28 
JOURNAL OF THE PLYMOUTH INSTITUTION. 
may be much alike externally ; but the longer the duration of the 
Barrow Period the greater will be the differences in non-localised 
features between those which belong to its earlier, and those which 
were raised in its later stages. 1 Perhaps the comparison of results 
may in time give such variations a definite chronological value. 
Some of the differences have a very important bearing. Why is 
it that in the round barrows in the wolds of Yorkshire inhumation 
is most common, while in other localities cremation is the rule] 2 
Why is it that in Wiltshire the proportion of burnt to unburnt 
interments is three to one, in Dorset four to one, while in Devon 
and Cornwall cremation is all but universal? Cremation and 
inhumation have been contemporary in various nations ; 3 but here 
we seem to have an indication of some governing law, and though 
Canon Greenwell holds that there is no evidence to show which 
class of interment was earlier 4 (and they may have been partially 
contemporaneous) the balance of facts favours the belief that in- 
humation had a certain precedence, though the long barrows also 
furnish instances of cremation. 
1 The Barrow Period was undoubtedly of great duration. In the words of 
the late Professor Rolleston, "the stone and bone age impresses the naturalist 
with the notion of an antiquity which may have given time enough and to 
spare for the more or less complete disappearance of more than one unwritten 
language," while the bronze period, "though its term of duration in these 
islands was no doubt almost infinitely shorter than that of the stone and bone 
age, or rather ages " was of itself long enough to admit of quite as great a 
differentiation in any single language as that which exists between Gaelic and 
Kymric at present." {British Barrows, p. 633.) Such changes as are here 
indicated must have been accompanied by changes of habit and custom, from 
which the associations of interment cannot have been exempt. Professor 
Rolleston held that both the long and round-headed races are represented in 
the present population " — the short-statured, dark-haired, long-headed race " 
of the existing Keltic districts, being lineally descended from the long-barrow 
people, while " the bronze-using race seems in the southern parts of the country 
to have more completely absorbed or destroyed the dolichocephalic than it did 
in the north." (British Barrows, p. 711.) I have shown that in this particular 
corner of the island we may, in this period, have traces of a much older race 
than that of the long barrows ; certainly of a different one. The long-barrow 
people may or may not have been Turanian — the evidence is by no means 
clear ; but the bronze users were distinctly of Aryan affinities. To attempt to 
apply modern race-names to these ancient peoples is almost certain to mislead ; 
but Professor Rolleston has stated that our bronze men closely resembled 
osteologically the brachycephalic neolithic Dane, and might be the evidence of 
a pre-historic immigration from the Cimbric peninsula (British Barrows, p. 680). 
2 British Barrows, p. 19. 3 Ibid. p. 18. 4 Ibid. p. 19. 
