113

find the British Isles uninhabited, and their homogeneity, in a few re­stricted localities, cannot mean that they caused the extinction of earlier peoples. Nor did they, when still later invasions of another physical com­plex reached the British Isles, become extinct.⁶⁶ The mountains of Wales, the hills of Cornwall and Devon, and almost the whole of Ireland, remain a blank in our early skeletal map of the British Isles.

8. Western europe and the alpine race

By this time we have studied all of the approaches by which Neolithic food-producers invaded Europe, and have seen that in all known cases these immigrants belonged to some branch of the Galley Hill stock or wider Mediterranean race. We now come to the portions of Europe in which the Mesolithic cultural tradition had a strong survival—as a blend into the Neolithic economy, or as an absolute continuation. These por­tions may be divided into three general groupings: (1) Western Europe— that is, Switzerland, France, and Belgium; (2) Scandinavia, northern Germany, and the eastern shores of the Baltic; (3) The forest belt which stretches across northern Russia into Siberia. It is with the first of these that we are immediately concerned.

Commencing with Switzerland, we find, in the so-called Lake Dwelling culture of the Neolithic, a blending of the old with the new. The early Lake Dwelling culture of western Switzerland, centered about Lake Neufchatel, consists of the grafting of North African Neolithic agriculture upon a local Mesolithic base, while that of eastern Switzerland represents the same phenomenon to which a Danubian element may later have been added. Toward the end of the Neolithic period, just before the introduc­tion of metal, the Corded people invaded Switzerland from the north, and at this time local, sectional differences were to some extent ironed out.⁶⁶

Under these circumstances, we may expect to find, in all Swiss Lake Dwelling skeletal collections from the Early and Middle Neolithic, exam­ples of the small Mediterranean race, representing the bringers of agri­culture and animal husbandry to the hunting and fowling communities of the lake shores; as well as survivors of the previous population, what­ever, in a racial sense, they may have been.

Unfortunately, the archaeologists have yet to discover the cemeteries in which the Lake Dwellers buried their dead; what few remains have been found seem to have been for the most part those of persons who died by accident, and especially of children. Schlaginhaufen states that seventy-

⁶⁶ As suggested by Hooke, Beatrix, G. E., and Morant, G. M., in their article: Bio- metrika, vol. 18, 1926, pp. 99-104.

66. Childe, The Danube in Prehistory, p. 186.

THE RACES OF EUROPE

three Lake Dwelling skulls, suitable for the study of the cranial index, are known to exist, but few of these have been made available to the pro­fession through publication. Schlaginhaufen could find but nine adult crania with measurable faces.⁶⁷

His conclusion is that in the earliest phase of the Swiss Neolithic, brachycephals predominate; in the late stages, round and long skull forms are about equal in number, with few intermediate forms; later, the two blend, and there is a reinforcement of dolichocephals at the begin­ning of the metal period. The brachycephals of the Early Neolithic were short statured, low faced, low orbitted, and broad nosed; later, their face form became longer and narrower, producing, by the end of the Neolithic, disharmonic forms. The original combination of round heads with low faces and orbits had been upset by mixture with the invading Mediter­raneans.

One must remember that these conclusions on changes in linkage be­tween head form and face form are presumably based on no more than nine specimens. Five of these may be studied dircctly from readily avail­able published data.⁶⁸ Three of them are brachycephalic, two meso­cephalic. The former have upper facial indices below 50, and nasal in­dices above 50; while the latter fall on the other side in each case. In the orbital index two of the brachycephalic crania fall below 80, and one above it; while both of the dolichocephals are above. In these five exam­ples, then, the round skulls have short faces, low or broad noses, and low orbits, while the longer specimens are higher and narrower in face, orbit, and nose form.

The dolicho- and mesocephalic Swiss Lake Dwelling crania seem to belong without exception to some variety of small Mediterranean, such as might have entered either from the east or the southwest, with agri­cultural movements. The brachycephals, which are most numerous and least mixed in the earliest levels, form the one element in the Lake Dwell­ing racial complex which cannot be derived from known Neolithic sources, and may, therefore, be circumstantially linked to the Mesolithic element so important in Swiss Lake Dwelling cultures.

Besides the Lake Dwellings, with their meager supply of human re­mains but rich yield of cultural objects which have perished elsewhere, there are Neolithic sites of other kinds in Switzerland, including rock shel-

87. Schlaginhaufen, O., Die menschlichen Skeletrester aus der Steinzeit des Wauwilersees.

66. Covering the following crania:

1. Pittard, E., ASAG, vol. 7, 1935, pp. 118-122. One female, Lake Neuchatel.

2. Pittard, E., Anth, vol. 10,1899, pp. 281-289. One female, Point, Lake Neuchatel.

3. Schenk, A., REAP, vol. 15, 1905, pp. 389-407. One female, Lake Leman.

4. Kollman, J., KDGA, vol. 29, 1899, p. 116. One female, Auvernier.

5. Schlaginhaufen, O., op. cit. One female, Greifensee.