that we may accept the suggestion of Sir John Morris Jones that the syntax of Welsh and Irish is a legacy from the language spoken by these Mediterranean invaders, who reached Spain about 7000 B.C. and formed the bulk of the population of the British Isles about 5000 B.C.

So far we have been dealing with the early inhabitants of the Celtic lands of the west, but a word must be said of some fresh arrivals into the Celtic cradle in Central Europe. It was during the Azilian period, about 6000 B.C., that a new race appeared in Central Europe, coming from the east. Of their earlier abode we know nothing positively, but there are reasons for inferring that their line of approach was by the Kopet Dagh and the Armenian highlands, and that they came ultimately from the slopes of the Hindu Kush and the western side of the Himalayan massif. This race, which is called the race of Ofnet, from the skulls found in the caves of Ofnet, in Bavaria, had a broad head, the outline of which as viewed from above consisted of two segments of circles, the one forming the back of the head, the other the front. The brow-ridges are slight, the nose short and straight, the eye-sockets low and almost rectangular, the cheek-bones not very prominent and the chin weak and undeveloped.[62] This race seems to have met and mated with the remnants of the Combe Capelle race in the Upper Danube basin, and the progeny of this union seems to have been a type with a pear-shaped head as seen from above, with a rounded back, indistinguishable from the type found later in the Swiss lake-dwellings and in the mountains of Central Europe at the present day, and which is known as the Alpine race.[63]

The Ofnet race seems to have spread westward into the Celtic lands, either at this time or perhaps later, though probably in small numbers, for a skull found at Grenelle, near Paris, under what are believed to be neolithic surroundings, belongs to this type.[64] Other broad-headed skulls of this or the Alpine type, dating from about 5000 B.C., or a little earlier, have been found at Mugem on the banks of the Tagus,[65] while others of this type of about the same date have been found in the caves of Furfooz in Belgium.[66]

Whether any of this broad-headed Asiatic strain reached the British Isles at so early a date is uncertain. No skulls of this type and date have been discovered, but broad-headed types occur sporadically in Wales, Ireland and the western islands of Scotland, which may conceivably represent descendants of early Ofnet or Alpine immigrants.

Somewhat later, before 4000 B.C., fresh waves of broad-headed immigrants seem to have arrived in Central Europe from the Armenian highlands or the Anatolian plateau, bringing with them the knowledge of grain, cultivated fruits and domestic animals, and the custom of erecting pile-dwellings in marshes or lakes, and of grinding and polishing axes of flint or other hard stone.[67] Such knowledge seems to have reached even the west of Switzerland by 4000 B.C. and to have spread later throughout the massif central of France, which was already peopled by men of the Alpine type.