NEOLITHIC MAN 51 



any trace of flax seed or thread ever found. Lastly, the 

 neolithic system of burial also shows a considerable advance ; 

 the dead were no longer buried separately in caves, or in the 

 open fields, but many together in a small room skilfully con- 

 structed of stone, or, as in the Rhine districts, in graveyards 

 arranged in rows, and apart from the country settlements. 

 Specimens of these settlements have also been excavated and 

 they may be described as villages. In the graves the skeletons 

 are found sometimes lying at full length, sometimes in a sitting 

 posture or half-sitting with the knees drawn up to the chin, 

 sometimes lying on the side. 



The discoveries of neolithic graves prove beyond a doubt 

 that Europe in the neolithic period was not peopled by one 

 uniform race alone, but that the process of division into 

 dolichocephalous and brachycephalous races (the latter of small 

 stature) which began in the palaeolithic period was continued 

 into the next. Remains of a tall, dolichocephalous race have 

 been found in the stone coffins and burial vaults of Sweden, in 

 the cave graves of Aurignac and Duruthy, in the neolithic 

 graveyards on the Rhine, and in the narrow " sitting-graves " 

 of Lengyel (Hungary). A few isolated graves in Sweden 

 contain brachycephalous skeletons of short stature, as do the 

 Aggteleker caves in Hungary and the grottoes of the French 

 Maritime Alps ; the skull of a lake dweller preserved in the 

 Museum at Berne also belongs to a member of the same 

 race. In the dolmens (cromlechs) of France remains of 

 dolichocephalous and brachycephalous individuals were found 

 together a triumphant proof that the two races were con- 

 temporary. 



The frequent discoveries of mesocephalous skulls proves 

 that a mingling of the races most certainly took place. In 

 course of time, the dolichocephalous type died out in Europe 

 (with the exception of Scandinavia), being gradually supplanted 

 by the mesocephalous race, till they in their turn were forced 

 into the background by the brachycephalous, which eventually 

 became the predominant European type. 



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