food for the soul of the departed on its way to the other world. These people are also supposed to have entered Britain by way of Kent, and to have spread northwards, keeping more to the east coast till they reached the Yorkshire wolds, where their remains are exceptionally abundant, and ultimately Scotland. While these new-comers were quietly settling down, apparently in harmony with the long-headed population, the custom of cremating the dead spread over the land with the rapidity of a religious epidemic, reaching North Britain before the dolichocephals had barely commenced the construction of their chambered cairns.
The Brythons
At a considerably later period, but not many centuries before the Roman occupation of Britain, another set of immigrants from the opposite shores of France gradually spread over South Britain, where they also mingled with its previous inhabitants. These new-comers were the Brythons of modern authors, who are regarded as an offshoot of the Galli of classical writers—probably the Belgæ of Cæsar. Their entry into Britain was during the Early Iron Age, and so they are credited with having introduced the technical elements of the civilization known as Late Celtic. The Brythons differed from the preceding brachycephalic invaders in having
