Now the civilisation principally considered by archæologists in connection with the building of the monuments which I have studied is the Aryan, of which the Celts formed a branch. This view, however, is not universally held; the late General Pitt-Rivers, and I know of no higher authority, stated his opinion that “The megalithic monuments... take us back to pre-Aryan people, and suggest the spread of this people over the area covered by their remains.”[88]
Mr. Gomme is of the same opinion (p. 27):
“Ceremonies which are demonstrably non-Aryan in India, even in the presence of Aryan people, must in origin have been non-Aryan in Europe, though the race from whom they have descended is not at present identified by ethnologists.”
Sergi also points out:—
“Indo-Germanism led to almost entire forgetfulness of the most ancient civilisations of the earth, those born in the valleys of the Euphrates and the Tigris, and in the valley of the Nile; no influence was granted to them over Greco-Roman classic civilisation, almost none anywhere in the Mediterranean.”[89]
It is not necessary for me to deal at length with the great Aryan controversy in this book, even if the subject were within my competence, which it is not; but now that we have a large number of monuments dated, say, within twenty years of their use, it is important to bring forward some dates arrived at by archæologists and philologists to compare with those which the astronomical method of inquiry has revealed.
Hall[90] gives evidence to show that the Aryans did not reach Greece till after the earlier period of the Mycenæan age, which he dates at about 1700 B.C.
With regard to the date of the Aryan invasion of Britain, Mr. Read, of the Department of Ethnography, British Museum, informs me that it may be taken as about 1000 B.C.; it was associated with cremation. It is highly probable that these Aryans were the Goidels or the Gael. These were followed some 700 years later by another Aryan sept—the Brythons. Mr. Read is also of opinion that the Goidels reached Britain from the country round the South Baltic, and the Brythons from or through north-east France.
Archæologists, however, recognise a pre-Aryan invasion, about 1800 B.C. (a date determined by the introduction of bronze), of a brachycephalic folk who built covered barrows, different in these respects from the neolithic folk, who were long-skulled and built long barrows. Now, in relation to the stone structures to which this book especially refers, the question arises, are we then dealing with this swarm or the people whom they found on the soil?
There are some indications in the traditions which imply that we are really dealing with an early stone age, when flints were the only weapons, and there were no clothes to speak of. I will give one or two examples of these traditions. Gomme (p. 53) refers to a singular fact preserved among the ceremonies of witchcraft in Scotland: