NATURE 



60 1 



THURSDAY, APRIL 30, ic 



ANCIENT BRITAIN. 

 Ancient Britain and the Invasions of Julius Caesar. 

 By Dr. T. Rice Holmes. Pp. xi + 764. (Oxford: 

 Clarendon Press, 1907.) Price 2i.>;. net. 

 '"T'HIS substantial volume divides itself, roughly 

 -«- speaking, into two halves, of which the first is 

 ihe text of the author's story of ancient Britain ex- 

 tended so as to include Julius Caesar's invasions and 

 their more immediate results. The other is devoted 

 to discussions and notes on special subjects, varying 

 greatly in length and importance. 



The summing-up at the end of the story is .i; 

 cheerful reading. In some respects the author th. ..vs 

 we have sunk below the level of " those primitive 

 ancestors " who form the subject of his work. He 

 .-isks in what we have advanced, and answers that we 

 have made giant strides :-' all that appertains to 

 material civilisation. He proceeds in the following 

 terms : — 



" But such improvements liardly enable men to 

 bear up under burdens which are ever increasing. 

 The tourist in a Pullman car is not happier than those 

 who travelled in stage-coach or waggon, and speed 

 deprives him of as much as it bestows ; machinery 

 has but substituted fresh evils for those which it 

 destroyed. New superstitions, less gross but not less 

 false, have been engrafted upon the old : but ' pure 

 religion and undefiled,' — how far has it strengthened 

 its hold on the hearts of men? " 



The reader will form some idea of the wide scope 

 of his study of the primitive ancestors from the follow- 

 ing headings of the chapters on ancient Britain : the 

 Palaolithic age, the Neolithic age, the Bronze age 

 and the voyage of Pytheas, the Early Iron age, 

 Ca:sar's first invasion of Britain, Caesar's second 

 invasion, the results of Caesar's invasions. 



It is to be hoped that Dr. Holmes may prove mis- 

 taken when he asserts in his introduction that we 

 already know all, or nearly all, that sepulchres and 

 skulls and coins can teach us of ancient Britain and 

 its inhabitants. He goes on to express views which, 

 if hardly more encouraging, are more likely to be in 

 accord with those of his readers : — 



" There is room also for many labourers in excavat- 

 ing stone circles, camps, and earthworks, and deter- 

 mining their age, in exploring habitations, wherever 

 they can be found, and learning what they can teach 

 about those who constructed them. What has been 

 already done in this department has produced the 

 most fruitful results. . . . But such work, which in 

 other civilised countries is an object of national con- 

 cern, languishes here for want of funds. No British 

 Government can expect support from the intelligence 

 and the public spirit of its constituents in spending 

 money upon archaeological research, or has the 

 courage to give them a lead ; and where are the 

 wealthy Englishmen w'ho will follow the example of 

 Iheir American cousins in endowing such work? " 



At the risk of seeming to digress, w-e should like to 

 point out that this state of things shows signs of 

 cf ming to an end, and we may mention as one of 

 NO. 2009, VOL. 77] 



our reasons for believing so the appointment not long 

 since of a Royal Commission to report on the 

 antiquities of Scotland. It is devoutly to be hoped 

 that the Government will do more and extend the 

 sphere of its activity so as to include other parts of 

 the Ivingdom. 



We shall now endeavour to give the reader an idea 

 of ancient Britain and its populations as Dr. Holmes 

 conceives of them. He regards the Bronze age as 

 beginning in this country about 1800 years before the 

 Christian era, but many centuries previously the 

 island began to be invaded from various parts of 

 northern Gaul by a Neolithic people, whom he 

 describes as follows (pp. 64-5) : — 



"The skeletons that have been exhumed from the 

 Neolithic tombs of England, Scotland, and Ireland 

 . . . belong, for the most part, to the same general 

 ivpe. All, or almost all. had long narrow skulls : 

 their faces were '-ommonly oval, their features regular, 

 and their noses aquiline : most of them were of 

 middle height, and their limbs, as a rule, were rather 

 delicate than robust. Men with the same physical 

 characters lived contemporaneously in Gaul and the 

 Spanish peninsula, and are still numerous in the basin 

 of the Mediterranean ; and the race to which they 

 belonged is often called the Iberian, though there is 

 no reason to believe that its British representatives . 

 belonged to the Iberian rather than to some other 

 branch of the Mediterranean stock. But it is remark- 

 able that while early in the Neolithic age Gaul and 

 Spain, as well as Central Europe, were overrun by 

 invaders of a totally different kind, who were ex- 

 tremely short and sturdy and had broad round heads, 

 there is no evidence that men of this race reached 

 Britain until the very end of the [Neolithic] period, 

 and then only in comparatively small numbers. One 

 would be inclined to infer that tribes of the Mediter- 

 ranean stock began to migrate into Britain before 

 many of the round-headed race had settled in Gaul. 

 Vain attempts have been made to trace the [Neolithic] 

 migration to its original starting-point by the distri- 

 bution of the dolmens, or rude stone sepulchres, which 

 are found in many European countries. . . . Every- 

 thing points to the conclusion that the earliest 

 dolmen-builders of Britain retreated from Gaul before 

 the sturdy round-headed invaders ; and it is useless to 

 inquire whether the Mediterranean stock, to which 

 the British, like the earlier French dolmen-builders, 

 belonged, originated in Europe, in Asia, or in Africa. 

 We only know that the oldest traces of the race were 

 discovered in the Riviera." 



At this point the author refers to certain philologists, 

 who, like Prof. Morris-Jones, see in the syntax of the 

 Neoceltic languages the influence of a language akin 

 to the Hamitic dialects of Africa, with which it may 

 be supposed to have come in contact after the advent 

 of the Celts to Britain. He asks (p. 405) why it may 

 not have been affected by some such contact before 

 their arrival here. Doubtless that question occurred to 

 Prof. Morris-Jones, but he was probably prevented 

 from answering it in the way w hich Dr. Holmes would 

 seem to suggest by the fact that there are some 

 sentences of Continental Celtic extant, and that they 

 show few traces, if any, of the non-Aryan syntax 

 referred to. Whether Dr. Holmes noticed that difii- 

 cultv does not appear, but if he is right in saying 

 that the Neolithic short-heads chased the " Iberians " 



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