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THE NEOLITHIC INVASIONS

109

in the graves of its associated culture; but that country also contains the more usual Danubian type, associated with a Neolithic agricultural economy, and a certain number of brachycephalic and other crania, which have northern affiliations, and which will therefore be dealt with later.51

In southern and western Germany remains of the Corded people are again found, and in comparative abundance. In Saxony and Thuringia they flourished especially, and apparently were more stable here than farther east. Out of ten crania which belong to the Saxo-Thuringian Corded culture,62 four of the seven which can be measured are meso­cephalic, and only three dolichocephalic. In the eastern Corded group, the highest index was 75. The three dolichocephals seem to have be­longed to the usual type.

The statures of two of them were both 168 cm. The rest of the crania, as far as one can tell, are normal Neolithic Mediterranean examples, which might have had either a Danubian or a North African derivation, or both. The Corded people in the west and south of Germany had settled down, and had combined with Neolithic farmers.

Before we leave this section, let us move still farther west to Baden, to the Early Neolithic cemetery of Altenburg.63 Here, in the center of one of the most brachycephalic regions of Europe today, were buried four male skeletons, the crania of which ranged from 65 to 71 in cranial indices, and two female skulls of 77. The long bones are small, the statures short; the skulls are delicate in appearance and purely Mediterranean—but remark­able for the narrow vault form of the males. Six other Neolithic male crania, from Worms, are similar.54 This evidence, while not complete, at least shows that the Corded people, in southern and southwestern Ger­many, were preceded by an agricultural population of the smaller Medi­terranean variety, upon which they superimposed themselves.

  1. The neolithic in the british isles

The next move in this geographical game is back to the extreme west again, and to Britain. The Early Neolithic culture of the British Isles was a peripheral echo of the movements which influenced the rest of western

51 Lencewicz, Stanislaw, Swiatowit, vol. 10, 1912, pp. 53-64.

Rosinski, B., WArc, vol. 9, 1924-25, pp. 29-50; A CIA, 2me Session, Prague, 1929, pp. 164-174.

Westlawawa, Eleanora, PAn, vol. 9, 1935, pp. 80-84, French r£sum6, pp. 142-143.

  1. Gotze, W., JVST, vol. 24, 1936, pp. 91-100.

Heberer, G., JVST, vol. 24, 1936, pp. 82-90.

Strauch, K., MannusZ., vol. 7, 1915, pp. 249-262.

88 Miihlmann, Wm. E., ZFMA, vol. 28, 1930, pp. 244-255.

  • Virchow, R., ZFE, vol. 29, 1897, p. 464.

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THE RACES OF EUROPE

Europe. The so-called Windmill Hill culture, closely allied to the Michels- burg expression in southern Germany, may have been originally of either North African or Danubian inspiration, or a blend of both. Childe, seeing Merimdian similarities in the pottery, suggests but does not insist on the former. At any rate, we have no valid evidence in Britain itself to indicate the physical type of the people who brought it.55

The bulk of the Neolithic population of the British Isles seems to have come by sea,66 with the Megalithic invasions which also passed on to Denmark and southern Sweden. In many parts of Scotland and in Ire­land, the Megalithic people may well have been the first bringers of the Neolithic economy. In England, it was their custom to make primary interments under long barrows of earth, unchambered in Yorkshire and Derbyshire, chambered in the counties farther south.

The cranial remains of Long Barrow men, as the occupants of these monuments are called, are abundant.67 (See Appendix I, col. 13.) Al­though over 160 skulls represent this group, the geographical distribution is far from even. Wiltshire, Staffordshire, and Gloucestershire account for 120; fourteen only are from Scotland, and one from Ireland. The remain­ing thirty come from a few counties of England. Wales is unrepresented as is most of Scotland; the few crania found in the latter country were all buried close to the sea. The Long Barrow people, who had come by water, selected open, unforested country to live in. A large .part of the land area in the British Isles was, therefore, either uninhabited or open to the wan­derings of earlier human occupants.

The Long Barrow population formed a distinct, homogeneous type; one different from any which, to our knowledge, had previously inhab­ited the British Isles since the days of Galley Hill; and one which cannot be duplicated, except as an element in a mixed population, anywhere on the western European continent. One is, therefore, led to conclude that the Megalithic cult was not merely a complex of burial rites which dif-

56 The so-called river-bed skulls, dredged from the bottom of the Thames, are those of low-vaulted Mediterraneans. These may include some examples from the Early Neo­lithic, but the evidence is inconclusive. (Garson, J. G., JRAI, vol. 20, 1890, pp. 20-25.) Three skulls from stone cists at La Motte, Jersey are similar. (Marett, R. R., Archae- ologia, vol. 63, 1911-12, pp. 203-230. Keith, Sir A., Antiquity of Man, vol. 1, pp. 52-65.)

  1. Childe, who read Chapters II to VII in manuscript before revision, comments at this point: UI find it hard to believe that the bulk of the British population came by sea. The Windmill Hill culture is predominant in the megalithic tombs, but arose earlier.” While Childe is undoubtedly correct as to the importance of the Windmill Hill people culturally, there is little evidence of them in a physical sense. This apparent contradic­tion cannot be explained on the basis of present data. The fact that small Mediter­raneans do appear in the living British population (see Chapter X) indicates that Childe’s observation may be well founded.

  2. Morant, G. M., Biometrika, vol. 18, 1926, pp. 56-98.

THE NEOLITHIC INVASIONS

111

fused without visible carriers; and also that the bearers of this complex avoided mixture by coming by sea.

In stature and bodily build, the Megalithic people belong to a large variety of Mediterranean. The stature for a large number of males 58 from England ranges about a mean of 167 or 168 cm.; which is not con- traverted by the meager evidence from Scotland and Ireland. Four male skeletons from a single burial in Kent69 may represent, more nearly than most, the Windmill Hill group; they are somewhat shorter than the rest.

The Long Barrow skulls are large for a Mediterranean sub-race, but not as large as those of the Upper Palaeolithic peoples. They are par­ticularly long, moderately narrow, and of medium height. Unlike that of the Corded skulls, the height is less than the breadth. In most instances, the occiput projects far to the rear; the parietals are parallel; the forehead is moderately sloping, and, in contrast to the restricted skull width, very straight and broad.

The face is of medium length and of moderate width; the orbits are of medium dimensions, and in many instances slope downward an4 outward, as if the confines of the face were too narrow for them. The nasion depres­sion is of medium depth, under browridges of medium development; and the straight-profiled nose is leptorrhine. In its totality, the Long Barrow type is both extreme and striking.

In looking for related populations of equal age, we may eliminate at once the smaller, less dolichocephalic branches of the Mediterranean race proper, including the Danubian. A few individual crania in Neolithic Spain and Italy would qualify, but none of the series from these coun­tries. The standard Egyptian crania, as groups, are all too small, as is the single lady from Greece. In one particular feature, the nasal index, the Long Barrow people resemble the Egyptians more than most of the more northerly Mediterraneans, for the Long Barrow crania are leptorrhine.

In their extreme dolichocephaly, the Long Barrow skulls resemble the Corded group, but the comparison does not hold for all features—the Long Barrow skulls are slightly longer', considerably broader, and much wider of forehead, than the Corded specimens, and, of course, the vault of the Long Barrow skulls is much lower.60 As far as one can tell, the

88 Calculated by the Pearson formulae on femora from several series, including some eighty-six individuals from England, of which many may be duplicates; three from Scotland, and one from Ireland. Sources: Crania Britanmca; Thurman, J.; Garson, J. G.; Mortimer, J. R.; Keith and Bennett; Edwards, A. J. H., and Low, A.; Laing, S., and Huxley, T. H.; and Bryce.

  1. Keith, Sir A., and Bennett, JRAI, vol. 43, 1910, pp. 86-100.

  1. In this I am relying on Morant’s mean of 135.5 mm. for 25 male crania. Schuster (1905) gives 137.8 mm. for 12; Garrison, 135.0 mm. for four from Howe Hill Barrow, Yorkshire. On the other hand, 45 male crania of Thurman (1867) when seriated « 143 mm., 59 from the Crania Britannica and Thurman = 142.1 mm.

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THE RACES OF EUROPE

orbits in the two series are much the same, while in regard to the faces, there is not enough evidence in the Corded group for a valid comparison.

A true and valid similarity, however, may be found between the Eng­lish Long Barrow series and the early skulls from al 'Ubaid in Sumeria, which, whether belonging to the fourth or third millennium B.C., are in either case older than their British counterparts. The only difference, which prevents identity, is that the Mesopotamian faces and noses are somewhat longer.

The current idea that the Long Barrow people were directly derived from the Upper Palaeolithic inhabitants of Britain is clearly erroneous. The Long Barrow skulls are definitely smaller, shorter, and narrower than those of the Upper Palaeolithic group, but of equal or greater height; they have the same forehead breadth, the same upper face height, but a smaller jaw, a much narrower face, and narrower orbits. There is prob­ably a genetic linkage, over a long period of time, between the Long Bar­row or Megalithic type and an early Galley Hill or Combe Capelle vari­ety of European man, but the continuity could not, for historical reasons, have taken place in England.

The few crania from the Scottish seashores belong to the standard Long Barrow type, and the same may be said of the one surely Neolithic spec­imen from Ireland—the male vault from Stoneyisland, Portumna, County Galway.61 The male skull from Ringabella, County Cork,62 which is perhaps also Neolithic, is likewise of Megalithic race, while the disputed Kilgreany specimen, whatever its age, is, although low vaulted, also basi­cally of a Galley Hill Mediterranean type.63 However, the large mandible of the latter, and its low vault, make it atypical, so that it, like two skulls from Phoenix Park, Dublin,64 which may be Neolithic or Early Bronze Age, is not wholly characteristic of the Long Barrow race, and may derive its peculiarities from either a Mesolithic or an Early Bronze Age source. We must repeat, in view of these aberrances, that the only surely Neolithic skull in Ireland is of Long Barrow race.

The Megalithic Long Barrow people must have come by sea, and they probably came from somewhere in the Mediterranean. They did not

61 Martin, C. P., JSAI, vol. 64, June, 1934, pp. 87-89.

Movius, H. L., Jr., op. cit.y vol. 65, Dec., 1935, p. 282. For dating by palaeobotany, see Shea, S., JGAS, vol. 15, 1931, pp. 73 ff.

White, Miss J. M., INF, vol. 3, 1934, pp. 270-274.

“ Martin, C. P., in 6 Riordain, S. P., JSAI, vol. 64, June, 1934, pp. 86-87.

68 Fawcett, E., PBSS for 1928, vol. 3, #3, pp. 126-133.

Martin, C. P., as above.

Movius, H. L., Jr., as above.

Tratman, E. K., ibid., pp. 134-136.

64 Haddon, A. C., PRIA, vols. 3, 4, 1896—98, pp. 570—585. Also, Crania Britannica, skulls 22 A and B.


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