54 APHORISMS AND REFLECTIONS 



identity. All that it does prove is that, at some 

 time or other, free and prolong;ed intercourse has 

 taken place between the speakers of the same 

 language. 



CLXXXIV 



The capacity of the population of Europe for 

 independent progress while in the copper and early 

 bronze stage — the " palaeo-metallic " stage, as it 

 might be called — appears to me to be demonstrated 

 in a remarkable manner by the remains of their 

 architecture. From the crannog to the elaborate 

 pile-dwelling, and from the rudest enclosure to the 

 complex fortification of the terramare, there is an 

 advance which is obviously a native product. So 

 with the sepulchral constructions ; the stone cist, with 

 or without a preservative or memorial cairn, grows 

 into the chambered graves lodged in tumuli ; into 

 such megalithic edifices as the dromic vaults of 

 Maes How and New Grange ; to culminate in the 

 finished masonry of the tombs of Mycenae, constructed 

 on exactly the same plan. Can anyone look at the 

 varied series of forms which lie between the 

 primitive five or six flat stones fitted together into a 

 mere box, and such a building as Maes How, and 

 yet imagine that the latter is the result of foreign 

 tuition ? But the men who built Maes How, without 

 metal tools, could certainly have built the so-called 

 " treasure-house " of Mycenae, with them. 



CLXXXV 



Reckoned by centuries, the remoteness of the 

 quaternary, or pleistocene, age from our ovTn is 

 immense, and it is difficult to form an adequate 

 notion of its duration. Undoubtedly there is an 

 abysmal difference between the Neanderthaloid race 

 and the comely living specimens of the blond long- 



