704 GENERAL REMARKS 



to the early date of which their possession of the f priscan ' pecu- 

 liarities specified above (pp. 645652) speak as decisively as their 

 archaeological surroundings, one only, a lower jaw of a man, had 

 been affected by alveolar abscess. From the AVestow long-barrow 

 series (see p. 494 supra) no lower jaw thus affected has been re- 

 covered ; from the Rudstone long barrow (see p. 497 supra) only 

 one, (the one described above, p. 613, as) of a man ; from the 

 Ebberston long barrow (see p. 484 supra) only one of a woman 1 . 



Further investigations may possibly reverse this relation of 

 numerical superiority on the side of the female sex in the matter of 

 alveolar abscesses. I am inclined however to connect it with the 

 harder life and scantier fare which are the lot of women in most 

 savage races, upon which I have here (p. 659 supra) and elsewhere 2 

 insisted as accounting for the greater inferiority in stature and 

 in bulk which existed and exists between men and women in many 

 ancient and in many modern savage races. 



Feeble general physique is correlated, as Mr. Mummery's 

 examination of modern savage races (pp. 47, 5154, 60, 63) in 

 Africa, China, Australia, and elsewhere has shown us, with deterio- 

 ration of the state of the teeth, and this, howsoever, whether by 

 too small a proportion of animal to vegetable food in their dietary, 

 by frequent privation of food altogether, or by general anti- 

 hygienic conditions, this feebleness may have, been produced. 

 To realise the working of the two former of these causes among 

 the prehistoric inhabitants of these islands, and especially the 

 women, there is little need of imagination ; I think however that 

 from our present familiarity with the production of anti-hygienic 

 conditions by the crowding of a superabundant population within 

 solid walls, from our lack of familiarity with tent life and savage 

 life, we may underrate the extent to which unhealthy conditions 

 may, or indeed must have prevailed in the dwellings even of sparse 

 populations in days so long before the invention not merely of 

 glass but of many other things in which in these days ' our basest 

 beggars are superfluous.' It is obvious however upon the smallest 



1 In none of these cases have I seen any traces of the simple but relief -producing 

 operation of extraction, or of other evidence to show that in this, any more than in 

 any other sphere, ' the former days were better than these/ The same lesson may be 

 gathered analogically from observations made upon the "remains of modern savages, 

 Mr. Mummery informing us (L c., p. 47) that he has 'met in Australian jaws with 

 every form of dental disease with which we are familiar amongst the English race/ 



2 Journal Anth. Inst., Oct. 1875, p. 121 note ; British Association Report, 1875, p. 

 152; Archaologia, xlii 1870, p. 457. 



