102 THE HARLYN BURIALS. 



considered proved to be Neolithic by this contracted position 

 alone. Apart from Harlyn, we have two specially striking cases 

 in Cornwall. The first contracted skeleton was found in a barrow 

 on Trevalga head, near Newquay, and has been pronounced by 

 Mr. Borlase to be the oldest in Cornwall, and the second in an 

 interment near Sheveock. A third doubtful case is reported 

 from a barrow at Lesnewth, near Tintagel. Mr. W. C. Borlase 

 has also pointed out that many of our pre-historic graves in 

 Cornwall are too small to receive the body unless it was very 

 much bent. 



Let us now trace this contracted form of burial in Neolithic 

 times into various countries, remembering that the characteristics 

 of the skeletons at Harlyn are the dolichocephalic skull, and the 

 contracted position of the skeleton. We meet with it in 

 Scandinavia, and the cists in the dolmens in the Channel 

 Islands, explored by Mr. Lukis, contained contracted skeletons of 

 Neolithic age in coffins of stone slabs. In Belgium, also, the 

 Neolithic cave of Chavaux has furnished contracted and 

 dolichocephalic skeletons, while near by, in the cave of Nutons, 

 lay 18 Neolithic skeletons, with brachycephalic heads, and in an 

 extended position.^ Here, then, we have two different races 

 inhabiting Belgium during the later stone age. In France 

 (which is the Paradise of archaeologists) the Neolithic contracted 

 burials abound everywhere. In the barrows, dolmens, and 

 cists, they are found again and again, and are supposed to be 

 the oldest sepultures of the Later Stone age. One case is specially 

 striking. In the artificial grottoes of the chalk in the valley of 

 the Marne there are 2,000 skeletons all buried in the extended 

 manner. But there is one skeleton amongst them buried by 

 itself, in the contracted position. Probably it belonged to a 

 slave of an earlier race, who was buried by his fellow bondmen 

 amongst his masters, in the old position in which his ancestors 

 laid their dead to rest. Switzerland, also, furnishes us with 

 Neolithic burials in the contracted position, with dolichocephalic 

 skulls ; the skeletons being often found in graves bordered by 

 stone slabs.* The same kind of burials are found in Italy. The 

 famous skeletons of the Mentone caves have been thought to be 



8. L' Homme pendant les Ages de la Pierre, by E. Dupont, p. 230. 



9. La France Prehhtorique, by E- Cartailhac, pp. 230-231. 



