A NEOLITHIC COMMUNITY OF KENT 17 
pyramids. They were men of the same type, and we 
must suppose, in order to account for their resemblances, 
that they arose, at some remote period, from a common 
race or stock. We can detect, however, in the ancient 
Maltese and in the ancient Egyptian skulls certain 
negroid features — features which are absent in the skulls 
of the Neolithic people of Western Europe. Further, we 
know that at the very dawn of the Neolithic period a 
great wedge of round-headed humanity had been thrust 
into central Europe — with its base in the East and its 
advancing Western edge almost on the shores of the 
North Sea. An anthropologist in the Neolithic period, 
if he had tried to account for the origin and distribution 
of the races of Europe, had to face just the same 
complicated problems as we have to grapple with now. 
Mankind was already old ; the human web already 
universal. 
The Coldrum people not only shared their physical 
characters with the people of Western Europe, but they 
also participated in the mental life of their time. The 
monument itself is proof of that. We must infer that 
the people who set up such monuments along the shores 
of the Mediterranean and in Western Europe during 
Neolithic times must have been stirred by a common 
code of beliefs concerning life and death. In seeking 
for an explanation of the Coldrum monument, I follow 
the lead of Professor Elliot Smith. ^ In his opinion, the 
birthplace of such monuments is ancient Egypt, the time 
of their evolution there — the five or six centuries which 
mark the establishment of the early dynasties — from 
3400 B.C. onwards. During that period, the original 
simple Egyptian grave became an elaborate home for 
the dead — such as is shown in the accompanying dia- 
gram (fig. 8). Such a grave consisted of a mound or 
tumulus bounded by four stone retaining walls. The 
approach to the tomb was usually placed on the eastern 
1 See Ancient Egyptians, Harper Brothers, 191 1. Essays ami Studies 
presented to William Ridgway on his Sixtieth Birthday, Cambridge, 
1913. Man, 1913, vol. xiii. p. 193. 
2 
