The Ethnology of the British Islands

by R. G. Latham

For the ambitious attempt at a reconstruction of the earliest state of the human kind in Britain, we may prepare ourselves by a double series of processes. Having taken society as it exists at the present moment, we eject those elements of civilization which have brought it to its present condition, beginning with the latest first. We then take up a smaller question, and consider what arts and what forms of knowledge—what conditions of society—existing amongst the earlier populations have been lost or superseded with ourselves. The result is an approximation to the state of things in the infancy of our species. We subtract (for instance) from the sum of our present means and appliances such elements as the knowledge of the power of steam, the art of printing, and gunpowder; all which we can do under the full light of history. Stripped of these,[20] society takes a ruder shape. But it is still not rude enough to be primitive. There are parts of the earth's surface, at the present moment, where the metals are unknown. There was, probably, a time when they were known nowhere. Hence, the influences of such a knowledge as this must be subtracted. And then come weaving and pottery, the ruder forms of domestic architecture, and boat-building, lime-burning, dyeing, tanning, and the fermentation of liquors. When and where were such arts as these wanting to communities? No man can answer this; yet our methods of investigation require that the question should be raised.

Other questions, too, which cannot be answered must be suggested, since they serve to exhibit the trains of reasoning that depend upon them. Was Britain (a question already indicated) cut off from Gaul by the Straits of Dover when it was first peopled? If it were, the civilization required for the building of a boat must have been one of the attributes of the first aborigines; so that, whatever else in the way of civilization may have been evolved on British ground, the art of hollowing a tree, and launching it on the waves was foreign.

Now it is safe to say that the writers who are most willing to assign a high antiquity to the first occupation of the British Isles by Man, have[21] never carried their epoch so high as the time when Britain and Gaul were joined by an isthmus. On the contrary, they all argue as if the islands were as insular as they are at present, and attribute to the first settlers the construction and management of some frail craft—rude, of course, but still a seaworthy piece of mechanism—after the fashion of the boats of Gaul or Germany; and this is the reasonable view of the subject.

In Mr. Daniel Wilson's "Pre-historic Annals of Scotland," we have the best data for the next portion of the question, viz., the extent to which geological changes have occurred since the first occupancy of our islands. In the valley of the Forth,[1] alterations in the relations of the land and sea to the amount of twenty-five feet have occurred since the art of making deers' horns into harpoons was known in Scotland. Such at least is the inference from the discovery, in the Carse lands about Blair Drummond Moss, of the skeleton of a whale, with a harpoon beside it, twenty-five feet above the present tides of the Forth. As much as can be told by any single fact is told by this; its valuation being wholly in the hands of the geologists.

Then, the bone of an Irish elk, according to one view (but not according to another), gives us a second fact. A rib, with an oval opening, where[22] oval openings should not be, and with an irregular effusion of callus around it, is found under eleven feet of peat. Dr. Hart attributes this to a sharp-pointed instrument, wielded by a human hand, which without penetrating deep enough to cause death, effected a breach on the continuity of the bone, and caused inflammation to be set up. But Professor Owen thinks that a weapon of the kind in question, if left in, to be worked out by the vix medicatrix of Nature, would be fatal, and consequently he prefers the notion of the wound having been inflicted by a weapon which was quickly withdrawn, e.g., the horn of some combative rival of its own kind, rather than the human. Now if it be a difficult matter to say what will, and what will not kill a man in the year '52, much more so is it to speak chirurgically about Irish elks of the Pleiocene period. Hence the evidence of man having been cotemporary with the Megaceros Hibernicus is unsatisfactory.

That a certain amount, then, of change of level between the land and sea, in a certain part of Scotland, has taken place since Scotchmen first hunted whales is the chief fact, relative to the date of our introduction, that we get from geology. From archæology we learn something more. Those sepulchral monuments which have the clearest and most satisfactory signs of antiquity, contain numerous implements of stone and[23] bone, but none of metal. When metal is found, the concomitant characters of the tomb in which it occurs, indicate a later period. If so, it is a fair inference for the ethnological archæologist to conclude, that although the earliest colonists reached Britain late enough to avail themselves of boats, their migration was earlier than the diffusion of the arts of metallurgy. And this has induced the best investigators to designate the earliest stage in British ethnology by the name of the Stone Period, a technical and convenient term.

It is the general opinion, that during this period the practice of inhumation, or simple burial, was commoner than that of cremation or burning, though each method was adopted. Over the remains disposed of by the former process, were erected mounds of earth (tumuli or barrows), heaps of stone (cairns), or cromlechs. There are strong suspicions that the practice of Suttí was recognized. Around a skeleton, more or less entire, are often found, at regular distances, the ashes of bodies that were burnt; just as if the chief was interred in the flesh, but his subordinates given over to the flames. The posture is, frequently, one which, on the other side of the Atlantic, has called forth numerous remarks. Throughout America, it was observed by Dr. Morton, that one of the most usual forms of burial was to place the corpse in a half upright position, or a sitting attitude,[24] with the knees and hams bent, and the arms folded on the legs. Now this is a common posture in Britain—a clear proof of the extent to which similar practices are independent of imitation. If any ornaments be found with the corpse, they are chiefly of cannel coal. The implements are all of stone, or bone—the celt, the arrow, the spear-head, the adze, and the mallet.

What was the physical aspect of the country at this time? The present, minus the clearings—wood and fen, fen and wood, in interminable succession; woods of oak in the clay soils; of beech on the chalk; of birch, pine, and fir in the northern parts of the island. The boats were essentially monoxyla, i.e., single trees hollowed out, sometimes by stone adzes, oftener by fire. The chief dresses were the skins of beasts.

Such is what archæology tells us. The other questions belong to the naturalist. What was the ancient Fauna? Whether the earliest men were cotemporaneous with the latest of the extinct quadrupeds, has been already asked—the answer being doubtful. How far the earliest beasts of chase and domestication were the same as the present, is a fresh question. The sheep may reasonably be considered as a recent introduction; but with all the other domestic animals there are, perhaps, as good reasons for deriving them from native species as for considering them to be of foreign origin.[25] The hog of the present breed, may indeed be of continental origin; so may the present cat, horse, and ass. Nevertheless, the hog, cat, horse, and ass, whose bones are found in the alluvial deposits, may have been domesticated. The Devonshire, Hereford, and similar breeds of oxen may be new; but the bos longifrons may have originated some native breeds, which the inhabitants of even the earliest period—the period of stone and bone implements—may have domesticated. The opinion of Professor Owen is in favour of this view; and certainly, though it cannot be enforced by mere authority, it is recommended by its simplicity,—avoiding, as it does, the unnecessary multiplication of causes. The goat was certainly indigenous, but no more certainly domesticated than the equally indigenous deer. This indigenous rein-deer may or may not have been trained. The miserable aliments of the beach, shell-fish and crustacea, constituted no small part of the earliest human food; and so (for the northern part of the isle at least) did eggs, seals, and whales. Surely in these primitive portions of the Stone period our habits must have approached those of the Lap, the Samöeid, and the Eskimo, however different they may be now.

But metals, in the course of time, were introduced; first bronze, and then iron; gold and lead being, perhaps, earlier than either, earlier too[26] than silver. Of gold we take but little notice. It was not a useful metal; but subservient only to the purposes of barbaric ornament. The next fact is of great importance.