Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 52.djvu/166

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152
POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

height more respectable as compared with the present living one than its stunted predecessor. Dr. Beddoe has selected the accompanying portrait as representing this almost extinct broad-headed type of the bronze age. It is said to be not uncommon in the remoter

Round-Barrow Bronze-Age Type. Cumberland.

parts of Cumberland. The heavy brow ridges seem to be a noticeable peculiarity of it.

The generally accepted view among anthropologists to-day is that the round-barrow men came over from the mainland, bringing with them a culture derived from the east. We can never know with certainty whether they were Celtic immigrants from Brittany; where, as we have already shown, a similar physical type prevails to-day—such is Thurman's view: or whether they were the vanguard of the invaders from Denmark, where a round-headed type was for a time well represented, an opinion to which Dr. Rolleston inclines. This latter hypothesis is strengthened by study of the modern populations, both of Norway and the Danish peninsula. For example, turn for a moment to our map on page 158, showing the head form in Scandinavia to-day. Notice how the tints darken, that is to say, the heads broaden, in the southwest corner of Norway. The same thing is true just across the Skager Rack in Denmark proper, where the round-headed type is still more frequent than immediately to the south in Schleswig-Holstein and Hanover. This neighborhood was once a distinct subcenter of distribution of this type. It might readily have come over to England from here, as the Jutes, Angles, and Saxons did a few centuries later. Differing in these details as to their precise geographical origin, all authorities