§2.2. The Iberians.

In the period immediately after its formation the Channel was too stormy to allow access to Britain by the nearest route. The newcomers crossed the sea to Britain to the west of the Channel and settled along the western shores. Those newcomers, the Iberians or Megalithic men, are supposed to have arrived in Britain from the region of the Mediterranean and inhabited it between 3000 and 2000 BC. Their burial places in Cornwall, in Ireland, in the coastal regions of Wales and Scotland are found to be either long barrows, that is, man-made hills, or huge structures of stone slabs (megaliths).

One of the best-known megalithic monuments in Britain is Stonehenge, dating from about 2800 BC. It is situated on Salisbury Plain, Wiltshire, England.

Stonehenge consisted originally of a circle of 30 upright stones. Their tops were linked by lintel stones to form a continuous circle. Within this monument was a so-called ‘altar stone’ – an upright pillar. Stonehenge is one of a number of prehistoric structures on Salisbury Plain, including about 400 round barrows.

One of its mysteries is how it was ever built at all with the technology of the time (the stones come from over 200 miles away in Wales). Another is its purpose. It appears to function as a kind of astronomical clock and we know it was used by the Druids for ritual ceremonies.

The Iberians were not a clearly defined culture, ethnic group or political entity. The name is instead a blanket term for a number of peoples belonging to a pre-Roman Iron Age culture inhabiting the eastern and southeastern Iberian peninsula and who have been historically identified as "Iberian". Although these peoples shared certain common features, they were not homogenous and they diverged widely in some respects.

The Iberians lived in isolated communities based on a tribal organization. They also had a knowledge of metalworking, including bronze, and agricultural techniques. In the centuries preceding Carthaginian and Roman conquest, Iberian settlements grew in social complexity, exhibiting evidence of social stratification and urbanization. This process was probably aided by trading contacts with the Phoenicians, Greeks, and Carthaginians.

The Iberian language, like the rest of paleohispanic languages, became extinct by the 1st to 2nd centuries AD, after being gradually replaced by Latin. Iberian seems to be a language isolate. It is generally considered as a non-Indo-European language (although a 1978 study found many similarities between Iberian and the Italic languages [10, pp.80-85].

The Iberians produced sculpture in stone and bronze, most of which was much influenced by the Greeks and Phoenicians. The styles of Iberian sculpture are divided geographically into Levantine, Central, Southern, and Western groups, of which the Levantine group displays the most Greek influence [11].

§ 2.3. An Alpine race.

The civilization of the Iberians as the monuments show was quite advanced, and the splendor of their burial arrangements can be taken as a sign of class differentiation. An Alpine race came to subdue them, however, about 1700 BC from the east and south-east, from the Rhineland and the territory of modern Holland. Historians refer to these later immigrants who settled in the east, south east and up the Thames Valley, as the Beaker Folk for they left a characteristic relic of their civilization, an earthenware drinking vessel called ‘beaker’.

The Alpine race was certainly familiar with the use and working of bronze. The two peoples were closely related in culture, that’s why the newcomers gradually merged with the previous arrivals. In the Salisbury plain area evidence of both races was discovered, and the mixture was later supplemented by more arrivals, though never so numerous or important as those described.

A distinctive Alpine type had been proposed by earlier writers, notably Vacher de Lapouge, but it was Ripley who promoted it to one of the main divisions.

Ripley argued that the Alpines had originated in Asia, and had spread westwards along with the emergence and expansion of agriculture, which they established in Europe. By migrating into central Europe, they had separated the northern and southern branches of the earlier European stock, creating the conditions for the separate evolution of Nordics and Mediterraneans [12, pp. 145-147].