THE CRANIOLOGY OF THE PEOPLE OF SCOTLAND. 235 



of occasional cremation along with inhumation, the proportions of the skull, the char- 

 acters of the other bones of the skeleton and the probable stature of the individuals 

 whose skeletons had been preserved. From this extended comparison it is obvious 

 that large tracts in Europe had been peopled by neolithic man, whose crania had 

 persistent dolichocephalic proportions and form, and whose tools and weapons were 

 made from direct natural products, which preceded in their use the metals, copper, 

 bronze and iron, associated with interments in later ages. 



Although opinions have differed as to the race with which neolithic man should 

 be associated, there is now a consensus that he was derived from a stock which 

 occupied the northern shore of the western division of the Mediterranean ; though 

 possibly, as Serg-i supposed, its cradle was on the northern coast of Africa. Some 

 ethnographers have attempted to connect it more specifically with the coast of 

 Spain, and have named the stock Iberian.* Rice Holmes has not limited its habitat 

 to the Iberian peninsula, f but has regarded neolithic man as descended from an 

 ancestral race which occupied the basin of the Mediterranean^ so that the term 

 Iberian, if applied to the neolithic people of Britain, should be used in a purely con- 

 ventional sense. Offshoots from this stock had migrated northwards through France, 

 and, after reaching the north-west of that country, had invaded Britain, in all proba- 

 bility not as a single migration, but in successive waves and at several points, and under 

 the pressure of an increasing population and the need of obtaining more supplies of 

 food, had diffused themselves in it to its furthest limits. Professor Bryce briefly re- 

 viewed § their continental relations, and stated that the chambered cairns in Scotland - 

 resembled the gallery graves in Western France ; he noted also that the pottery found 

 in the megalithic burials in Arran had marked affinities with that obtained in the 

 " dolmens " in France and with the late neolithic ceramics from the Pyrenees and 

 Spain. Further, he entertained the opinion that the migration from France pursued 

 two routes : one by the English Channel to the east coast, Caithness, the Orkneys, and 

 the Baltic ; the other by St George's Channel to Ireland, the west of England, includ- 

 ing the region of the long barrows, the west of Scotland, Arran, and the Hebrides. 



The recognition of ores, the discovery of the methods of extracting metals in 

 order to provide, from their hardness and durability, a more suitable material for 

 the manufacture of implements and weapons than the flint, stone, and bone already 

 in use, marked important advances in the development of human intelligence. 

 Copper came apparently first into use ; but further progress was made when it was 

 discovered that an alloy, formed by the fusion of copper and tin in certain proportions, 

 produced the metal bronze, which from its greater hardness and power of resisting 

 the atmosphere was much more serviceable than the simple unalloyed metals. 



* Tacitus considered that the ancient Iberians crossed the sea from Spain and settled in Britain (Agricola, 

 section xi) ; a sea route doubtless impracticable to be traversed at that early period. 

 t Ancient Britain and the Invasions of Julius Gxsar, Oxford, 1907. 

 % See Sergi, The Mediterranean Race : Europa, Torino, 1908. 



§ Bryce in the " Cairns of Arran," P. S. Ant. Scot., July 1902, and Scottish Historical Review, April 1905. 

 TRANS. ROY. SOC. EDIN., VOL. LI, PART I (NO. 5). 33 



