| Modern men. | ||
| Mediæval. | ||
| Gallo-Roman (coins). | ||
| Gauls (iron weapons). | ||
| Neolithic men | bronze. polished stone. | |
| [Gap. This gap questioned.] | ||
| Palæolithic men | of ivory and bone weapons. | |
| of delicately-worked flint blades. | ||
| of rudely-worked flint weapons. | Moustier. Chelles.[15] | |
The Palæolithic men were the great reindeer and horse hunters, and the development of their civilisation may be followed in their remains. What became of them we know not. Perhaps they migrated north after the reindeer.
The Neolithic men erected the rude stone monuments, the circles of upright stones. They were the men of Stonehenge and of Carnac. But this race was not pure. Its skulls exhibit a great mixture of character and kind, and it is probable that it took up into it other peoples subjugated on its way west and south. Perhaps it also was conquered. We cannot tell; but it seems from certain indications that it was so, and that by the metal-working race.
When the Gaels and Cymri invaded our isles, they found them peopled, and peopled by various races, and these they in turn subjugated.
We know but very little of the primitive populations of our isles and of Europe; and a good deal of what we think we know is due to guesswork based on a few observations.
As far as we can judge, the dwellers in bee-hive huts were the same as those who erected the rude stone monuments, but it does not follow that the Megalithic monument builders did not impose their customs on the race they conquered; and indeed it is possible, even probable, that a people conquering them may have adopted their religious ideas and their methods of interment.
It is curious to note how that in legend the subjugated people are supposed to live in earth mounds. No story is more common than that of a man passing a mound at night and seeing it open, and finding that merriment and drinking are going on within. Sometimes children are snatched away, and are brought up in these mounds. He who desires to have a sword of perfect temper goes to one of the mounds, taps, and bargains with the mound-dweller to make him a sword. The name now given to the race—not a pure, but a mixed one—that occupied the land before the dawn of history, is Ivernian. It was a dark-haired and sallow-complexioned race. The Kelt was fair; and if in Ireland, and in Cornwall, and in France so much dark hair and dusky skin is found, this is due to the self-assertion of the primitive race that was subjugated by the blue-eyed, fair-haired conquerors from the Black Sea and the Danube.
What was the conquered race? “What,” asks the author of “Chaldæa,” in the “Story of the Nations,” “What is this great race which we find everywhere at the very roots of history, so that not only ancient tradition calls them ‘the oldest of men,’ but modern science more and more inclines to the same opinion? Whence came it?” And the answer Mme. Ragozin gives to the question is—that this was the yellow Turanian people which overflowed from the steppes of Northern Asia, which carried with it thence acquaintance with the metals, and through this acquaintance established itself as masters wherever it went. That may be, but before this Ivernian race arrived in the west, whatever it was, it found that man had been on the soil before it—aye, and for ages on ages—occupying caves, hunting the reindeer and the horse, ignorant of the art of the potter, and yet in some particulars his superior in intellectual power.[16]
Although the bee-hive hut may have originated with the dark-haired Ivernian metal-worker, it by no means follows that it was not in use long after, to a comparatively recent period. As we have seen, Tristan and Ysonde took refuge in one. The bee-hive hut is still in employ in the Hebrides. I will quote a most interesting account of one by Dr. A. Mitchell. “I turn now to a more remarkable form of dwelling which is still tenanted, but is just passing into complete disuse. Nearly all the specimens of it remaining in Scotland are to be found in the Lewis and Harris, or other islands of the outer Hebrides. There are probably only from twenty to thirty now in occupation, and although some old ones may yet be repaired, it is not likely that a new one will ever again be built. The newest we know of is not yet a century old. It was still occupied in 1866, and was built by the grandfather of a gentleman who died a few years ago in Liverpool.