THE RACIAL GEOGRAPHY OF EUROPE. 149 



Alpine race in the British Isles therefore is merely another illustra- 

 tion of its essentially continental character. 



Before we proceed to consider the other physical traits of the 

 living population, we must draw in a background by a hasty sum- 

 mary of the facts which the science of archaeology has to offer con- 

 cerning the prehistoric human types in the islands. In the first 

 place, it is certain that the earliest inhabitants were decidedly long- 

 headed, even more so than any Europeans of to-day; far more so 

 than the present British. The evidence concerning this most primi- 

 tive stratum is carefully presented by Boyd Dawkins in his Early 

 Man in Britain. These men, whose remains have been unearthed in 

 caves and whose implements have been discovered in the river drift 

 of the late glacial epoch, were decidedly dolichocephalic. Both in 

 the stage of culture attained and in head form they were so like the 

 Eskimo of North America that Nilsson more than a half century ago 

 suggested a common derivation for both. Boyd Dawkins lends his 

 support to the same hypothesis, assuming that as the ice sheet with- 

 drew to the north, these primitive folk followed it, just as we know 

 to a certainty that the mammoth, mastodon, and other species of ani- 

 mals have done. A former connection of Europe with Greenland 

 would have made this migration an easy matter. Whether this inter- 

 esting supposition be true or not, we know that the earliest type of 

 man in Britain was as long-headed as either the African negro or 

 the Eskimo that is to say, presenting a more extreme type in this 

 respect than any living European people to-day. 



The second population to be distinguished in these islands was 

 characterized by a considerably higher culture; but it was quite 

 similar, although somewhat less extreme in physical type than the 

 preceding one, so far as we can judge by the head form. This epoch, 

 from the peculiarities of its mode of interment, is known as the 

 long-barrow period.* The human remains are found, often in con- 

 siderable numbers, generally in more or less rudely constructed 

 stone chambers, covered with earth. These mounds, egg-shaped in 

 plan, often several hundred feet long, are quite uniform in type. 

 The bodies are found at the broader and higher end of the tumulus, 

 which is more often toward the east, possibly a matter of religion, 

 the entrance being upon this same end. These people were still in 

 the pure stone age of culture; neither pottery nor metals seem to 



* The best authorities upon this and the succeeding type are Canon Greenwell's British 

 Barrows, with its anthropological notes by Dr. Rolleston, at pages 627-718; the Crania 

 Britannica above mentioned, but more especially the essays by Dr. Thurnam in Memoirs of 

 the Anthropological Society of London, vol. i, pp. 120-168, 458-519; and vol. iii, pp. 

 41-75. Consult also Rolleston i 1 Journal of the Anthropological Institute, London, vol. v, 

 pp. 120-172. 



