Prehistoric Britain/Chapter 10
CHAPTER X
BRITISH ETHNOLOGY
We have already sufficiently discussed the culture, civilization and physical characters of the Palæolithic people of Britain whom we encountered as inhabitants of the western fringe of the great European continent which represented the inhabited land-areas of those days. They were regarded as belonging to the same races as their fellow-hunters on the other side of the English Channel—there being then no water barrier to prevent free intercourse between them and the rest of the people of Europe. Their fossil remains were too scanty and fragmentary to furnish reliable data for founding on them any specific racial distinctions—even the Eoanthropus dawsoni is still sub judice.
River-bed Race
The first problem we have to consider is, what became of the descendants of these early inhabitants of Britain? Have they died out like the dodo? Or did they emigrate with the reindeer to more congenial lands? To both these questions the answer is in the negative, for reasons annexed. Evidence will be adduced to prove that they continued to live in their native land, after it became detached from Europe, till the Neolithic immigrants came upon the scene.
It has been also conclusively proved that there was no hiatus in the continuity of human life and civilization on the European continent during the whole range of the successive culture-stages from Moustérien to Neolithic and later times, as shown by the discoveries at Mas-d'Azil, Sirgenstein, the Schweizersbild and many other stations. It now becomes imperative on us to show that a similar state of matters obtained in Britain, although the evidence on which this conclusion is founded may be somewhat different. We have not as yet discovered caves in this country indicating continued occupancy of man during all the stages of progressive civilization. But this is not the only evidence available by which a similar result may be reached. At no time was Palseolithic man an inhabitant of North Britain, but yet we have laid before our readers incontrovertible facts to show that a pre-Neolithic race of savages existed there during the Transition or Azilian period. Who were these troglodyte hunters, shell-eaters and devourers of stranded whales? How did they come to the north of Scotland? Did they come by long sea-voyages, or across the narrowest portion of the English Channel? If by the latter is it not strange that they should forsake the richer lands of England and find their way to Scotland without leaving any traces of their existence and wanderings behind them? Unfortunately we have no skeletal remains of these primitive people, for we are not justified in assuming that the human skeletons found in the Oban cave were contemporary with the shell-eating troglodytes who frequented it. Here the evidence so far depends entirely on the character of the tools and implements they left among the remains of the marine and land faunas on which they feasted.
Again, it has been conclusively proved that, by a subsidence of the land in South Britain, archæological materials of the highest significance have been for a long time submerged, and, so were concealed from the immediate cognizance of modern antiquaries. We now know that man's handicraft-works have been found in widely separated localities which were formerly inhabited as ordinary land-surfaces, but which are now more or less under the level of the present-day sea. Notwithstanding the difficulties involved in subaqueous investigations, modern researches have brought to light, not only a goodly number of worked objects from these old land-surfaces, but actually two skeletons of the individuals who inhabited them, viz. the woman of Walton-on-Naze and the Tilbury man, both of which have already been described, as well as the circumstances in which they were found. The former belonged to the ordinary Neolithic type, and differed little in physical characters from women of the present day. The body was buried two feet beneath the prehistoric floor, over which eight to ten feet of silt had accumulated since then. The latter lay in a sand-bank, thirty-four feet below the present surface of the land, and above it rested a succession of deposits of silt, peat and old habitable land-surfaces, indicating, on precise geological grounds, the time that has elapsed since the Tilbury man was in life. Dr. Keith, on well-defined archæological data, estimates that 4000 years is the probable antiquity of the Essex woman. He then calculates, from a comparison between the respective depths below sea-level at which the bodies were found, the antiquity of the Tilbury man at not less than 15,000 years. (Ancient Types of Man, p. 12.)
On the other hand, Mr. Clement Reid gives in the following extracts a different estimate of the rate of submergence:—
"Our next inquiry (Submerged Forests, p. 117) must be into the length of time represented by the series of submerged forests and associated deposits described in the foregoing pages. The newest of them belongs certainly to the age of polished stone, and the earliest also probably comes within the Neolithic Period. Within the period represented by the submerged forests, we have seen that there has been a change of the sea-level to the extent of eighty feet, or perhaps rather more. If we can obtain some measure of the time occupied, this should give us some approximate idea as to the length of the Neolithic period, and of the rate at which changes of the sealevel can take place."
After descanting on the rapid growth of forests and estuarine silts, he continues:
"It is useless to pretend to any exact calculations as to the time needed for the formaftion of these alternating strata of extensive silt and marsh-soil; but looking at the whole of the evidence without bias either way, it seems that an allowance of 1000, or at most 1500, years would be ample time to allow. A period of 1500 years may therefore be taken to cover the whole of the changes which took place during the period of gradual submergence. If this is approximately correct the date at which the submergence began was only 5000 years ago, or about 3000 B.C."
Admitting that no change of sea-level has taken place in Britain during the last 2000 years, that the rate of submergence has been in the same localities of a uniform character, that the Essex Woman lived about 4000 years ago, and that eight feet of land-submergence has taken place during the 2000 years this movement was in action, it follows that the rate of submergence at Walton-on-Naze would be four feet per 1000 years. The same rate of submergence, if applicable to the Thames Valley, would make the Tilbury Man's age 10,000 years, and that of the commencement of the Submerged Forest period 22,000 years.
Now comes important evidence in support of the views advocated in this chapter; and it is so precise and condensed that its recorder, Dr. Keith, will pardon me if I quote his own words, as any abstract would greatly deteriorate their argumentative value.
"To what race of mankind did the Tilbury man belong? He is abundantly represented in the population of modern England. To what race, when we see this type of man in the flesh to-day, do we assign him? He and his successors are ancient British, if you will, but it is better to follow the example of the sharp-sighted Huxley and speak of a type rather than of a race. In 1862, twenty-one years before the Tilbury man was discovered, Huxley had recognized and described a form of prehistoric skull found in England under the name of the 'river-bed' type. The Tilbury cranium is of the river-bed type. The actual specimens described by Huxley are still in the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons, England; one is from an old bed of the River Trent, near Muskham; another is from a dolmen in Anglesey. Lately another of this type was discovered by the Rev. E. H. Mullins in the floor of a cave in Derbyshire, with bones of the reindeer, and other animals long extinct in England. Indeed, this specimen of the river-bed type from the Langwith cave deserves fuller mention. for that able scientist, Mr. Martin A. C. Hinton, regards the fauna found with this skull as of the Pleistocene period, and therefore much older than the Tilbury specimen. Another of the same type, also in the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons, was found beneath a layer of peat and fifteen feet of blue clay when a railway cutting was made in Gloucester. The skull found beneath the limestone deposit of Gough's Cave at Cheddar, Somerset, is also of the river-bed type. All of these are usually assigned to the Neolithic period, and represent the prevailing type of Englishman at the commencement of that period, and probably also in the latter part of the Palæolithic period. The skulls mentioned may represent British men and women living thousands of years apart. They clearly belong to the same race which, for lack of a better, we may name the 'river-bed race.' It is the prevailing type in England to-day, and from the scanty evidence at our disposal we may presume that it has been the dominant form many thousands of years. Remains of the same race have also been found at Schweizersbild in Switzerland. These remains of a Neolithic people have been described recently by Dr. Franz Schwertz. All trace of this race has disappeared in Switzerland, whereas in England, in spite of invasion of Saxon, Jute, Dane and Norman, it still thrives abundantly. Further research will probably show that this race was at one time widely distributed throughout Europe, where it appears towards the close of the Glacial period."
In addition to the above list of the "riverbed race" I submit another specimen which clearly comes under the same category. This skull was extracted from a rock-fissure by quarrymen, at Great Casterton, in Rutland, and brought under public notice by Mr. Crowther-Beynon, Hon. Secretary of the Rutland Archæological and Natural History Society. Its osseous characters (cephalic index, 73⋅4) approach so nearly those of the Neanderthal-Spy type that for some time doubts were entertained as to whether or not it belonged to that race. This skull is figured in Vol. XXVI, p. 280, of the Proceedings of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.
Could any widely distributed series of skulls be brought together which more effectually proves that these "river-bed" types belonged to the people of the Transition period? How otherwise is their presence to be accounted for? According to Dr. Keith, Palæolithic blood is as rife in the British people of to-day as in those of the European continent—a conclusion which entirely meets with the present writer's views.
Hitherto it was supposed that there was no archæological evidence in support of the theory that Britain was inhabited during the Transition period. The general idea was that the Palæolithic races, who frequented Kent's Cavern and other caves in the south of England up to the Magdalénien epoch, had, prior to, or rather in consequence of, the submergence of their hunting-grounds, shrunk back to their original home in France. Even the present writer, as late as last year, admitted the possibility of holding such a view, as will be seen from the following statement then made on the subject:
"When Palæolithic civilization began to be curtailed in virtue of cosmic changes in the environment, and new methods of living were forthcoming, it is possible that the British fringe of the Palæolithic population would shrink back to Europe, and thus, for a time, leave a gap in the continuity of human life in Britain." (Munro Lectures for 1912, p. 286.)
Since the above was written fresh discoveries have turned the scale in favour of a more satisfactory explanation. I am now of opinion that these "river-bed" people were the descendants of the Palæolithic races who continued to inhabit Britain after the setting in of the milder climate which destroyed the big game on which they formerly depended for sustenance. In the changed circumstances they were gradually reduced to great straits, and had to resort to the produce of the sea-shores as the most readily available source of food, next to small animals, roots, nuts, seeds, etc. They wandered chiefly along the shores of the British seas, where their haunts, workshops and relics are now mostly submerged. In course of time they pushed their way northward, as far as the Valley of the Forth and the islands on the west coast of Scotland, where they found a rich harvest among the luxuriant faunas of both sea and land. Had the bed of the English Channel been raised some forty or fifty feet, instead of being depressed to that extent, we would probably find many shell-heaps and other remains of feasting along the raised beaches of its shores. The only thing that improved the social life of this primitive population was the incoming of the first Neolithic immigrants from Europe, who brought with them the arts of cultivating plants and cereals, and the rearing of animals in a state of domestication. Henceforth the miserable shell-eaters, and other members of the "river-bed race," became clodhoppers and cowherds to the invaders. They, however, retained to a certain extent the cranial features as well as the culture habits of their forefathers with this difference, that while they had to eat snails and shell-fish, their hunting predecessors fed on steaks of horse and reindeer-flesh.
Shell-mounds may belong to any age, but it is to be noted that those of the early Transition period, such as the Kjøkkenmøddings of Denmark and Portugal, contain no bones of domestic animals, nor any of the cultivated cereals, nor pottery.
The few instances of food refuse-heaps here brought forward as evidence, in support of the theory that the people of the Transition period were the surviving remnants of the old Palæolithic people of Britain, are by no means exhausted, and I believe that a more careful investigation of promising ground, especially submerged forests and old habitable land-areas, would produce further corroborative materials. Shell-mounds on land are not readily recognized, being often covered with a coating of decayed vegetation, but nevertheless they exist in many localities along the shores of Britain and those of the adjacent continent. On this phase of the subject Mr. Clement Reid's book on Submerged Forests may be consulted with advantage. Although the best lesson to be derived from his large experience is to show how much more remains to be done in such matters, especially by carefully watching the contents of dock-excavations.
If we glance for a moment at the earlier archæological discoveries in this country, we shall see that they bear out the above interpretation of the facts. As early as 1850 Sir Daniel Wilson maintained, as the result of an investigation of the craniological materials then available, that the earliest British people were characterized by markedly elongated and narrow skulls, to which he gave the 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 country, viz. a long-headed, dark Irish stock, on the west of the Shannon, and a fair-haired, globular-headed stock, on the north-east of that river. But this precise distribution of the different races has not been corroborated by subsequent researches. So far as I know, the opinion of Professor Huxley, published forty years ago, still holds good. "As the evidence stands at present," writes the Professor, "I am fully disposed to identify the ancient population of Ireland with the longbarrow and 'river-bed' elements of the population of England, and with the longheaded and 'kumbecephalic ' inhabitants of Scotland; and to believe that the 'roundbarrow' or Belgic element of the Britannic people never colonized Ireland in sufficient numbers to make its presence ethnically felt." The fact that the beaker type of sepulchral ceramic has very rarely, if at all, been found in the prehistoric burials of Ireland, together with the rarity of brachy cephalic skulls from that country, supplies fresh evidence in support of the above exposition of Irish ethnology by Professor Huxley. As cremation advanced the beaker type of ceramic would be gradually superseded, and this might have taken place before these Goidelic invaders had penetrated as far as Ireland and found time to revolutionize the life and language of its original inhabitants.
According to Dr. Thurnam's cranial statistics, the range of the cephalic index 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 their physical and cultural characteristics? These problems open up a wide field of facts, theories and speculative inferences, utterly beyond the modest scope of this book. We can only hope to call attention to a few guiding landmarks. Our first object is to find a few inhabited sites disclosing the physical characters of the Palæolithic people and the brachycephalic hordes who, from time to time, found their way into Europe from Eastern lands, before their respective racial characters became blended by marriage and social intercourse.
M. Dupont describes the Trou du Frontal as the burying-place of the reindeer-hunters inhabiting the Trou des Nutons—the latter being a large cavern situated about 200 metres lower down the valley. The former is a small recess at the end of a rock-shelter which had in front of it deposits containing relics of different ages. The cavity measured two metres in depth and one metre in height and breadth, and contained the remains of sixteen human skeletons, five being those of children. The bones were disconnected before being deposited, as none was in its normal anatomical position. A human jaw, for instance, had been broken into two portions. One portion, having a whitish appearance, lay in one part of the vault, and the other, having a brown colour, was found at some distance from the former, but yet, when brought together, the portions fitted exactly. A large slab placed in front converted the recess into an ossuary. The skeletons were pronounced by Pruner-Bey to belong to a Mongoloid race. The skulls were apparently of a mixed character—more brachycephalic than dolichocephalic; but only two, a male and a female, were sufficiently entire to yield correct anatomical details. At the entrance to the cave, and inside it, were found some twenty worked flints, perforated pendants of fluorine, many shells from Eocene formations (perforated), two plaques of sandstone with incised ornamentation and a globular vessel, or urn, restored from fragments of coarse pottery. M. Dupont, probably influenced by Lartet's opinion of the analogous sepulchral cavern of Aurignac, regarded the Trou du Frontal as a cemetery of the Palæolithic hunters of the Reindeer period. But, because of the brachycephalism of the skulls, the pottery and the associated relics, it is now generally believed to have belonged to the early Neolithic Age. The point to be noted here is that already two races are represented in the community who owned this cemetery.
One of the most useful contributions to prehistoric craniology is a statistical list of the Neolithic crania of Gaul drawn up in 1895 by Philippe Salmon. In looking into the details of these tabulated crania some striking facts are brought out. Thus there are some stations, especially among sepulchral caverns, which contained only dolichocephalic skulls. while others were restricted to brachyeephalic types. A large majority of them, however, included long, intermediate, and short types of skulls in various proportions. The two most remarkable stations which contained only long skulls were the caverns of L'Homme-Mort and Baimaes-Chaudes, both situated in the department of Lozère. The details of their exploration and osseous contents have been recorded by Drs. Broca and Prunières.
In the cavern of L'Homme-Mort there were nineteen skulls sufficiently well preserved to furnish the necessary measurements. The cephalic indices of seventeen of these varied from 68⋅2 up to 76⋅7, and of the other two they were 78⋅5 and 78⋅8. There were, therefore, no brachycephalic skulls in this sepulchre, so that the race was comparatively pure. It may also be mentioned that some of the crania had been trepanned—a feature which, though at first overlooked, subsequently became the subject of much interest to anthropologists. The animal remains were those of the Neolithic epoch, but among them were none of the reindeer, horse, ox or stag. Among the relics were a lance-head and a portion of a polished stone axe. Drs. Broca and Prunières were of opinion that the individuals whose remains were consigned to this ossuary belonged to an intermediate race, who flourished in the Transition period, and thus became connecting links between the people of the reindeer caves and the dolmens.
The cavern of Baumes-Chaudes contained a vast collection of human bones, representing some 300 individuals. It was regarded by the investigators as a family burying-place, which had not been altogether abandoned till the beginning of the Bronze Age, as one of the skeletons in the upper deposits had beside it a bronze dagger. The crania measured and classified from this ossuary amounted to thirty-five, and all of them were dolichocephalic. The average height of this race was calculated to be about 5 feet 3½ inches. On the other hand, in the cavern of Tertre-Guerin (Seine-et-Marne) only two skulls were found and they were highly brachycephalic, with cephalic indices of 86⋅8 and 91. The archaeological remains in this cavern comprised polished stone celts, with and without horn-casings, together with various other relics indicating an advanced Neolithic civilization.
We thus see that in post-Palæolithic times there sprang up over Western Europe, as the result of the social contact of two different populations—one dolichocephalic and the other brachycephalic—a mixed people who between them founded the Neolithic civilization. At first there was a preponderance of the long-headed races among them, but as the flow of new-comers from the East continued, this cephalic feature was in some localities reversed, especially in Central and Eastern Europe. It was a colony of this mixed population in Europe, but mostly long-headed people, who first invaded Britain. They were in the early stage of Neolithic culture, manufactured pottery which was occasionally deposited in graves, possessed some knowledge of agriculture and the art of rearing domestic animals, and disposed of their dead by inhumation in megalithic chambers. These invaders hailed from some part of the European continent, possibly the Iberian Peninsula, and entered Britain by way of Kent, and spread westwards to Somerset, Wilts, Gloucester, etc., ultimately reaching North Britain and Ireland. They found the island already inhabited by the descendants of its former Palæolithic inhabitants, but in sadly reduced circumstances. As already mentioned, they were the people, whose stray skulls have been occasionally met with and recorded by Huxley and Keith under the name of "river-bed" type. It would appear that both they and the invaders consorted together and lived on friendly terms till the invasion of Britain by the brachycephali, who thus added another racial element to the already mixed population of the island.
Of the pottery manufactured by the Neolithic people of Britain, prior to the advent of the Bronze Age civilization, we know very little owing to the scantiness of its remains. From the few specimens that have been found in graves, the vessels seem to have round bottoms, slightly bulging bodies, and wide mouths, with little ornamentation —totally different from the ceramic of the Bronze Age.
Tacitus informs us that he identified the Silures, a people then occupying South Wales, as Iberians, on account of their swarthy complexion and curly hair. The inference that the Silures were the descendants of the long-headed British immigrants is not unreasonable, more especially as by that time the eastern parts of Britain had been taken possession of by successive waves of Gaulish and Belgic people from the Continent, thus causing the earlier inhabitants to recede more and more westwards. If this be so, it follows that the long-headed man of the chambered cairns of Britain and Ireland had a swarthy complexion with dark hair and eyes, like so many people still living on the more secluded and out-of-the-way portions of the British Isles.
The brachycephalic invaders of Britain are described as having light hair and a fair complexion, but there is no archæological evidence to justify this assertion. They buried their dead in short cists and round barrows and had a knowledge of bronze. According to the Hon. John Abercromby (A Study of the Bronze Age Pottery, 1912) they hailed from the Rhine district, and introduced the type of sepulchral ceramic known as the Beaker, or drinking-cup. This vessel was almost invariably deposited beside the body, and is supposed to have contained 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 dolichocephalic heads—a statement which is supported on archæological evidence, as, for example, a number of skulls found at Danes' Graves, Arras, etc., in Yorkshire. A skull from one of the Arras tumuli, and containing relics characteristic of the Late Celtic period, is described by Dr. Thurnam as having a cephalic index of 73⋅7. They were a branch of the later Celts or Galli, whose very name at one time was a terror in Europe. Classical writers describe them as very tall and fierce looking, with fair hair, blond complexion and blue eyes.
The next and last of the racial elements, which entered into the ethnic composition of the British people of to-day, were the successive Teutonic invasions from Germany, Denmark and Scandinavia, all belonging to a tall, blond, dolichocephalic people who existed in Central Europe from time immemorial—possibly the descendants of the Cro-Magnon race of the late Palæolithic Age.
Conclusion
From these facts and observations we see that at the dawn of Neolithic civilization there extended over Western Europe a primitive population living on shell-fish, the produce of the chase, seeds, fruits, roots, etc., varying according to the natural resources of the environment. At an early stage their domestic economy was of a low order, having only roughly formed implements of stone, bone and horn. They had few ornaments, little or no pottery, and no domestic animals with the possible exception of the dog. But even at this low and early stage there were among the shell-eaters of Portugal both dolichocephali and brachicephali. The former were greatly in excess of the latter in point of numbers, and being the descendants of the Palæolithic people may be regarded as indigenous. The latter, on their first appearance in Europe, were not more civilized than the former, but there was a constant stream of new-comers who gradually introduced improved methods in the manufacture of tools, the cultivation of grain, and the rearing of domestic animals.
Meantime the Troglodyte hunters of wild animals continued to live, but in gradually diminishing numbers, on the uplands of France and the flanks of the Pyrenees—localities where the reindeer and other animals of sub-Arctic origin still lingered. Contemporary with them, but outside the areas of their hunting-grounds, their fellow-countrymen, along with the ever-increasing population from Eastern lands, were devising new sources of food from the natural products of a more ameliorated climate. If the advancing geniality of the environment gave the coup-de-grâce to the sub-Arctic fauna and flora, it also supplied meteorological conditions favourable to fruit-growing, the cultivation of cereals, and the rearing of domestic animals. In short, the main elements of Neolithic civilization, including the disposal of the dead in caverns, or artificially constructed megalithic chambers, were established in various parts of Europe, even before the final close of Palæolithic civilization.
We have seen that the so-called Hiatus theory has been disproved on the Continent by the discovery of a number of inhabited sites (caves, rock-shelters, shell-mounds, hut-dwellings, etc.) showing by the character of the relics found in their débris that there had been no break in the continuity of human occupation from late Palæolithic to Neolithic times. The existence of such transition stations within the British Isles is, perhaps, not yet sufficiently pronounced to entitle archæologists to accept this opinion as applicable to Britain. The submergence of the land in the south of England, which has been advanced in these pages to partly account for the rarity of the evidential materials in support of the continuity of human life in Britain, requires more elucidation than the space at my disposal allowed. But if the theory be well founded, more convincing facts will, no doubt, be soon forthcoming. It is probable that the last phase of the Palæolithic civilization came to a close earlier in Britain than in France, in consequence of the warmer climate of the former which came into action as soon as the British area became an island, and was possibly accelerated by the Gulf Stream. Under these circumstances the reindeer would instinctively move northwards until it reached the north of Scotland where, according to historical evidence, it lived up to the twelfth century A.D. What is more natural than to suppose that some of the Palæolithic people of the south of England followed the dwindling herds of this animal as far as Caithness, where they have left some of their skeletons and traces of their transformed culture habits in the pre-Neolithic shell-heaps described by Laing and Huxley. Others of these "river-bed" wanderers found their way into the inland sea in the upper reaches of the Forth valley, where they came in contact with the famous school of stranded whales. Others pushed on till they reached the west highland lochs and islands, where they obtained abundance of food supplies in the luxuriant marine and land faunas of that district. No polished stone implements, or any worked objects characteristic of the Neolithic civilization, have hitherto been found on any of the sites inhabited by these primitive people.