H.— ANTHROPOLOGY. 



151 



and what that parentage is becomes plain when they are placed in company 

 with the Beaker folk. 



It seems to me as clear as clear can be that these Hythe people, in the 

 fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, were the result of an incursion and 

 settlement of people from the Continent, of the Alpine Race, who had 

 been slightly, but only slightly, modified by mixture with the Kentish 

 folk. 2 



In the eighteenth century the Londoners who lived in the neighbour- 

 hood of Clare Market had skulls the proportional dimensions of which 

 differed very little from those at Kothwell : — 



Apparently, however, there was a little more of the Nordic and a little 

 less of the Alpine element about them. 



In the seventeenth century three series of plague skulls are available 

 and were described by Macdonell and Hooke. They are remarkable for 

 their low vaults and receding foreheads, and it has been suggested that 

 they show that the modern Londoner has reverted to the Early Iron Age 

 type, though formerly Pearson regarded them as Long Barrow in their 

 characteristics. Unfortunately we know very little of the craniology of 

 the Early Iron Age, and I see that Morant cannot find a single record of 

 what their auricular height was. 3 We must therefore let this suggestion 

 stand over until more work has been done upon the head shape of the 

 Iron Age. There is one point, however, which I think should be borne 

 in mind, especially since the Londoners seem to have gone back to a 

 more normal head height in the eighteenth century ; it is that during the 

 plague the better class of citizens fled from the city, leaving the dregs of 

 the population behind, and it is in these dregs that receding foreheads and 



2 Writing in Biomelrika (vol. 18, p. 22) Miss Hooke says that the Hythe skulls 

 were ' in all probability those of Kentish men.' This I no longer believe, because I 

 examined a number of skulls of the same date from the crypt of a disused church at 

 Dover and found them quite different from those at Hythe. Again, the same writer 

 says that the skulls which I recorded at Hythe were ' selected ' from at least double 

 the number. This, if it were true, would necessarily make the Hythe records value- 

 less ; but it is absolutely untrue, since I examined all the skulls which were available 

 at the time, and no selection whatever was made. Since then more skulls have been 

 recovered from the stack, but there is no reason to believe that they differ in any 

 way from those which I measured. 



3 Biomelrika, vol. 18, p. 82. 



