interrupted development of civilization from the pure stone age through bronze and into iron. Beginning at a stage of civilization about equal to that of the ancient Aryan-speaking peoples, judged by the root words known to us; not only knowledge of the metals, but of agriculture, of the domestication of animals, and of the finer arts of domestic life, have little by little been acquired. Equally certain is it that no change of physical type has occurred among these primitive Swiss, at least until the irruptions of the Teutonic Helvetians and others at the opening of the historic period. From the very earliest times in the stone age a broad-headedness no less pronounced than that of the modern Swiss prevailed among these people.[1] Here would seem to be pretty conclusive proof that the Alpine race entered Europe long before the culture with which its name has been all too intimately associated.
In the outlying parts of Europe, perhaps even in Gaul, it is extremely doubtful whether any closer connection between race and culture exists than in the Alps. It has long been maintained that the brachycephalic people of the Round Barrows introduced bronze into Britain. Surely, as we have already shown, things point to that conclusion.[2] Beddoe, Dawkins, and other authorities maintain it at all events. Yet Canon Taylor makes it pretty evident that the new race arrived in Britain, as it certainly did in Gaul, considerably in advance of any knowledge of the metals. As for Scandinavia, much the same relation holds true. Both race and culture, as we shall see, came from the south, but it is by no means clear that they arrived at the same time or that one brought the other. In Spain, Siret has asserted that bronze came in the hands of a new immigrant broad-headed race, but the authoritative opinion of Cartailhac discovers no direct evidence to this effect.
The final conclusions which would seem to follow from our tedious summary is this: That the nearly contemporaneous appearance of a brachycephalic race and the first knowledge of metals indicative of Oriental cultural influences in western Europe, is more or less a coincidence. The first civilized peoples of the Hallstatt period seem to have been closely allied, both in physical type and culture, with the Greeks and other peoples of the classic East. Among them, perhaps over them, swept the representatives of our broad-headed Alpine type who came from the direction of Asia. These invaders may have
- ↑ This fact has been established beyond doubt by the recent great work of Studer and Bannwarth, Crania Helvetica Antiqua, 1894. Vide p. 13. Sergi's attempt to interpret the data otherwise (1898 a, p. 67) is entirely erroneous. Gross's data apparently refer entirely to the later period of Teutonic invasions in the iron age (1883, p. 106). Cf. Munro, pp. 537 and 541.
- ↑ Popular Science Monthly, December, 1897, p. 151.
