The earliest man who has left traces in Europe is he of the Palæolithic Period, or Old Stone Age, a hunter and cave-dweller without domesticated animals, whose traces are especially found in southern Europe. No traces of his presence have yet been found in Scandinavia or in Scotland, where the climatic conditions perhaps made his existence impossible. Not much is known of this early race, but it seems to have been long-headed, and was probably dark. It is no longer believed that there was a complete rupture between the culture of the Palæolithic period, with its unpolished stone implements, and that of the Neolithic age, with its polished implements, but the relations of the two remain somewhat uncertain. The remains of the Neolithic period are much more extensive and enable us to draw much more satisfactory conclusions as to racial characters. We shall describe briefly some of these Neolithic remains as they appear in Great Britain.
Before doing this, however, it is necessary to say a few words about the means of recognising different races of men. The criterion most employed is that of head form, and especially what is known as the cephalic index, that is, the ratio between the breadth of the skull between the ears and its length from front to back. The ratio is expressed as a percentage, the length being taken as 100, and the breadth stated as a fraction of it. When the index rises above 80, the skull is said to be brachycephalic, or rounded; when it is below 75, the skull is long, or dolichocephalic. The Italian anthropologist, Sergi, adopts another classification of skulls, based upon the shape, but this is only a refinement of the ordinary distinction between long and round skulls.
Another important character, which, like the shape of the skull, can be measured either in the living person or in the skeleton, is the height, which has some racial significance. A third character, of much importance, is the colouring of the skin, eyes and hair. This can only be inferred in the case of pre-historic peoples. Finally, the shape of the features, especially of the nose, has some racial significance.
In the west of Great Britain generally, and extending northwards to Orkney, there occur the burying-places of a Neolithic people, which have yielded abundant remains, including skeletons. The cairns, tumuli, or barrows of this people are recognised by their elongated shape, by the fact that they are chambered, and by the contained skeletons, which are always those of a dolichocephalic people. “Long barrows, long skulls” is an anthropological rule for England and Scotland, no less than for the other parts of Europe in which these tumuli occur. The skeletons within the barrows show no marks of fire, so that inhumation not cremation was practised, and a very curious feature found in Scotland, in Sicily, in Egypt and elsewhere, in tombs supposed to be of similar age, is that the body is usually placed in a doubled-up position. The position corresponds to the pre-natal position of the human infant, and this method of burial is supposed to imply some belief in a future life—is a record of a naïve hope that man could “enter a second time into his mother’s womb and be born again.”
Graves of this type, containing the skeletons of long-headed men, believed to be of the race which we have called Mediterranean, occur not only in western Great Britain, but also in France, in Scandinavia, in Germany, in the Mediterranean basin, and elsewhere. There seems reason to believe that they prove that in Neolithic times the Mediterranean race was widely distributed, especially in the west; it seems, further, tolerably certain that Mediterranean man himself was an immigrant from the north of Africa, and established himself first in the Mediterranean basin.
The members of this race have now, and apparently have always had, the following characters:—The skull is markedly dolichocephalic, the skin tends to be brown, the eyes and hair are dark, the stature is medium and the build slight, and the nose is rather broad.
According to Prof. Sergi there are four great stocks of this race; of these, one remained within Africa, and has been known under various names, the ancient Egyptians, the Libyans, the Berbers being all of this stock. The other three stocks invaded Europe, entering by the three natural routes which present themselves, that is, by the three regions where the sea is most easily crossed. The most western group, the Iberians, crossed, as we have seen, via Gibraltar, and occupied the Iberian peninsula. The next group, the Ligurians, found an entrance into Europe via Sicily, and passing up into Italy extended westwards along the Riviera, till they encountered the Iberians in southern France.
Finally, the third group, the Pelasgians, reached Greece by means of the islands of that part of the Mediterranean. It still remains uncertain whether an earlier migration still had peopled Europe with Palæolithic man, who, on this theory, would belong also to the Mediterranean race, or whether the immigrant African race displaced some earlier unrelated population. In any case, it is tolerably certain that the first peopling of Europe on any considerable scale was the result of this immigration of Mediterranean man.
He doubtless first established himself on the margin of the great sea, and there became thoroughly suited to his environment. Later he spread northwards, being no doubt especially attracted by the relatively mild climate of the west, by what has been called the “winter gulf of warmth” which extends over north-western Europe.