These interments in caves are of the same order as those from Gibraltar; and since the skulls agree with those from the latter, there can be little doubt but that, in the neolithic age, the long-headed small race under discussion had possession of the southern provinces.
The Woman’s Cave, near Alhama.
This conclusion derives additional support from the discoveries subsequently made by Mr. McPherson[130] in the Woman’s Cave, near Alhama, in Grenada, of implements of bone, flint, and greenstone of the neolithic age, mingled with charcoal, pottery, and human skeletons of the same type as those from Gibraltar. The human skull, figured by Mr. McPherson, is dolicho-cephalic, and the thigh-bone is remarkable for the extreme development of the linea aspera, which assumes the form of a stout ridge sweeping from one extremity of the shaft to the other.
This long-headed race, burying their dead in caves, also erected dolmens in Andalusia. In the dolmen of De los Eriales[131] human remains were discovered along with bronze (copper?) lance-heads, and pottery of the same sort as that of the caves. It is, therefore, evident that the practice of burial in caves, and of erecting dolmens, was carried on by the same people in Britain, in France, and in Spain.
The Guanches of the Canary Isles.
The Guanches,[132] the ancient inhabitants of the Canary Isles, are considered by Berthollet, Glas, and other high authorities, to be allied to the Berbers of North Africa in language. At the time of their discovery and conquest by the Spaniards, they are described by Miss Haigh as being unacquainted with the use of any metal, and as fashioning their weapons out of a black, hard stone. The Guanches of Teneriffe lived principally in caves, preferring for their winter residence those near the coast, and “in the summer those in the higher parts in the interior of the island, whence they could enjoy the fresh air of the hills.” Some of these caves have been excavated by the hand of man, and are divided into square chambers, containing rock-hewn benches, “and deep niches made to contain vessels of milk or water.” They had also stone houses, thatched with straw or fern. They also buried their dead in sepulchral caves, belonging each to a family or clan, entrances to which are carefully concealed, and are now discovered only by accident. In them the dead were placed either upright, or lying side by side on wooden scaffolds, after having been prepared with salt and butter and thoroughly dried and wrapped in the tanned skins of sheep or goat. In some cases the prepared body was placed in the sitting posture.
They were possessed of a settled government by “Menceys,” or chiefs subordinate to one head, and were divided into “nobles and common people, and had a code of punishment for the robber, murderer, and adulterer.”
Their food consisted of sheep and goats, roasted barley ground between two stones, and the fruit of the arbutus, date-palm and fig, as well as fish and rabbits. Their fences were made of reed, their ropes and nets of rushes, and their baskets, mats, and bags, of palm-leaves. They manufactured vessels out of clay or hard wood, needles of fishbones, beads of clay, and they especially excelled in the art of tanning. The civilization of this very interesting people may fairly be taken to be a fragment of that of North Africa and of Europe in the neolithic age, protected by insulation from the influences by which it was swept away from the countries bordering on the shores of the Mediterranean, just as the old Norse customs and legends are preserved by the present inhabitants of Iceland in greater purity than in Norway.
The Berbers are viewed by Professor Busk as of the same non-Aryan stock as the Basque, and the civilization of the Guanches may therefore be taken to represent that of the Iberic peoples of Spain, among whom caves were used in like manner for habitation and burial.