Iberic Dolicho-cephali of the same Race as those of Britain.
If this group of Iberic skulls be compared with those from the caves and tumuli of Great Britain (see Table, [p. 197] and that below) it will be seen, that what Professor Busk observes of the ancient population of Spain is equally true of that of our country in the neolithic age. And the identity of form is especially remarkable in the crania from the sepulchral caves at Perthi-Chwareu, the difference between them being so small as to be of little account:—
| Length. | Brdth. | Height. | Circum- ference. | Ceph. index. | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mean of 10 skulls from Perthi-Chwareu | 7·07 | 5·5 | 5·6 | 20·0 | ·765 |
| Mean of 2 skulls from Genista Cave, No. 3 (Busk) | 7·35 | 5·55 | 5·9 | 20·7 | ·755 |
| Mean of 40 male Basque skulls from Guipuscoa (Thurnam) | 7·2 | 5·5 | 5·4 | — | ·760 |
| Mean of 20 female, ditto | 6·9 | 5·3 | 5·0 | — | ·760 |
| Mean of 19 skulls,chiefly male | 7·4 | 5·6 | 5·4 | — | ·760 |
| Mean of 57 female ditto, St. Jean de Luz | 7·02 | 5·6 | — | — | ·799 |
The Dolicho-cephali cognate with the Basque.
Nor can the truth of Professor Busk’s conclusion, that the group of skulls in question belong to a people akin in blood to the modern Basques, be disputed. We are indebted to M. Broca[133] for the elaborate description of seventy-eight Basque crania from a village cemetery in Guipuscoa, and of fifty-eight from an ossuary at St. Jean de Luz, in which they had been collected in the reign of Francis I., 1532. In both these groups the long and oval types predominated, the broad type being represented by 6·4 (Thurnam) per cent. in the one, and 37·36 per cent. (Broca) in the other; a difference that is doubtless caused by the greater mixture of blood in the south-west of France than in the north-west of Spain, shut off from the broad-headed Gallic tribes by the Pyrenees.[134] Six skulls, obtained by Professor Virchow from Bilbao, agree in all particulars with those from Guipuscoa. M. Broca has further shown, that this group of Spanish skulls offers all the characters of the black-haired, swarthy, oval-faced, Basque population of the surrounding region, and it therefore follows, that they may be taken as standards of comparison, as typical of the ancient Basque crania, modified, it may be, to some extent, by the infusion of other blood. Their agreement, therefore, with the skulls from Gibraltar implies that the latter are also Basque. And since they agree also with those from the cave of Perthi-Chwareu, as may be seen in the preceding Table, the men who buried their dead in the caves of North Wales in the neolithic age, are proved to belong to the same stock.
The same long-headed, small race also inhabited France, side by side with the broad-headed Gallic tribes; and since to it belong the skeletons in the Cave de l’Homme Mort, which M. Broca refers to the neolithic aborigines, it may reasonably be concluded that in Gaul, as in Britain, it was the older of the two races. The two have also been met with in the caves of Belgium. If we allow that an aboriginal Basque population spread over the whole of Britain, France, and Belgium, and that it was subsequently dispossessed by broad-headed invaders, the two extremes of skull-form and of stature, and of the gradations between them, may be satisfactorily explained. And this view coincides with the well-ascertained facts of history.
Dr. Thurnam was the first to recognize that the long skulls, out of the long barrows of Britain and Ireland, were of the Basque or Iberian type, and Professor Huxley holds that the river-bed skulls belong to the same race.[135] (Compare Table [p. 197] with the preceding.) We have therefore proof, that an Iberian or Basque population spread over the whole of Britain and Ireland in the neolithic age, inhabiting caves, and burying their dead in caves and chambered tombs, just as in the Iberian Peninsula also in the neolithic age.
Dolicho-cephali and Brachy-cephali in Neolithic Caves of Belgium.—Chauvaux.
Both these forms of skull have been met with in Belgium, the one in the famous cave of Chauvaux, the other in that of Sclaigneaux.
The first of these is a rock-shelter passing into a small cave, at the base of the limestone cliff on the Meuse, opposite the little village of Rivière, between Dinant and Namur. It was known to contain human remains in 1837–8, and was partially explored in 1842 by Dr. Spring, who published his account of the discoveries in 1853, and subsequently in 1864 and 1866. Below a thin layer of loam was a floor of stalagmite, concealing a vast number of broken human bones mixed pêle-mêle with those of wild and domestic animals, and associated with charcoal and coarse pottery. Two polished stone celts indicated the neolithic age of the accumulation; one of them resting close to a skull which had been fractured by a blow from a blunt instrument, such as it may have inflicted. The human bones belonged to infants and young adults.