There is probably this grain of truth in Professor Rhys’s theory, that the non-Celtic natives continued to exist in greater purity in the country which was occupied by a group of tribes who, during the latter part of the Roman occupation and afterwards, were called Picts, than in any other part of Britain. But I doubt whether this eminent scholar could have spent his time less profitably than in striving to demonstrate, first, that the language of the Picts was related to Basque, and, when he was forced to abandon this attempt, in clinging to the theory that it was a non-Aryan tongue.
VIII. THE ROUND-HEADS
There is, as we have already seen,[1889] sufficient evidence that round-headed immigrants had begun to appear in Britain towards the end of the Neolithic Age; but the majority of the prehistoric skulls of this kind undoubtedly belong to the Age of Bronze. Men of the same type were living in England at the time of the Saxon invasion;[1890] and their descendants may be recognized here and there at the present day.[1891] The prehistoric skeletons have been found not only in the round barrows of Yorkshire, Derbyshire, Staffordshire, Wiltshire, Dorsetshire, Denbighshire, Man, and Orkney, and in secondary interments in long barrows, but also in Welsh caverns and graves and in the short cists of Scotland.[1892] The range of this people in Britain was, however, it need hardly be said, far wider than that which the discovery of a few skeletons has indicated.
The round-headed invaders are commonly described as physically finer men than the neolithic population whom in most parts of Britain they subdued;[1893] but the truth is that, both in respect of stature and of cranial form, they belonged to two utterly different groups, though, as might be expected, some exhibit characteristics of both.[1894] The average height of 17 brachycephalic men whose skeletons had been found in round barrows before 1865 would have been, according to Dr. Beddoe’s estimate, 5 feet 9 inches, or almost 1 metre 753; while the average height of 27 men of various cephalic indices, including the 17 just mentioned, whose skeletons (described in Crania Britannica) have been found in round barrows, would, according to the same authority, have reached 5 feet 9⅖ inches,[1895] or approximately 1 metre 763. Measurements of skeletons which have been discovered since the publication of Crania Britannica have yielded results virtually the same.[1896] On the other hand two groups of skeletons have recently been described which belonged to a much shorter race. Four, taken from round barrows in Glamorganshire, showed, according to Dr. Beddoe’s method, an average height of about 5 feet 5¾ inches;[1897] while 7 male skeletons, found in short cists in and near Aberdeenshire, ranged, according to Mr. Alexander Low, between 5 feet and 5 feet 7 inches, the average being only 5 feet 3 inches.[1898] The skulls of these skeletons will be presently described.
The cephalic indices of 103 male skulls, found before the year 1894 in round barrows or in other interments of the Bronze Age,[1899] ranged from 70 to 88, 55 of them exceeding 80; while those of 19 skeletons from round barrows in which no bronze was found ranged from 68 to 88, six of them exceeding 80.[1900] In both series a large proportion of the skulls whose indices fell short of 80 belonged, wholly or in part, to the Long Barrow race. Other skulls, however, which have since been described and of the characteristics of which Dr. Beddoe, the compiler of this list, may have been ignorant, yielded indices higher still.[1901]
But it is not enough to describe the invaders of the Bronze Age as brachycephalic: they shared that characteristic with peoples who were otherwise markedly different from them. Let us first consider those which belong to the so-called characteristic type, which, until a recent date, received more than its share of attention,—that which is seen only in the taller skeletons. Their foreheads, says Rolleston, were ‘sometimes ... especially in cases where the whole skull and skeleton are marked by great strength and even ruggedness, markedly sloping’.[1902] Their supraciliary ridges were often extraordinarily prominent. ‘The eyebrows,’ says the same authority, ‘must have given a beetling and probably even formidable appearance to the upper part of the face, whilst the boldly outstanding and heavy cheek bones must have produced an impression of raw and rough strength.... Overhung at its root, the nose must have projected boldly forward.’[1903] These men were, in some instances, extremely prognathous:[1904] their teeth were often extraordinarily large;[1905] and, to quote Thurnam, ‘the prominence of the large incisor and canine teeth is so great as to give an almost bestial expression to the skull.’[1906] The reader who scans the illustrations in Crania Britannica and in Canon Greenwell’s British Barrows will, however, see that the brachycephalic skulls even of the taller skeletons are not all of the same type. Moreover, some few of the Round Barrow skulls combine the contour of the characteristic brachycephalic skull of the British Bronze Age with dolichocephaly;[1907] and this is one of the facts which tend to prove that in certain parts of England the brachycephalic invaders intermarried with the people whom they found in possession. In the East Riding of Yorkshire, indeed, it would seem that the old race and the new were as completely intermingled as the modern population. Dr. William Wright tells us that in a collection of 80 skulls, taken from round barrows and preserved in the Mortimer Museum at Driffield, ‘almost all the varieties of cranial shape met with in Europe are represented.’ Their cephalic indices ranged from 69 to 92; and, says Dr. Wright, ‘it is doubtful if it is possible to find a materially more mixed series of skulls in a community of to-day.’[1908] Dr. Wright, however, does not believe that the skulls of apparently hybrid form prove intermarriage between the invaders and the old neolithic population, or that the former were purely brachycephalic. ‘To grant this,’ he argues, ‘one must believe that a pure round-headed race could have made its tardy progress across Europe unmixed,—an assumption which to my mind is incredible.’[1909] Has the doctor forgotten that ten male skulls, found in short cists in and near Aberdeenshire and evidently assignable to the end of the Neolithic or the beginning of the Bronze Age,[1910] were all brachycephalic, and that nine of them belonged to the same pure type.[1911] Has he forgotten that the round barrow skulls of Wiltshire were mainly brachycephalic? Has he ever walked over the mountains of Auvergne? Very likely the round-headed race which he has in mind did not make its way across Europe unmixed; but the mixture did not greatly diminish the roundness. Very likely when it reached Britain it included a few long-heads; but the contrast between the uniformity in Wiltshire and the diversity in East Yorkshire suffices to disprove the doctor’s theory.
Some of Dr. Wright’s brachycephalic specimens belonged to a type which is quite different from the ‘characteristic’ Round Barrow type, and is also common to almost all the short Welsh and Scottish skeletons mentioned above.[1912] These skulls are generally broader than those of the other kind. The ten found in Aberdeenshire and its neighbourhood ranged between 80.8 and 92.3, their average index being 85.39;[1913] while those of Glamorganshire ranged between 81.7 and 86, and yielded an average of 84.2.[1914] Not one of these skulls is prognathous:[1915] all are high as well as round and broad: the supraciliary ridges are only slightly developed: the cheek bones are not prominent: the face is both broad and short; and the lower jaw is small.[1916]
Who were the brachycephalic people of the round barrows and the short cists, and whence did they come? Those who have attempted to solve these problems have generally had in mind only the tall round-heads, whether their skulls belonged to the characteristic type or showed signs of crossing with the other. Wherever the short people came from, their ethnical affinities are certain: they belonged to the so-called Alpine type of Central Europe, of which the French Grenelle race were a branch. Let us for the present confine our attention to the others. To the questions which I have asked at least six different answers have been given:—that they were Goidelic Celts; that they were Belgae; that they were Finns; that they came from Denmark or the Scandinavian peninsula; that their original home was Dalmatia; and, lastly, that they may be traced back to the valley of the Rhine.[1917] But the view which has been repeated by almost every recent writer is that they were Goidels.[1918]
1-2. The Goidelic theory and the Belgic (which I ought perhaps to apologize for noticing) may be considered together; for if any argument tells in favour of the latter, it tells as much or more in favour of the former.
Thurnam, who does not trouble himself about the distinction between Goidelic and Brythonic Celts, points out that ‘extremely brachycephalic skulls have been exhumed from many of the French chambered tumuli’;[1919] that seven skulls with cephalic indices of 80 and upwards from a dolmen near Senlis, which is in the territory that was occupied by the Belgae, ‘have much resemblance to those from the round barrows’;[1920] and that three skulls with indices of 80, 80, and 85 respectively from a sepulchral grotto in the Belgic department of the Oise are ‘very similar in general character to the short skulls from the round barrows’.[1921] He argues that of the cranial types represented by the peoples of the long barrows and the round barrows respectively ‘one at least must be Celtic’:[1922] he points out that in the cremation interments which have been discovered in round barrows ‘the appearances are consistent with what we are told of the funerals of the Gauls ... by Caesar and Pomponius Mela’;[1923] and his general conclusion is that the Round Barrow people were ‘an offshoot through the Belgic Gauls from the great brachycephalic stock of Central and North-Eastern Europe’.[1924] Finally, Professor Rhys maintained in 1890[1925] (it would be rash to assume that his opinion is unchanged) that the Round Barrow race belonged to the Brythonic group, who, he asserted, being comparatively broad-headed, were less pure than the Goidels.