Ch. X.] 



CRANIAL TYPES OF THE BRONZE PERIOD. 



113 



shells in which it lay. A cylindrical coating of such materials has 

 sometimes been found encircling cannon and gun-barrels, the fur- 

 ther corrosion of which seems to have been arrested by such an en- 

 velope.* 



Human remains of the recent period. — Yery few human bones of 

 the bronze period have been met with in the Danish peat, or in the Swiss 

 lake-dwellings, and this scarcity in generally attributed by archaeolo- 

 gists to the custom of burning the dead, which prevailed in the age 

 of bronze. In the antecedent era of stone, the primitive population 

 of the North are said to have buried their dead in sepulchral vaults, 

 carefully constructed of large undressed blocks of stone. From such 

 burial-places many skulls have been obtained by Scandinavian ethnolo- 

 gists, which show that the ancient race had small heads, remarkably 

 rounded in every direction, but with a facial angle tolerably large, and 

 a well-developed forehead. (See figure 104.) Similar skulls have, 

 according to Retzius, been discovered in France, Ireland, and Scot- 

 land, and they are so like those of the modern Laplanders, as to have 

 suggested the idea that the latter were the last survivors of the stone 

 period in the north of Europe. The Laplanders have usually been 

 considered as an extreme branch of the Mongolian race. 



The cranial type of the bronze age is not yet well known, but with 

 the introduction of iron, the custom of burying the dead was resumed, 

 and with it a new form of skulls appears, resembling that now-a-days 



Tig. 104 



Fisr. 105. 





Brachycephalous type of the age of stone 

 of the recent period in Denmark. 



Dolichocephalous type of the beginning 

 of the age of iron in Denmark. 



most common in Europe. As seen in fig. 105, it is elongated fore and 

 aft, has a forehead somewhat retreating, and corresponds with what is 

 often called the Celtic type.f 



POST-PLIOCEXE PERIOD. 



From the foregoing observations we may infer that the ages ol iron 

 and bronze in Northern and Central Europe were preceded by a stone 



* See Lyell's Principles of Geology, 9th ed., p. 760. 

 f Morlot, ibid. 



