Page:Early Man in Britain and His Place in the Tertiary Period.djvu/344

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316
EARLY MAN IN BRITAIN.
[CHAP. IX.

throughout the whole of the Neolithic age. On the Continent, however, it is not so; a new set of men, differing in physical characteristics from them, make their appearance. They were bigger than the preceding, averaging, for the adult male, 5 feet 8⋅4 inches in height, according to Dr. Thurnam. The skulls (Fig. 111) are broad, or round (brachycephalic), the supra-occipital tuberosity or "probole" prominent, the parieto-occipital region often flattened, the supraciliary ridges more strongly marked than in the oval skulls. The face instead of being oval is angular, or lozenge-shaped, and the upper and lower jaws are so largely developed, and projected so far beyond the vertical line dropped from the forehead, that the term macrognathic has been happily applied to them by Prof. Huxley; their foreheads are high, broad, and expanded. Human remains of this kind are met with in caves and tombs in Belgium, France, and Spain,[1] under conditions which show that the tall race occupied those regions in the Neolithic age, and the occurrence of the two forms of skull, with all the intermediate varieties, in chambered tombs and sepulchral caves reveals the fact that the tall invader and the small dark inhabitant of France dwelt side by side in the same area. The new invader is identified by Thurnam and Huxley with the Celtæ of history, whose tall stature, light hair, and fierce blue eyes, have been handed down as their principal characters. The Belgæ also were tall and fair, but their exact relation to the Celtic and Germanic or Teutonic tribes is uncertain.

  1. For details, see Thurnam and Davis, Crania Britannica. Thurnam, Anthrop. Mem. Soc. Lond. I. and III.; Rolleston, in Greenwell and Rolleston's Ancient British Barrows.