86 



NATURE 



[October 4, 19 17 



land we naturally turn to the three Scottish 

 universities which have become centres of anthro- 

 polog-ical investig^ation — Edinburgh, Glasgow, 

 and Aberdeen. We shall take the last-named 

 university first, because the school of anthro- 

 pologists which has grown up under Prof. R. W. 

 Reid, Dr. Alexander Low, Mr. James F. Tocher, 

 the late Dr. W. R. Macdonell, and the late Mr. 

 John Gray can show us very precise and remark- 

 able facts bearing on the early history of the 

 people of the north-east of Scotland. ^ All over the 

 county of Aberdeen are found burials in short 

 stone-cists, which certainly date back to an early 

 stage of the Bronze age, and have been given an 

 approximate date of 1500 B.C. by the Hon. John 

 Abercromby. There could not be a sharper con- 

 trast between two human types than there is 

 between the Nordic and those squat, bullet-headed, 

 short-cist people of Aberdeenshire. The latter 

 were a wonderfully uniform folk, showing a 

 peculiar type of brachycephaly. To find the 

 nearest approach to that type in a modern popu- 

 lation we have to go more than a thousand miles 

 away, to the countries lying at the upper waters 

 of the Elbe and Rhine. In the ancient graves of 

 these same areas of central and south-west 

 Germany the Hon. John Abercromby finds the 

 prototype of the "beakers " which were so often 

 placed in the Aberdeenshire short cists with the 

 dead. Between 3000 and 4000 years ago Aber- 

 deenshire was invaded by a brachycephalic, Slav- 

 like people. We have ample evidence to show 

 that the round-heads of Central Europe broke 

 through the Nordic barrier that still guards the 

 eastern shores of the North Sea about the end 

 of the Neolithic period, some 4000 years ago. 

 Nor need we hesitate to believe that they had the 

 means to cross the North Sea. In that great 

 work, 6 whereby a foundation for a real history of 

 the Scottish people was laid, Sir Daniel Wilson 

 describes the discovery of a boat at a depth of 

 15 ft, in the carse of Falkirk. The boat 

 was 36 ft. long and 4 ft. wide. We know 

 approximately when the silt of the carse was 

 deposited and the boat embedded ; it was when 

 the 25-ft. beach marked the level of the 

 sea and when the hunters of Scotland used that 

 peculiar form of harpoon which marks the transi- 

 tion from the Palaeolithic to the Neolithic civilisa- 

 tion. There were apparently bV boats in 

 Scotland several thousand years before the Con- 

 tinental or German round-heads landed on the 

 shores of Aberdeenshire. 



Unfortunately the anthropologists of Aberdeen 

 University can show us nothing of the people who 

 preceded the round-heads or of the people who 

 followed them. But they have provided us with the 

 means of ascertaining how far the stock Introduced 

 by the short-cist people has been perpetuated.'^ In 

 402 men examined by Mr. John Gray and Mr. 



5 See Proceedings of the Anatomical and Anthropoloeical Society of 

 Aberdeen University of December, 1902, and subsequent dates. 



« "The Archaeology and Prehistoric Annals of Scotland." By Daniel 

 Wilson. (1851.) 



7 Physical Characters of the Adults and School-children of East Aber- 

 deenshire." By John Gray and James F. Tocher. Journ.'Roy. Anthrop. 

 Inst., 1900, vol. XXX., p. 104. 



NO. 2501, VOL. 100] 



James Tocher there were only 5 per cent, who 

 had the peculiar head form and dimensions of 

 the short-cist people; there were 9 per cent, 

 who were technically of the round-headed type 

 with a cephalic index of 80 or more. The pre- 

 vailing forms varied between the upper limits of 

 long-headedness and the lower of round-headed- 

 ness. These modern Buchan people were, on an 

 average, about 4 in. taller than the short- 

 clst men and had the fair colouring in hair and 

 eyes of the modern Bavarian. How and when 

 the Nordic type reached Aberdeenshire we have 

 no precise evidence. But it certainly is at present 

 the prevailing type. 



We come now to deal with the contributions 

 which the late Sir William Turner, principal of 

 the University of Edinburgh, made to Scottish 

 ethnology. He may be described as one of the 

 best Scotsmen ever born south of the Tweed. 

 When he arrived In Edinburgh in 1854, at the age 

 of twenty-four, to assist Goodsir, he found Daniel 

 Wilson, who had opened so brilliantly the first 

 chapter of Scotland's ancient history, on the 

 point of departure for the University of Toronto, 

 of which, in the course of time, he became the 

 distinguished principal. Another young English- 

 man, the late Dr. John Beddoe, had just finished his 

 first preliminary survey of the Scots : he found 

 them to be a compound of Saxon, Pict (Iberian), 

 Celtic (a hybrid between the British of the 

 Neolithic and Bronze ages), and Welsh. Turner 

 had a predilection for facts rather than theories, 

 and he began to collect, in a systematic manner, 

 the materials for a cranlologlcal history. His 

 numerous pupils became willing assistant col- 

 lectors, and In the course of fifty years he 

 assembled In his museum the most extensive col- 

 lection of ancient and modern Scottish crania 

 that has as yet been made. When he retired from 

 the chair of anatomy, to assume the onerous 

 duties of principal of the University of Edinburgh, 

 he devoted his spare hours to the study of his 

 cranial collections. He published two mono- 

 graphs ^ on the Scottish crania, the first, issued 

 in 1903, being a detailed description of 176 skulls 

 of modern people; the second issued in 191 5 — 

 a few months before his death at the age of 

 eighty-four — in which he gave an account of 

 prehistoric crania and stated his conclusions 

 regarding the races which had become fused to 

 form the Scottish nation. He had, Including the 

 Aberdeenshire series already mentioned, forty- 

 nine skulls from short stone-cists, representing 

 Scotsmen of the Bronze age. Of the forty-nine, 

 thirty-eight were discovered In the eastern 

 counties ; of these, thirty-four were brachycephalic, 

 of a type very similar to the Aberdeenshire series, 

 yet showing a sufficient degree of difference to 

 lead one to suspect that there was at least a tribal 

 distinction. 



Turner agreed that the people buried in the 

 short stone-cists were Alpine or Central Euro- 

 pean in origin and represented the Bronze-age 



8 " Contributions fo the Cranioloey of the People of Scotland." Part i. 

 Trans. Roy. Soc. Edin., 1903, vol. xl., p. 547 ; part ii., igis.'.vol. li., p. 171.' 



