658 



NATURE 



[February ii, 1915 



Ireland, where they formed numerous settlements in 

 the north and east. The.late Sir, William Wilde be- 

 lieved — sixty years ago — that they were the aboriginal 

 inhabitants of Ireland, but we kno\v now that Ireland 

 had been the scene of many an invasion before the 

 round-heads reached her shores. The invading race 

 spread over the richest parts of England ; they reached 

 Wales. 



We are not yet in possession of sufficient evidence to 

 determine how far the round-heads replaced the older 

 inhabitants of Britain. There were several parts of 

 England, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland which they 

 failed to penetrate ; at least we have not found in 

 these parts their peculiar "round-barrow" graves. 

 But in other parts their influence was pronounced. 

 In the Museum of Comparative Anatomy at Oxford 

 there are seventy skulls of people buried in round 

 barrows during the earlier part of the Bronze age; 

 thirty of them are apparently pure representatives of 

 the round-headed race ; among sixty-seven skulls 

 gathered from the older or long barrows there is not 

 a single representative of the round-headed people. 

 Dr. William Wright found that the round-heads 

 formed 29 per cent, of the people buried in the round 

 barrows of Yorkshire. In the Aberdeenshire graves 

 of the Bronze period Prof. Reid observed that eleven 

 out of twelve skulls were of the rounded type. Were 

 we to argue from the people buried in the peculiar 

 graves of the early Bronze period we should infer 

 that the invaders had influenced the British popula- 

 tion to a profound degree. We have reason to believe 

 that the people buried in the barrows or in cist-graves 

 represent not the population as a whole but only a 

 class — the richer or governing class. I had occasion 

 recently to examine a hundred skulls from a disused 

 London cemetery — representative of the working popu- 

 lation — and found that only three showed clear signs 

 of a Bronze-age ancestry. It is unusual to see a head 

 of this rounded type on a British artisan. It is other- 

 wise in the classes from which we draw our Civil 

 Servants, our squires, and professional men. In a 

 West End club, chiefly recruited from these classes, 

 the Bronze-age type of head can be traced in about 

 20 per cent, of its members. I have said that the 

 counties round the Firth of Forth were centres of 

 settlement. Sir William Turner found that 25 per 

 cent, of modern skulls from these counties were of the 

 short or rounded type. The population of Kent, 

 which has been the scene of more than one round- 

 headed invasion in pre-Roman times, is eminently 

 short-headed, or brachycephalic.^ 



We may speak with equanimity of an invasion 

 which overwhelmed our country between 3000 and 

 4000 years ago ; it brought in a strain of blood which 

 still exerts its influence on certain classes of our popu- 

 lation, and which has given us some of our most 

 eminent men. I will cite only three instances — the 

 first being Charles Darwin — one of the most acute 

 and best balanced intellects ever bred in England. 

 No one who has examined the bust which Woolner 

 modelled from him in life can doubt his Bronze-age 

 ancestry. His resemblance to Tolstoi is more than a 

 superficial one. The second instance I shall cite from 

 Scotland. We know the head-form of King Robert 

 the Bruce, for a cast of his skull was taken before 

 his remains were re-interred in 1819. An examination 

 of that cast shows that Bruce possessed all the essen- 

 tial features of the Bronze-age race. Lastly, I take 

 an instance from Ireland, where there are many 

 descendants of the Bronze-age invaders, selecting that 

 most lovable of men — Oliver Goldsmith, It is also a 

 matter worthy of note that John Bull, as portrayed 



2 See paper on Hytlie Crania by Prof. F. G. Parson, Joum. Roy. 

 Anthrop. Instit., 1908, vol. xxxviii, p. 419. 



NO. 2363, VOL. 94] 



by " Mr. Punch," carries in his form of head a dis- 

 tinct impression of a Bronze-age ancestry. 



So far as concerns the basis of the British popula- 

 tion the invasion of the round-heads remained without 

 efi'ect; the mass of the people retained the long- 

 headedness which had characterised their ancestors in 

 the Neolithic and later Palaeolithic ages. When we 

 turn to France and mark the changes which occurred 

 in her population at a corresponding period, we find 

 the end result was totally difterent, there was a com- 

 plete revolution in head-form ; from being a long- 

 headed people the majority of the French became 

 round-headed. Long before the end of the Glacial 

 p>eriod we find long-headed races in possession in 

 France ; even when the Glacial or Pleistocene period 

 had ended and the Neolithic age was well begun, the 

 native tribes of France retained the more ancient type 

 of head. But even in the older or Pleistocene period 

 we find some trace of the short-headed race. The 

 skull found at Chancelade, in the Dordogne, in cir- 

 cumstances which convince us that its owner must 

 have lived in one of the later phases of the Glacial 

 or Pleistocene period, possesses certain definite 

 features in its hinder or occipital region, which show 

 affinity to the round-headed type. In the more super- 

 ficial strata of a gravel pit at Grenelle, a suburb of 

 Paris, a series of skulls have been found ^ which show 

 all the features of our invaders of the Bronze age. 

 In deeper and more ancient strata all the skulls were 

 of the long type. There is good reason for believing 

 that the Grenelle skulls, from both the deeper and 

 more superficial strata, are of Pleistocene age. 



Apparently then the round-head invasion of France 

 had begun at a much earlier date than in England. 

 M. Salmon collected measurements of the skulls of 

 688 people who lived in France during the Neolithic 

 period — or, to make my meaning more clear, in a 

 pre-Bronze age — and found that 58 per cent, were 

 long-headed, 21 per cent, round-headed, the rest (21 

 per cent.) forming an intermediate group. A late Neo- 

 lithic sepulchre in the Marne (Petit Morin) yielded a 

 higher percentage of short-heads, viz., 27 per cent., 

 while the long-headed group had become much reduced 

 -^34 per cent. 



We see then that the round-headed invasion of 

 France took place at a much earlier date than that 

 of Britain. The French invaders, appear to have be- 

 longed to a different branch of the round-headed 

 stock. It is true that north of the Seine one fre- 

 quently sees amongst the skulls of Neolithic France 

 Ihe identical type which invaded Britain; we note the 

 same strong and rugged faces, the same prominent 

 supra-orbital ridges and the same flattened occiputs 

 which characterise our British invaders. We suppose 

 these northern forms must have come, like our 

 ancestors, from across the Rhine. But the majority 

 of the round-heads which then invaded France were 

 of a diff'erent type; their foreheads were full and wide 

 and destitute of great brow ridges; their faces were 

 short and wide and of a less massive cast ; their occi- 

 puts were rounded rather than flattened. They repre- 

 sent exactly what modern anthropologists have in mind 

 when they speak of the "Alpine" race or type. The 

 type deserves that name, for it evidently issued from 

 i the western flanks of the Alps and spread gradually 

 over the whole of France. The revolution in head- 

 form never passed beyond the Pyrenees. Long before 

 the arrival of Caesar in Gaul, the majority of the 

 French people had become of the round-headed type. 

 From Caesar's time onwards the people who lived 

 between the Loire and the Seine have been regarded 

 as the representative of the true Celtic race. Our 



» See " Crania Ethnic"-," Qu/»trefages and Hamy, 1882. ,' 



