Page:Prehistoric Britain.djvu/247

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
BRITISH ETHNOLOGY
239

name kumbecephalic; and that after a time a brachycephalic people appeared on the scene, who, though still practising the simple methods of living prevalent in the Stone Age, were to some extent acquainted with the use of bronze. Through the researches of Bateman, Thurnam and Davies, Busk, Greenwell and Rolleston, Boyd Dawkins, Huxley, Mortimer and others, archæologists have been long conversant with the fact that, as a rule, the crania found in the chambered cairns of Wiltshire, Somerset, Gloucester, and some adjacent localities were dolichocephalic; but, on the other hand, that both forms were found in almost equal proportions in the round barrows and other graves of the Bronze Age. Although Dr. Thurnam's aphorism, "long barrows, long skulls; round barrows, short skulls," is not strictly accurate, it undoubtedly conveys an important ethnological fact, which is thus stated by Professor Rolleston: "In no skull from any long barrow, that is to say, in no skull undoubtedly of the Stone Age, examined by us, has the breadth been found to bear so high a relation as that of 80:100 of the length." The more recent discoveries of human remains in the Oban caves, the chambered caves of Arran, and the Wick Barrow (Somersetshire) also lend support to the same view.

With regard to the contemporary ethnology of Ireland, Sir W. Wilde expressed the opinion that two races existed simultaneously in that