316 Mortimer: Notes on our Ancestors in East Yorkshire. 
These people buried their dead frequently in cemeteries, often 
enclosing British barrows and other earthworks, but I have 
never found any indication of their having erected a grave 
mound. 
Like the earlier races they were pagans when they settled 
in this part of Yorkshire, and buried their dead in narrow, 
shallow graves in various positions, from a much doubled-up 
to an extended attitude, and in some graveyards they are 
interspersed with cremated burials. They likewise seem to 
have had a belief in the hereafter. This is proved by the 
frequency with which the dead were supphed with articles of 
everyday use, such as weapons, tools, ornaments, pottery, and 
even food. 
These notes, together with the accompanying table, show 
that the inhabitants of East Yorkshire in the very earliest 
times were neither giants nor dwarfs, but men possessing stature 
very similar to those of the present day. Their heads were of 
the most diverging types, ranging from the extreme long to 
the extreme short skull. No trace has been observed of a race 
of a higher or a lower stature, nor of a race of long or short 
heads having first occupied this district. This is also the 
view of Dr. W. Wright, to whom I am much indebted for the 
measurements of the greater number of these skulls. 
As_ previously mentioned, several hundred years later, 
during the Early Iron Age, there was in East Yorkshire a very 
different race of settlers ; - smaller men, of a stature and cranial 
type far more uniform than those previously existing. These 
were evidently settlers from over the sea, and were not des- 
cendants of a family of the tall long heads of the earlier settlers. 
Still later, in pagan Saxon times, the stature rises and 
closely approaches that of the inhabitants of the Stone and 
Bronze periods, but their cranial types are much more uniformly 
long. 
After these Saxons were converted to Christianity their 
pagan customs were slowly abandoned, and they became of 
less interest to the antiquary. Had it not been for the heathen 
beliefs and customs of our ancestors we should have known 
much less than we do now of early man and his mode of life 
during these remote periods. _ 
In performing his pagan rites he was unconsciously recording 
the history of his time. 
In conclusion. Though we of this twentieth century are 
descendants of the various races that have lived before us, yet 
we do not show a greater diversity in stature and in type of 
skull than did our most distant fore-fathers of the Neolithic 
and Bronze periods. Thus, the conclusion to be drawn seems 
to be that the blending of the different types of mankind must 
have taken place in very early days. 
Naturalist, 
