The Bronze Age and the Celtic World

hem. In spite of the recent admissions by the eminent French arch?ologists who have examined the new discoveries at Foxhall,[2] there is still no little difference of opinion as to t

But the only skeletal remains which can with certainty be attributed to this period are the human jaw from the Mauer sand-pit near Heidelberg,[4] and the famous Piltdown skul

ement among anthropologists as to the exact date, or for that matter the exact reconstruction, of the Piltdown skull,[8] though the ingenious hypothesis tha

ier first appeared as the climate was becoming colder on the approach of the last or Würm glaciation, though it is thought by some that it had flourished in an earlier and warmer time in the regions lying to the east.[11] This industry is believed by most authorities to have survived the first Würm maximum and to have lasted throug

le for this work. Everyone is agreed that the authors of this culture were of the type known as Neanderthal man, for several skeletons of this type, or parts of them

le. There are vast differences observable between the skull from Chapelle-aux-Saints,[15] the highest form yet discovered, and that of the Gibraltar man,[16] or rather woman, which is the most primitive yet found in Europe. As far as one can judge from the descriptions which have appeared as I write, the skull recently found at Broken Hill in Rhodesia differs from that of G

y having over the eye sockets a heavy and continuous projecting ridge, known as a torus, which is one of the distinguishing features of the large anthropoid apes. Another point of importance is that the head was so attached to the body that it could not have been h

Audi, near Les Eyzies, in the Dordogne, we find a culture, which in some respects resembles that of Le Moustier, and in others the succeeding culture of Aurignac.[19] That these two races interbred is unlikely, for Neanderthal man must have appeared an unsightly beast t

came from Asia, probably by means of the Sinaitic peninsula, or possibly across the Straits of Bab-el-Mandeb. This much is certain; about this time the Capsian culture is found extending along the north of the continent, from Egypt as far west at any rate as Algeria, and perhaps beyond, though at no point but one is it found far from the Mediterranean coast.[25] The one exception is in Egypt, where implements of this type have been found as far south as Luxor,[26] so that we

these, who had come into contact with the Capsian culture of North Africa, who were responsible for the Audi industry. They were followed before long

f the present day, there is a considerable range of variation among them.[29] The skulls of the upper pal?olithic periods, apart from the Chancelade skull[30] to be discussed later, may be divided into three marked groups, though it is well

Mentone.[31] But as these are the earliest in date, and differ in some respects very markedly from the remainder,

racter known as prognathism. This latter character has caused the race to be termed negroid, and unjustifiable deductions have been drawn from this term. It has been shown, however, that there is no reas

r all the skeletons from this period except those of the Grimaldi type, but more recently it has been shown that all these remains cannot conveniently be placed in one gro

urope to-day, but not very high; they were long as compared with their breadth, having a cranial index of about 74; their noses were narrow, but their faces were short and relativel

it,[36] and if this were the case we might expect Cromagnon man to be the result of a crossing of two other races. There is no other evidence to

innings of that art, which reached its finest development in a later age, and has provided t

vier de fond at Grenelle, the Denise fragments, as well as by one or two skulls of the transition period from pal?olithic to neolithic found at Ofnet (No. 21, i.) and a few of those belonging to the same period found at Mugem. The type is usually high-headed as well as narrow-h

urope, so far as it was habitable during the later pal?olithic periods, and the combinations of Combe Capelle and Cromagnon characters in the skulls of Obercassel (Magdalenian period) is noteworthy. The earliest in point of time is the Grimaldi, which has been found only near Mentone, and there are reasons for believing that its distribution lay around the western Mediterranean, then an inland sea. This view is supported by the fact that marked alveolar prognath

survive in the Dordogne and perhaps near the western Pyrenees in North Spain at the present day.[41] The Combe Capelle or Brünn type, is seen to have occurred on the whole more to the north and east, and seems rather to focus in Central

have three groups of long-headed men in Celtic lands, and that, though they ove

istic of the latter period,[42] when France was invaded by a new people, not given, as far as we know, to artistic efforts, but who were able to fashion very skilfully made weapons of flint to aid them in chasing the beasts of the steppe.[43] The fact that skulls of our third group the Combe Capelle, are more common during this period and have only been found during the later phases of the previous age, w

f the men of Solutré, who hunted them for food, seem to have followed in their wake. It seems doubtful whether the Solutrean invasion reached Britain, though implements of this type are said to have been found here

men of La Madeleine, became the dominant race in Celtic lands. It seems possible that some of their comrades had fled north to Britain on the arrival of the men of Solutré, and had survived there throughout this period, for, though no in

tain, but some of the skeletons which have been found here have been classed with the Combe Capelle group.[50] But, as we have seen, this race w

g up on the hitherto open lands. As the tundra conditions in Celtic lands gave way to forest, the reindeer migrated to the north and north-east, while their place was taken by the red deer. As the forests developed it became increasingly difficult for men to traverse

the Dordogne. This skeleton bears a close resemblance to those of the modern Eskimos,[52] and since the latter have retained a type of art reminiscent of ce

own as East Spanish Art.[55] By degrees they pressed the Magdalenian Cromagnons to the Pyrenees, where their culture declined to that which we know as Azilian.[56]

f we may judge by those who seem to be their descendants, they were of rather short, slight build, with long narrow heads, brown skin, dark hair and eyes, the type which to-day is known as the Mediterranean race.[58] It is possible that the Grimaldi elements in their composition, and which are someti

ntain zones of the Pyrenees and the Dordogne, and the Combe Capelle type survived in Central Europe and among the hills of Wales. It seems almost certain that the newcomers were still hunters, quite ignorant of a

he Celtic lands of western Europe during the upper pal?olithic period. That the Combe Capelle type survives on the moorlands of Plynlimmon has been shown by Fleure: examples of an africanoid type with alveolar prognathism are not uncommon in Wales and in the poorer quarters of our big cities, and

at "the syntax of Welsh and Irish differs in some important respects from that of the languages belonging to the other branches of the Aryan family," and suggested that these points, in which too the neo-celtic tongues differed from ancient Gaulish, were due to the influence of a language which had been spoken in these lands before the in

, as we have seen, to have incorporated no small amount of Grimaldi blood; it would seem then that we may accept the suggestion of Sir John Morris Jones that the syntax of Welsh and I

hey came ultimately from the slopes of the Hindu Kush and the western side of the Himalayan massif. This race, which is called the race of Ofnet, from the skulls found in the caves of Ofnet, in Bavaria, had a broad head, the outline of which as viewed from above consisted of two segments of circles, the one forming the back of the head, the other the front. The brow-ridges are slight, the nose short and straight, the eye-sockets low and almost rectangular, the chee

Paris, under what are believed to be neolithic surroundings, belongs to this type.[64] Other broad-headed skulls of this or the Alpine type, dating from about 5000 B.C., or a

ulls of this type and date have been discovered, but broad-headed types occur sporadically in Wales, Ireland and

wledge of grain, cultivated fruits and domestic animals, and the custom of erecting pile-dwellings in marshes or lakes, and of grinding and polishing axes of flint or other hard stone.[67] Suc

ht the encroaching woodland must have encouraged this art. How far the elements of agriculture had travelled with the art of grinding axes seems uncertain, for few, if any, unquestionable neolithic dwelling sites of this time within this area have been fou

oss of Maglemose, in the west of the island of Zealand, there was found in 1900 an important dwelling site with a very distinct culture, including harpoons and other implements of horn and bone, which is known to Scandinavian arch?ologist

an origin. Others, relying largely on the resemblances of certain elements of culture to those found at some very late Aurignacian sites in South Poland, believe the people and the culture to have arrived from that region.[71] Recently I have suggested another explanation.[72] Noticing the resemblance between the Magiemose culture and a slightly later civilisation known as East Scandinavian or Arctic, which has been found at several sites associated with skulls of Mongoloid type, I have suggested that i

overies in the caves at Oban and on a raised beach on the island of Oronsay, are claimed to be of this or of Azilian culture,[74] while other finds at Holderness are said to resemble more closely still the Maglemose culture.[75] More recently

and Sv?rdborg. This does not, of course, disprove their cultural connection. It is unwise, at present, to draw any positive conclusions from such evidence, but we may note that it is possible that duri

ular areas; how far it may be noted in the west of Scotland or in Ireland I am uncertain. But we cannot be sure that the introduction of this Mongoloid strain dates from so

h racial elements before the beginning of the Bronze Age. The origin of Campignian culture, which seems to have flourished over the northern part of Celtic lands, in one form or another, fro

re or mixed form, as did the Combe Capelle type further north, while a modified form of the Grimaldi type was found from Portugal to Wales, especially in fishing villages. The prevailing type seems to have been that which came latest from Africa,

, reached the British Isles. And we must realise that it is just possible that some Mongoloid peoples, from the Baltic and ulti

lithic age, when people lived in small, self-contained communities, and outside commodities were rarely met with, and t