UPON THE SEEIES OF PREHISTORIC CRANIA. 233 



stature and dark of complexion, whereas the bracbycephali with 

 whom we have to deal were certainly tall, and all but equally 

 certainly light in hair and complexion. 



The skulls from the earlier British barrows have been stated to 

 be invariably dolichocephalic, whilst the skulls from the barrows 

 of the bronze period, though in some cases exclusively brachy- 

 cephalic, may belong to either one or other of these two types. The 

 few skulls which I have been able to examine or to read of from 

 interments of what is called the late Celtic period, the period 

 intervening between the close of the bronze age and the establish- 

 ment of the Roman power in this country, have been dolicho- 

 cephalic, a fact which may be explained either by a reference to 

 the well-known persistence with which ' les types autochthones sur- 

 vivent a la domination etrangere et au melange des sangs 1 / or, 

 though with less probability, by the hypothesis of a preponderance 

 having been given in this iron age to the still surviving dolicho- 

 cephalic stock in the way of invasions from the continent. The 

 dolichocephalic late Celt however differed probably from the 

 dolichocephalic inhabitant of these islands in the stone age in being 

 light- instead of dark-haired 2 . See pp. 2$$, 283 infra. 



It is undoubtedly an important fact that in no skull from any 

 long barrow, that is to say, in no skull undoubtedly of the stone age, 

 examined by us, has the breadth been found to bear so high a rela- 

 tion as that of 80 : 100 of the length ; for this alone would suffice to 

 show that Retzius's classification of skulls into two great divisions 

 of dolichocephalic and brachycephalic cannot, even when taken to 

 connote merely the strictest geometrical proportions, be summarily 

 set aside as an artificial one. But, as Professor Cleland has well 

 pointed out in a memoir ('Philosophical Transactions/ 1870, vol. 150, 



1 Broca, ' Memoires,' i. 340, 341. 



2 Broca, 'Bull. Soc. Anth. Paris,' se>. ii.tom. viii. Avril, 1873, p. 319, says that cer- 

 tain districts of modern Brittany, in which the British refugees from the Saxon 

 invasion of the fifth century settled in great numbers, are still distinguished by the 

 tallness, light complexion, and dolichocephaly of their inhabitants. He calls this 

 stock ' Kymrique,' in the application of which word I differ from him. Similarly, at 

 least as to the cephalic index, certain interments from the period of transition from 

 bronze to iron described by Kopernicki, cit. Ecker, 'Archiv fur Anthropologic/ ix. p. 

 118, 1876, as examined by him in South-east Galicia, were found to furnish skulls 

 1 exquisite orthognathe dolicho-cephalen ' (C. I. = 73), contrasting strongly with the 

 pronounced brachycephalism (C. I. = 81) of the modern Ruthenian inhabitants of that 

 district. 



