THE PRE-HISTORIC RACES OF ITALY. 491 



posit, tbe relics of the feasts of these savages, nearly 10 feet iu thick- 

 ness and more than 300 feet in length, composed entirely of the bones 

 of horses, and comprising the remains of from 20,000 to 40,000 indi- 

 viduals. 



The Palaeolithic period must have lasted for unnumbered millenniums. 

 Archceologists conjecture that it came to an end some 20,000 years ago, 

 when it was succeeded by the Neolithic period, which may have lasted 

 for some 10,000 years. At the beginning of the ISTeolithic age, when 

 regular sepulchers were first used, we tind savages, who may probably 

 be the descendants of the Palaeolithic people, spread over western 

 Europe. They were clad in skins, stitched together with bone needles. 

 They wore bracelets of shells, and painted or tattooed their bodies with 

 red oxide of iron. Broca considers that this early race is allied to the 

 North African tribes, their language probably belonging to the Hamitic 

 class, without inflexions and almost without grammar. 



To us the chief interest of these people lies in the fact that their 

 descendants may probably be traced in the present inhabitants of 

 Sardinia and of southern Italy, as well as in some parts of the British 

 Islands and of Spain. They are usually called the Iberian race. In 

 the early Neolithic period we find skulls of the Iberian type all over 

 western Europe, in Caithness, Yorkshire, Wales, and Somerset, in the 

 south of France, in Spain and Italy. This race was swarthy, with olive 

 complexion and black curl^- hair; it was orthognathous, leptorhiuic, 

 and highly dolichocephalic, with a low orbital index, and short stature, 

 averaging about 5 feet 4 inches. Their present descendants are found 

 in Donegal, Galway, and Kerry, in some of the Hebrides, in Denbigh- 

 shire, and iu the counties bordering on Wales. They are also to be 

 recognized among the Spanish Basques, the Berbers, the Kabyles, the 

 Guanches of Teuerilfe, the Corsicans, the Sardinians, the Sicilians, 

 and the people of southern Italy. Pausanius informs us that the Sar- 

 dinians were Libyans, or what we should now call Berbers. Seneca 

 says that Corsica was peopled by Iberians and Ligurians. Thucydides 

 and Ephoros also inform us that the oldest inhabitants of Sicily were 

 Iberians. 



There are several prehistoric skulls of this race in the Kincherian 

 Museum at Rome, and the Falerian skull in the Villa Papa Giulio 

 belongs to the same type. These skulls areorthoguathous and dolicho- 

 cephalic, resembling the modern Sardinian skull and ancient Iberian 

 skulls found in caves at Gibraltar and in Sicily. 



This ancient type is still predominant in southern Italy, Sicily, Sar- 

 dinia, and Corsica. Professor Calori, of Modeua, has measured more 

 than 2,400 skulls in different provinces of Italy. In southern Italy only 

 36 per cent, are round-headed, with a cephalic index* above 80 ; whereas 



* The cephalic index gives the proportion of the breadth of the head to the lengtli, 

 and is obtained by dividing the breadth by the length from front to back, and then 

 multiplyiag by 100. 



