CHAP, ix.] CELTIC INVASION OF GAUL AND SPAIN. 315 



Britain and on the Continent, and may therefore be 

 taken to imply that the Basque-speaking peoples are to 

 be looked upon as a fragment of the race which occupied 

 the British Isles, and the area west of the Rhine and 

 north of the Alps, in the Neolithic age. 



The Basques of the present day are, as might be 

 expected from the many invasions they have undergone, 

 by no means uniform ; but the researches of Dr. Broca 

 prove that the real Basque stock was small in stature, 

 dark in complexion, with black hair and eyes, and with 

 a long head ; the other elements in the population, as 

 at present constituted, having been contributed by the 

 Celtic, and long afterwards by the Gothic and English 

 invaders. Nor can there be any reasonable doubt as to 

 this small, dark- haired people being identical with the 

 ancient Iberians of history, 1 who have left their name 

 in the Iberian peninsula as a mark of their former 

 dominion in the west. Thus, by a chain of reasoning 

 purely zoological, we arrive at the important conclusion 

 that the Neolithic inhabitants of the British Isles belong 

 to the same non-Aryan section of mankind as the 

 Basques, and that in ancient times they were spread 

 through Spain as far to the south as the Pillars of 

 Hercules, and as far to the north-east as Germany and 

 Denmark. 



The Celtic Invasion of Gaul and Spain in the 

 Neolithic Age. 



The Iberic population of the British Isles was 

 apparently preserved from contact with other races 



1 Broca, Sur I'Origine et la Repartition fo la Langue Basque, Rev. 

 Anthrop., 1875. 



