Ancient Britain and the Invasions of Julius Caesar

by T. Rice Holmes

Now the ethnological problem presented by the distribution of the dolmens is exceedingly difficult; and it is not certain that either of the above-mentioned views is right. Dolmens are found not only in the countries which have been already mentioned, but also in Japan, India, Persia, Arabia, Syria, Palestine, Moab, Asia Minor, the Crimea, the Netherlands, Northern Germany, and the Balearic Islands;[1717] and it is possible that in certain other countries their non-existence may be due simply to lack of the necessary stones.[1718] In the territory which corresponds with ancient Gaul there are no dolmens east of the line formed by the Jura and the Vosges;[1719] while the departments in which they are most numerous form a band extending obliquely from Finistère to Gard, that is, from the Channel to the Mediterranean.[1720] The single department of the Morbihan contains more megalithic monuments, including menhirs, or single standing stones, than all the other departments put together; but in the list of dolmens it ranks below Aveyron and Ardèche.[1721] In the Spanish peninsula almost all the dolmens are concentrated in Portugal, the north-eastern corner of Spain, and the southern and eastern seaboard: in Southern Britain they are found in Cornwall, Devonshire, Dorsetshire, Somersetshire, Wiltshire, Oxfordshire, Berkshire, Kent, Derbyshire, Staffordshire, and Northumberland, in Monmouthshire,[1722] Herefordshire, and Wales;[1723] while in Scotland they are represented by the horned cairns of Caithness and the chambered cairns of Orkney, Inverness, Argyllshire, Arran, and other islands.[1724] In Ireland they are everywhere, but most numerous in the west.[1725]

There is a striking resemblance, which, in certain cases, amounts to almost complete identity of form, between many of the dolmens of Western Europe and some even of the Caucasus and India; although, as might have been expected, local peculiarities exist everywhere.[1726] Thus the chambered long barrow of West Kennet in Wiltshire is identical in construction with the Hünebedden, or ‘Giants’ Graves’, of Brandenburg, Mecklenburg, and Hanover;[1727] and close resemblances have been noted between certain dolmens in Wales and others in Brittany and Portugal,[1728] between some in Antrim and others in Denmark,[1729] and between certain Irish dolmens and the peculiar ship-shaped monuments of the Balearic Isles.[1730] It is of course true that in sepulchres of such rude and simple construction general resemblance is inevitable, and does not necessarily imply community of origin: but when we find that in the Caucasus, in Syria and India, and in every European country in which dolmens exist some few have one of their stones pierced with a hole;[1731] that the covering-stones of certain dolmens in Portugal, Ireland, Cornwall, Sweden, and elsewhere are indented with small circular depressions,[1732] and that the sepulchral customs discernible in the dolmens of widely separated countries are virtually identical,[1733] it must be admitted that there is ground for the opinion that the custom of dolmen-building originated with some one people.[1734] On the other hand, it is easily conceivable that these coincidences originated in customs and beliefs which may have been common property before the first dolmen was set up, or which may have been handed on at a later time from tribe to tribe. De Mortillet argued that dolmens were not the exclusive creation of any one race because in France skeletons of widely different races have been found within them.[1735] But this fact only proves that an intruding race buried their dead in dolmens built by others, or else adopted the custom of dolmen-building from their predecessors. It has also been argued that the differences in detail which are noticeable in the dolmens of the various countries of Western Europe prove that they were not the work of one migratory people but of various settled tribes; and that this conclusion is borne out by the similarity between the culture of the dolmen-builders of widely separated countries such as France and Denmark.[1736] What is certain is that if the dolmens had been erected successively by peoples who migrated westward from Syria or even North Africa, and whose descendants moved on northward to the British Isles, we should expect to find that the British dolmens belonged to a period very much later than those of the Mediterranean. But the oldest dolmens of North Africa are assigned by General Faidherbe to the very end of the Neolithic and the commencement of the Bronze Age.[1737] The arguments of Penka, whatever value they may have in regard to the origin of dolmen-building, certainly do not prove that the Long Barrow race were descended from Scandinavian ancestors: for their skulls are easily distinguishable from those of Scandinavia;[1738] the neolithic pottery of Britain is utterly different from that of the north;[1739] and the distribution of the dolmens in the British Isles, where they are most numerous in Western Britain and in Ireland, is hardly consistent with the theory that the people who erected them came from the north-east. Moreover, the remains which have been found in the oldest Scandinavian dolmens indicate that the culture which they represent was more advanced than that which is manifested in similar tombs in Gaul or the British Isles.[1740]

On the question of the origin of dolmens I offer no opinion. But in regard to those of Western Europe the least improbable theory appears to be that which was first tentatively propounded by M. Cazalis de Fondonce,[1741] and developed by Mr. Borlase,[1742] namely, that a dolichocephalic people who were erecting dolmens in France and the Spanish peninsula, where these monuments may have been evolved from sepulchral caves,[1743] were forced westward by the brachycephalic ‘Grenelle’ race who invaded those countries in the Neolithic Age;[1744] that some of them migrated into the British Isles, and others into Holland and Northern Germany,[1745] whence the custom of dolmen-building would have spread to Denmark and Scandinavia; and that others [perhaps] moved southward into Africa. The earlier neolithic dolmen-builders of Gaul, like the Long Barrow people of Britain, belonged to the ‘Mediterranean’ type; and on the theory which I have stated their ancestors might have migrated into Spain and Gaul from Africa long before the first African dolmen was erected.

Lastly, linguistic arguments have been adduced to prove the African origin of the Long Barrow race.[1746] Professor Morris Jones[1747] endeavours to show that the Celtic language was modified, after it had been introduced into Britain, by the language or languages which it encountered;[1748] and he claims to have established the syntactical similarity of the modern Celtic dialects to Egyptian and to the Hamitic dialects generally, and to have demonstrated that ‘neo-Celtic syntax agrees with Hamitic in almost every point where it differs from Aryan’.[1749] This, he concludes, is ‘the linguistic complement of the anthropological evidence, and the strongest corroboration of the theory of the kinship of the early inhabitants of Britain to the North African white race’.

I would not, however, venture to commit myself to the theory of Sergi, that the cradle of the ‘Iberian’ race, or of the ‘Mediterranean’ race of which it was an offshoot, was in Northern Africa or Somaliland.[1750] Professor Boyd Dawkins infers ‘from their range as far north as Scotland, and at least as far to the east as Belgium, that they travelled by the same paths that the Celtic, Belgic, and Germanic tribes travelled ... coming from the East, and pushing their way to the West; and that another [group] mastered Northern Africa’; and he argues that this view ‘is confirmed by the examination of the domestic animals which they possessed. The short-horned ox, the sheep, and the goat, are derived from wild stocks that are now to be found only in Central Asia.... None of these animals were known in Europe before the Neolithic Age.’[1751] But any one who has read so far will have seen that the range of the ‘Iberian’ race ‘as far north as Scotland’ lends no support to the theory that it originated in Asia. In regard to the argument which the professor derives from the examination of the domestic animals, Rolleston[1752] inclined to the view that ‘though coming in the ultimate resort from the east, [they] ... did not reach the north of the Alps directly from the East, but only ... from the Greek and Italian peninsulas’. But the truth is that we do not know whether the earliest neolithic invaders of the British Isles or of Western Europe possessed short-horned oxen, sheep, or goats.[1753] Supposing that these animals came from the East, is it not possible that they were introduced into Europe not by the ‘Mediterranean’ race but by brachycephalic neolithic immigrants? Moreover, Professor Boyd Dawkins has himself admitted that ‘the common domestic hog, descended from the wild boar, may have been originally tamed in Europe’,[1754] and that the vegetables possessed by the Swiss lake-dwellers may have been ‘derived from Southern Europe’;[1755] and it is now generally held that the domestic animals of the neolithic inhabitants of Europe were of European origin, and that there is no evidence that their plants and cereals were derived from Asia.[1756]

On the whole the evidence shows that the neolithic inhabitants of Britain, or at all events a large proportion of them, were descended from ancestors who lived in the Mediterranean basin. But it does not follow that they were more intimately related to the people whom the ancient writers called Iberians than to some other branch of the Mediterranean stock. It is certain that before the Romans entered the Spanish peninsula two languages at least besides Celtic were spoken there,—Basque and the language of the so-called Iberian inscriptions.[1757] The latter has not yet been deciphered: but, as we have seen,[1758] all attempts to explain it by means of Basque have failed; and, as Professor Morris Jones admits, all attempts to discover traces of Basque influence in the Celtic dialects have been equally unsuccessful.[1759]

Therefore it should be distinctly understood that if the term ‘Iberian’ is to be applied to the neolithic inhabitants of Britain, it must be taken in a purely conventional sense.[1760]

M. d’Arbois de Jubainville[1761] adduces various British place-names, for example, Sabrina (the Severn), Isca (the Exe), Albion, and Cantium (Kent), which he chooses to call Ligurian; but I am not aware that he has made any converts. Little or nothing is known about the Ligurian tongue;[1762] and even if M. d’Arbois’s conjectures could be verified their ethnological value would be comparatively slight; for, as I have shown elsewhere,[1763] there is some reason to believe that the Ligurians, like the Iberians, belonged to the ‘Mediterranean’ stock.

It is perhaps hardly necessary now to insist upon the fact that the Long Barrow race is not extinct. Not only have their remains been found, as we shall presently see, in graves of the Bronze Age and the Late Celtic period,[1764] but men of the same type, but little modified, are still numerous.[1765]

It is often taken for granted that no round barrows were erected in Britain before the close of the Neolithic Age, and that the earliest of the brachycephalic invaders whose remains have been found in them landed with bronze weapons in their hands.[1766] But these assumptions are made in spite of conclusive evidence. There is not the slightest doubt that most if not all of the circular chambered cairns of Argyllshire, Caithness, Orkney, and Derbyshire were erected before the Bronze Age in those parts began.[1767] Dr. Garson, speaking of brachycephalic skulls which have been found in round barrows in Orkney, says that ‘the fact that no metals of any kind were found, and that all the implements were of the most primitive manufacture, points to the people belonging to the unpolished stone period’, and concludes that ‘we probably post-date the existence of the people who buried in the round barrows of Orkney if we attribute them with (sic) the same antiquity as those of the round barrows of England’.[1768] Dr. Garson has also shown that the round barrow of Howe Hill in Yorkshire was erected in the Neolithic Age, and that the skeletons found in it belong to the Long Barrow type.[1769] The round-headed people who introduced drinking-cups into our island brought no bronze with them. According to Barnard Davis, a skull from a chambered round barrow at Parsley Hay Low in Derbyshire, which had a cephalic index of 81, ‘without doubt belongs to the early “stone-period”’;[1770] and he assigns to the same epoch another skull, the cephalic index of which was the same, from Green Gate Hill barrow, Pickering, Yorkshire.[1771] Canon Greenwell suggests that some of the round barrows ‘belong to an age before bronze was discovered’; and it is certain that the round barrows of this country were connected by evolution with the earlier long barrows.[1772] Finally, if Sergi[1773] is right in maintaining that ‘the new burial custom of cremation’ was introduced into Europe by brachycephalic immigrants, it follows that they invaded Britain in the Neolithic Age; for in this country, as in Gaul, cremation was then practised.[1774]