Page:Early Man in Britain and His Place in the Tertiary Period.djvu/358

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EARLY MAN IN BRITAIN.
[CHAP. IX.

his Life of Æmilius Paulus (vi.), speaks of the Ligures in southern Gaul as being mingled with the Gauls, and the Iberians living by the shores of the Mediterranean in southern Gaul.

Iberic Element in British Isles.

The Iberic element in the present population of Britain[1] is traceable in several areas, which offered refuge to the peoples in possession of the country before the invasion of the English. The strong resemblance borne by the small dark Silures to the Iberians was remarked, as we have already noticed, by Tacitus. At the present day his observation applies equally to the small swarthy Welshman, with long head and Iberian physique. The broad-headed dark Welshman is identical with the broad-headed dark Frenchman, and the Welsh people may be defined ethnologically as principally Celtic and Iberian, every intermediate variety between the two extremes being represented. The Silures no longer form a compact ethnological island, but are scattered and dispersed, and mingled with other races, English as well as Celtic.

In Scotland the small dark Highlander,[2] and in Ireland the black Celts to the west of the Shannon, still preserve the Iberian characteristics in more or less

  1. See Huxley, Journ. Ethnol. Soc. Lond. II. 4, p. 382, On the Ethnology of Britain.
  2. In these pages I have merely identified two of the elements in the Celtic peoples. There may have been others, hut the determining of these must be left for future discovery. The tall, long-headed, dark and red haired men are probably, as Professor Huxley points out, of Scandinavian, and the tall, long-headed, fair men of Low German origin. Both these became intermingled with the older Celtic population of Wales, Ireland, and Scotland, within the Historic period.