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OF the earliest inhabitants of Celtic lands we know little or nothing. We have, it is true, a number of tools made of flaked flint, but they tell us little of the men who fashioned them. In spite of the recent admissions by the eminent French archæologists who have examined the new discoveries at Foxhall,[2] there is still no little difference of opinion as to the human workmanship[3] of rostro-carinates, eoliths and such like early attempts, and no human remains have come to light which can be attributed with any probability to this horizon.

When we come to what is usually termed the lower palæolithic period we are on surer ground, for no one now denies the origin of implements of the Chelles and St. Acheul types. 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 skull.[5] Few people now believe that the Galley Hill skeleton dates from so remote a time,[6] while the discoverer himself has disclaimed so early an origin for the Ipswich man.[7]

To attempt to reconstruct a human type from a mandible alone would be indeed to carry far the principle of ex pede Herculem, and as yet there is little agreement among anthropologists as to the exact date, or for that matter the exact reconstruction, of the Piltdown skull,[8] though the ingenious hypothesis that a unique human cranium without a jaw, was found in close association with a unique troglodyte mandible has now, I understand, definitely been abandoned.[9]

Thus little or nothing is known of the first inhabitants of Celtic lands, beyond their tools, but when we come to the middle palæolithic period the case is different. While some difference of opinion still exists, the view advanced by Obermaier[10] and others seems to be gaining ground, that in Celtic lands the industry of Le Moustier 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 through the temporary amelioration of the Laufen retreat. Whether it survived, too, the second maximum, and lasted until the climate definitely improved is more doubtful, but many archæologists of great repute believe that it did so,[12] and unless this was the case it will be difficult to explain certain features of the Audi flints.[13]

Though there is as yet no general agreement as to the duration of the Mousterian industry, it is different when we come to consider the type of man who was responsible 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, have been found associated with flint implements of Le Moustier design, and none have as yet turned up under conditions which make this correlation impossible.[14]

A considerable number of skulls and skeletons, about two dozen in all, of Neanderthal man have been found, the great majority in Celtic lands; but, though there is a general resemblance between all the members of the series, sufficiently strong to mark them off from the Piltdown skull on the one hand and from modern men on the other, the type is in many respects very variable. 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 Gibraltar hardly if at all more than the Gibraltar skull differs from that found at Chapelle-aux-Saints. In the latter case there are several intermediate forms, in the former such may yet turn up, for Africa has, as yet, produced but one other skull of this type, that found not long ago near Constantine in Algeria, no description of which has, I believe, yet been published.

Skulls of this type have been so frequently described,[17] individually and collectively, that it is unnecessary to give another detailed account. It will be sufficient to say that they are large and massive, the vault is low, and they are specially distinguished by 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 held absolutely erect, and must have produced a slouching gait, though the degree of this slope varied considerably in different specimens, and in the case of the Rhodesian skull was quite halfway between the slope of the Gibraltar skull and that of the gorilla.[18]

But it is unnecessary for our purpose to pursue this question further, for with the arrival of modern man, after the last glaciation was past, Neanderthal man disappeared. That the two races met, though not necessarily in this continent, seems clear from the fact that at 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 to his modern successor. In any case, if mating did take place, the union must have been sterile, for, in spite of much that has been written to the contrary,[20], there is no clear evidence of the survival of any distinctive Neanderthal traits in the men of later days.[21]

The second maximum of the Würm glaciation seems to have culminated about 15,000 B.C.,[22] and about that time, or conceivably earlier, modern man first arrived in North Africa, if we may judge by the appearance of a fresh type of flint industry, known usually as Capsian.[23] Whence he came is uncertain. It has been suggested that he may have reached the north from tropical Africa,[24] but no evidence has been adduced in support of this hypothesis. It seems more likely that he 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 may be satisfied that modern man in his earliest movements passed up the Nile valley at least as far as the First Cataract. It would seem probable that in Egypt the invaders came into touch with their Neanderthal predecessors, who retreated before them up the Nile valley towards Luxor, where Dr. Seligman has found implements of Le Moustier type more developed than any discovered elsewhere[27]; it is possible that some retreated further south and may even have reached Rhodesia.

Other of these Neanderthal refugees seem to have gone westward, and perhaps passed up the Italian land-bridge to western Europe; if so it was probably 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 by the invaders, and in Celtic lands at least were soon exterminated, though it is just possible that they survived to a later date further east.[28]

The culture of the newcomers is known as that of Aurignac, and seems to have started in Europe about 12,500 B.C. A great many skeletons of this period have been discovered and described, and though all of these show us men very like those of the present day, there is a considerable range of variation among them.[29] The skulls of the upper palæolithic periods, apart from the Chancelade skull[30] to be discussed later, may be divided into three marked groups, though it is well to remember that there is no strict uniformity among all the members of each group. All the skulls of this period, however, are long, for the broad-headed type, so prevalent in Central Europe to-day, did not arrive until the closing phase.

Of the first of these three groups we have only two examples, the mother and son from the Grotte des Enfants, near Mentone.[31] But as these are the earliest in date, and differ in some respects very markedly from the remainder, they have been distinguished by the name of the Grimaldi race, after the owner of the cave, the Prince of Monaco.

This type was small, being less than 5 ft. 3 in. in height, the skulls were of the long variety, having length-breadth indices of 68.5 and 69.2, and the jaws and teeth project, so that they exhibit a character 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 reason for supposing any affinity between this type and the negro race of tropical Africa.[32] Both of these skeletons were found in a contracted position, and that of the boy was covered with red ochre.[33]

Our second group is the Cromagnon, and is based largely on the skeletons found in the cave of Cromagnon, near Les Eyzies. By many anthropologists this term is used to cover 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 group, for the distinguishing characters are but faintly visible in some and totally absent from a large number.[34] The term is now becoming used in a more restricted sense.

The Cromagnon type is tall. The men were often 5 ft. 10 in. or 5 ft. 11 in. high, though the women were frequently much shorter. Their heads were large, larger than the average in Europe 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 relatively broad. This combination of a long head and a short face is unusual, and is called disharmonic, and this disharmony is one of the most striking characteristics of Cromagnon man.[35]

It is often thought that this disharmonic trait, the long head and the short face, is evidence of the mixed ancestry of the race which exhibits 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 indicate that this was the case, and if such crossing had occurred, it seems likely that it took place before the Cromagnon type reached Europe.

It seems probable that it is to the men of the Cromagnon type that we must attribute the beginnings of that art, which reached its finest development in a later age, and has provided the most conspicuous as well as the most pleasing feature of the upper palæolithic culture.[37]

Lastly we have the type represented by Brünn I., Brüx, Lautsch, Combe Capelle, Barma Grande (one of the skulls from B.G. now in the Musée de Menton, but not the skulls generally known as B.G. 1 and 2), the woman from the upper layer in the Grotte des Enfants, the Calotte du gravier de fond at Grenelle, the Denise fragments, as well as by one or two skulls of the transition period from palæolithic 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-headed, and tends to have the orbits horizontally lengthened, the glabella and supraciliaries strong, the fore-head retreating, the nose broad and the upper jaw projecting (alveolar prognathism). The cephalic index is usually between 68 and 72; the stature is moderate or low.[38]

Thus we find during the period of Aurignac three groups of long-headed men, the Grimaldi, Cromagnon and Combe Capelle, and, especially on the Riviera, in the Barma Grande cave and the Grotte des Enfants, skulls which show various apparent combinations of these types, while at Solutré and Laugerie Basse we find the last type showing modifications to some extent towards the characteristics of modern men. These types and intermixed types occupied west and central Europe, so far as it was habitable during the later palæolithic 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 prognathism has been noted among the natives of Algeria and Morocco, and I am told that it is not uncommonly met with in Spain; it is also very marked in Portugal, though here it has been attributed to a different cause. It is, however, of old standing in that country, as it has been noted among the skulls from Mugem,[39] which are believed to date from the close of the palæolithic age. A similar feature has been noted in some of the skulls from the Algerian dolmens.[40]

To the Cromagnon type, pure, it is difficult to ascribe any other skulls besides those from Cromagnon, and those from Lafaye Bruniquel, but some of the Cromagnon characters are well shown in some Barma Grande skulls. The type is said to 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 Europe and the southern part of the North German plain. It was probably the latest to arrive on the scene, for it is associated only with remains of late Aurignac type, and has been more frequently found in the succeeding Solutré period.

Thus we see that by the close of the period of Aurignac, about 11,000 B.C., we have three groups of long-headed men in Celtic lands, and that, though they overlap, they are tending to obtain for themselves definite areas of distribution.

During the closing years of the Aurignacian period the climate had been getting milder and perhaps drier, and steppe conditions prevailed over much of France and still more further east. Herds of horses arrived and were hunted for food and the saiga, a kind of antelope, was found as far south as the Dordogne, if not beyond, during the succeeding Solutrean period. These Steppe conditions are more characteristic 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, when, as we have seen, steppe conditions were already approaching, leads us to suspect that it is to this type of man that we must attribute the invasion of Celtic lands which took place at this time. The Cromagnon men seem to have retreated to the south-west and to have taken refuge in the fastnesses of the Pyrenees,[44] while the invading hunters dominated the southern part, at least, of the Celtic lands.

But towards 9,500 B.C. the climate began again to deteriorate, and the steppe conditions passed gradually to those of tundra. The steppe animals retreated to the east, towards South Russia and Turkestan, and most of 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,[45] and Proto-Solutrean stations are reported as occurring in England.[46] It has been claimed recently that this type reached the south of Sweden,[47] but this view is not generally accepted in that country.[48]

On the departure of the Solutrean invaders the remnant of the aborigines, who had fled to the mountains in the south-west, and there developed their art to a much greater pitch of perfection, now returned to France, and once again, as the 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 industry has been found in the British Isles which can accurately be described as that of La Madeleine,[49] in the strict French meaning of that term, we do find traces of the culture of Aurignac, persisting perhaps until still later times.

It must not be thought, however, that the Combe Capelle race never reached these isles. Whether the culture of Solutré did so or not seems uncertain, 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 was present in France, at any rate in some parts of that country, for some little time before the arrival of the men with the culture of Solutré.

The colder climate of the Magdalenian period has been shown to coincide with the Bühl advance of the Alpine glaciers,[51] which reached its maximum about 7,500 to 7,000 B.C. After that the climate slowly improved, though the precipitation increased, and forests sprang 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 great distances or to intermingle as freely as they had done before. There was a tendency for separate groups to develop in different regions; so that, when we arrive at the next period, the Azilian, we find very different types of people in various parts of Europe.

Even before the close of the Magdalenian period a fresh type had arrived, apparently from the north, if we may judge from the skeleton found at Chancelade in 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 certain phases of Magdalenian culture,[53] we may suspect that Chancelade men, following the departing reindeer, passed north-eastward to the tundra of Siberia.

It was between 7,000 and 6,500 B.C. that a fresh wave of Capsian people from North Africa began to invade Spain,[54] into which peninsula they introduced what is known 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] The invaders passed on through Celtic lands, bringing with them a new culture, known as Tardenoisian,[57] and seem to have reached the British Isles before 5000 B.C.

These people seem to have been another variety of the same long-headed race, which had developed into a distinct type in North Africa, and had there, perhaps, mingled to a greater or lesser degree with the descendants of the Grimaldi men, whom we met with at the beginning of the period of Aurignac. If 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 sometimes found comparatively pure, may account for that small dark type, often showing marked alveolar prognathism, which has been found in certain out of the way regions, such as Apulia and Sardinia, and which are known to some anthropologists as Iapygian,[59] and have been termed Ethiopic by Ruggeri.[60]

This new population seems to have been peaceably inclined and made no attempt to exterminate its predecessors, but settled down in the lower lands and by the sea shore, while the Cromagnon men remained in the mountain 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 agriculture and the domestication of animals; as some of their settlements have been found by the sea shore and on the banks of streams, it seems likely that they lived to a considerable extent on fish and molluscs.

It would appear, then, that the type which we know as the Mediterranean race, and which has given to Wales, Scotland and Ireland the majority of their small brunette inhabitants, is made up of the descendants of all the types of long-headed men—except the Chancelade variety—which we meet with in the Celtic lands of western Europe during the upper palæolithic 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 the Cromagnon type only seems to be missing or at any rate relatively scarce. The main element, however, which has gone to make up the Mediterranean race as we now know it, seems to be that which entered Europe through Spain, with Capsian culture, during the closing years of the Magdalenian period.

These people have left in the west, not only considerable vestiges of their blood, but no small amount of their language, or to state the matter more accurately the language of these people has left a marked effect upon the tongues which succeeded it in the west. More than twenty years ago Mr., now Sir John Morris Jones[61] pointed out that “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 introduction of the Celtic tongue. He pointed out that many of these peculiarities, which occur also sometimes when the English tongue is spoken by Irishmen, were similar to the syntactical arrangements in force in the language of ancient Egypt and among the Berber dialects spoken by the natives of Algeria, the Kabyles, Shawiya and Tuaregs.

Now the Egyptians and other peoples of North Africa are considered by all anthropologists as typical members of the Mediterranean race, though the inhabitants of the western part seem, 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 Irish is a legacy from the language spoken by these Mediterranean invaders, who reached Spain about 7000 B.C. and formed the bulk of the population of the British Isles about 5000 B.C.

So far we have been dealing with the early inhabitants of the Celtic lands of the west, but a word must be said of some fresh arrivals into the Celtic cradle in Central Europe. It was during the Azilian period, about 6000 B.C., that a new race appeared in Central Europe, coming from the east. Of their earlier abode we know nothing positively, but there are reasons for inferring that their line of approach was by the Kopet Dagh and the Armenian highlands, and that they 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 cheek-bones not very prominent and the chin weak and undeveloped.[62] This race seems to have met and mated with the remnants of the Combe Capelle race in the Upper Danube basin, and the progeny of this union seems to have been a type with a pear-shaped head as seen from above, with a rounded back, indistinguishable from the type found later in the Swiss lake-dwellings and in the mountains of Central Europe at the present day, and which is known as the Alpine race.[63]

The Ofnet race seems to have spread westward into the Celtic lands, either at this time or perhaps later, though probably in small numbers, for a skull found at Grenelle, near 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 little earlier, have been found at Mugem on the banks of the Tagus,[65] while others of this type of about the same date have been found in the caves of Furfooz in Belgium.[66]

Whether any of this broad-headed Asiatic strain reached the British Isles at so early a date is uncertain. No skulls of this type and date have been discovered, but broad-headed types occur sporadically in Wales, Ireland and the western islands of Scotland, which may conceivably represent descendants of early Ofnet or Alpine immigrants.

Somewhat later, before 4000 B.C., fresh waves of broad-headed immigrants seem to have arrived in Central Europe from the Armenian highlands or the Anatolian plateau, bringing with them the knowledge 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] Such knowledge seems to have reached even the west of Switzerland by 4000 B.C. and to have spread later throughout the massif central of France, which was already peopled by men of the Alpine type.

But the art of polishing hard stone spread further than the people who were responsible for its introduction, and during the next few centuries this art had become well known throughout the Celtic lands of the west; the need for more efficient tools to fight 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 found or thoroughly explored. The scanty evidence at our disposal seems to show, however, that the people of the west were possessed of some domesticated animals, so that the inhabitants of Celtic lands had passed from a purely hunting stage before 3,000 B.C.

There is one other culture, introduced into Europe perhaps by another race, which I must not omit to mention, as it may have provided another element, albeit a small one, in the early population of Celtic lands. At Mullerup, in the peat moss 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 archæologists as the Mullerup, but to English-speaking students as the Maglemose culture.[68] More recently, in 1917, another settlement, exhibiting what appears to be the same culture, was discovered at Sværdborg, in the south of the same island.[69]

No skulls or skeletons have been found associated with this culture, and there has been much speculation as to the race which was responsible for it. Owing to the presence of harpoons it was first assumed that this culture was a direct derivation from the Azilian and Magdalenian, though it has been pointed out that the Maglemose harpoons are very different in form from the Azilian, and resemble more nearly some found in eastern Russia.[70] Still the majority of authorities treat this culture as of Azilian 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 in the Maglemose people we may perhaps see the first arrival in Europe of that Mongoloid race, which now peoples a large part of the north-east of the continent. My suggestion has not been well received in Scandinavian circles, and M. Nordmann has submitted it to very searching though courteous criticism.[73] While duly appreciating the value of all the evidence he has cited, I am still of opinion that my view, though far from proved, meets the existing evidence as well as, if not better than, its rivals.