Page:Prehistoric Britain.djvu/249

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
BRITISH ETHNOLOGY
241

in sixty-seven skulls from long barrows was 63 to 79, and in seventy from round barrows 74 to 89. There was thus no dolichocephalic skull in a round barrow, and no brachycephalic skull in a long barrow. Later researches have, however, entirely disproved the idea that long skulls were confined to long barrows, for, of the four typical long skulls from Canon Greenwell's collection of crania from the Yorkshire barrows, specially selected by Dr. Rolleston for description and illustration, three were taken out of round barrows.

Dr. Thurnam calculates the mean height of the dolichocephalic men of the long barrows to have been 5 feet 5 inches, and that of the brachycephalic men of the round barrows to have been 5 feet 8 inches. On the other hand, according to measurements by the late Mr. Mortimer, of thirty-four dolichocephalic and twenty-eight brachycephalic skulls taken from barrows on the mid-wolds of Yorkshire, the dolichocephalic people were taller by 1⋅2 inches than the incoming round heads. (See Glastonbury Lake-Village, Vol. I, p. 35.)

Neolithic and Bronze Age People

We now come to inquire who were the first Neolithic invaders of Britain, and how they came to be dolichocephalic, whereas the next immigrants into the country were brachycephalic? What relationship existed between these two very different races, and what were