THE CRANIOLOGY OF THE PEOPLE OF SCOTLAND. 233 



of an intermediate channel or strait. This problem had to be discussed in my inquiry 

 into the origin of the Tasmanians,* and it meets us in a more complex form in the 

 study of the early inhabitants of Britain. In Tasmania the presence of mammals 

 similar to those still living in Australia, which from their size and habits could only 

 have travelled along a bridge of continuous land, naturally indicated that its early 

 human inhabitants had reached it by the same route. The finding in Britain and 

 Western Europe of the fossil remains of large mammals such as the elephant,, 

 mammoth, tiger, rhinoceros, cave bear, etc., which through great climatic changes 

 are now extinct both here and on the Continent, points to the former existence at 

 one time of a similar land bridge. The rude flint and stone implements, known as 

 palaeolithic, which occur both in Western Europe and South Britain, were the tools 

 of their earliest human inhabitants, whose skeletal remains have been discovered on 

 the Continent, though they have seldom been procured in South Britain. 



In Scotland, again, no satisfactory evidence has yet been obtained of the remains 

 of palaeolithic man or his works. If one were to suppose that he had indeed at one 

 time occupied North Britain, the absence of any existing evidence may be regarded 

 as due to the destructive action of a great ice-sheet, or a succession of ice-sheets, 

 which had covered the country almost as high as the summits of its loftiest moun- 

 tains, and which by the grinding action of its glaciers had destroyed any trace of 

 man and his works lying on or near the surface of the ground. Specimens of 

 skulls of palaeolithic man, sufficiently well preserved to enable measurements to be 

 taken, are pronouncedly dolichocephalic ; in the Neanderthal and Spy group they 

 have the vertex flattened and the glabella and supraciliaries strongly projecting. 

 In skulls from other localities, also regarded as palaeolithic, the crania, though 

 dolichocephalic, have feeble supraorbitals and a larger cubic capacity. 



After the disappearance of these ice-sheets, when Britain had assumed surface 

 characters approaching to those of more modern periods, it became peopled by a 

 race which employed for weapons and tools natural products such as stones to be 

 shaped and polished into celts and hammers ; flints to be delicately chipped into arrow 

 and lance heads, scrapers, and useful articles ; or bone and horn capable of being 

 worked into pins, chisels, and other tools. These implements have been designated 

 by archaeologists neolithic, a term which is also applied to their makers. The question 

 has frequently been discussed whether, on the Continent as well as in Britain, the 

 palaeolithic race had become extinct before the advent of the neolithic, or whether they 

 had co-existed and the neolithic race in course of time had displaced the palaeolithic 

 without destroying, or being substituted for it. Climatic changes, modifying the food 

 supply and the temperature, had caused the disappearance in Western Europe of the 

 large mammals cotemporaneous with palaeolithic man. Man, however, has a power 

 of adapting himself to changes in environment both as regards food and climate far 

 exceeding that possessed by any other mammal, so that it does not follow that he 



* See my memoirs in Trans. Roy. Soc. Edinburgh, vols, xlvi, xlvii, 1. 



