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ANCIENT MAN IN BRITAIN

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ANCIENT MAN IN BRITAIN

BY

DONALD A. MACKENZIE

Author of " Egyptian Myth and Legend " ' Myths ot Crete and Pre-Hellenic Europe " " Colour Symbolism " &c

WITH FOREWORD BY

G. ELLIOT SMITH, F.R.S.

BLACKIE AND SON LIMITED

50 OLD BAILEY, LONDON; GLASGOW, BOMBAY

Printed in Great Britain

1922

FOREWORD

In his Presidential Address to the Royal An- thropological Institute this year the late Dr. Rivers put his finger upon the most urgent need for reform in the study of Man, when he appealed for "the Unity of Anthropology ". No true con- ception of the nature and the early history of the human family can be acquired by investigations, however carefully they may be done, of one class of evidence only. The physical characters of a series of skulls can give no reliable information unless their exact provenance and relative age are known. But the interpretation of the meaning of these characters cannot be made unless we know something of the movements of the people and the distinctive peculiarities of the inhabitants of the foreign lands from which they may have come. No less important than the study of their physical structure is the cultural history of peoples. The real spirit of a population is revealed by its social and industrial achievements, and by its

542710

vi FOREWORD

customs and beliefs, rather than by the shape of the heads and members of its units. The revival of the belief in the widespread diffusion of culture in early times has, as one of its many important effects, directed attention to the physical peculiar- ities of the mixed populations of important foci of civilization throughout the world. Such inquiries have not only enabled the student of human structure to detect racial affinities where he might otherwise have neglected to look for them, but on the other hand they have been able to give the investigator of cultural diffusion evidence of the most definite and irrefutable kind in corroboration of the reality of his inferences.

At the present time students are just awakening to the fact that no adequate idea of the anthro- pology of any area can be acquired unless every kind of evidence, somatic and cultural, be taken into account, and the problems of the particular locality are integrated with those worldwide move- ments of men and of civilization of which the people and culture of that locality form a part.

The great merit of Mr. Donald Mackenzie's book is due in the main to the fact that he has taken this wider vision of his subject and inter- preted the history of early man in Britain, not simply by describing the varieties of head-form or of implements, customs and beliefs, but rather

FOREWORD vii

by indicating how these different categories of information can be put into their appropriate setting- in the history of mankind as a whole. There is nothing of technical pedantry about Mr. Mackenzie's writing. He has made himself thoroughly familiar with the customs and beliefs of the whole world, as his remarkable series of books on mythology has revealed, and in the process of acquiring this mass of information he has not sacrificed his common sense and powers of judgment. He has been able to see clearly through this amazing jumble of confusing state- ments the way in which every phase of civilization in all parts of the world is closely correlated with the rest; and he has given luminous expression to this clear vision of the history of man and civilization as it affects Britain.

G. Elliot Smith,

The University of London.

PREFACE

This volume deals with the history of man in Britain from the Ice Age till the Roman period. The evidence is gleaned from the various sciences which are usually studied apart, including geology, archaeology, philology, ethnology or anthropology, &c., and the writer has set himself to tell the story of Ancient Man in a manner which will interest a wider circle of readers than is usu- ally reached by purely technical books. It has not been assumed that the representatives of Modern Man who first settled in Europe were simple-minded savages. The evidence afforded by the craftsmanship, the burial customs, and the art of the Cro-Magnon races, those contemporaries of the reindeer and the hairy mammoth in South-western France, suggests that they had been influ- enced by a centre of civilization in which considerable progress had already been achieved. There is absolutely no evidence that the pioneers were lacking in intelli- gence or foresight. If we are to judge merely by their skeletons and the shapes and sizes of their skulls, it would appear that they were, if anything, both phy- sically and mentally superior to the average present-day inhabitants of Europe. Nor were they entirely isolated from the ancient culture area by which they had been originally influenced. As is shown, the evidence afforded by an Indian Ocean sea-shell, found in a Cro-

X PREFACE

Magnon burial cavern near Mentone, indicates that much has yet to be discovered regard! nj; the activities of the early people.

In writing the history of Ancient Man in Britain, it has been found necessary to investigate the Continental evidence. When our early ancestors came from some- where, they brought something with them, including habits of life and habits of thought. The story unfolded by British finds is but a part of a larger story ; and if this larger story is to be reconstructed, our investigations must extend even beyond the continent of Europe. The data afforded by the "Red Man of Paviland", who was buried with Cro-Magnon rites in a Welsh cave, not only emphasize that Continental and North African cultural inlluences reached Britain when the ice-cap was retreating in Northern Europe, but that from its very beginnings the history of our civilization cannot be considered apart from that of the early civilization of the world as a whole. The writer, however, has not assumed in this connection that in all parts of the world man had of necessity to pass through the same series of evolutionary stages of progress, and that the beliefs, customs, crafts, arts, &c., of like character found in different parts of the world were everywhere of spontaneous generation. There were inventors and discoverers and explorers in ancient times as there are at present, and many new contrivances were passed on from people to people. The man who, for instance, first discovered how to •'make fire" by friction of fire-sticks was undoubtedly a great scientist and a benefactor of his kind. It is shown that shipbuilding had a definite area of origin. The "Red Man of Paviland" also reveals to us minds pre-occupied with the problems of life and death. It is evident that the corpse of the early explorer was smeared with red earth and decorated with charms for very definite reasons. That the people who thus interred

PREFACE xi

their dead with ceremony were less intelligent than the Ancient Egyptians who adopted the custom of mummi- fication, or the Homeric heroes who practised cremation, we have no justification for assuming.

At the very dawn of British history, which begins when the earliest representatives of Modern Man reached our native land, the influences of cultures which had origin in distant areas of human activity came drifting northward to leave an impress which does not appear to be yet wholly obliterated. We are the heirs of the Ages in a profounder sense than has hitherto been supposed.

Considered from this point of view, the orthodox scheme of Archaeological Ages, which is of comparatively recent origin, leaves much to be desired. If anthropo- logical data have insisted upon one thing more than another, it is that modes of thought, which govern action, were less affected by a change of material from which artifacts (articles made by man) were manufactured than they were by religious ideas and by new means for obtaining the necessary food supply. A profounder change was effected in the habits of early man in Britain by the introduction of the agricultural mode of life, and the beliefs, social customs, &c., connected with it, than could possibly have been effected by the intro- duction of edged implements of stone, bone, or metal.

As a substitute for the Arch^ological Ages, the writer suggests in this volume a new system, based on habits of life, which may be found useful for historical pur- poses. In this system the terms " Palaeolithic ", " Neo- lithic", &c., are confined to industries. "Neolithic man", "Bronze Age man", "Iron Age man", and other terms of like character may be favoured by some archaeologists, but they mean little or nothing to most anatomists, who detect different racial types in a single "Age". A history of ancient man cannot ignore one set of scientists to pleasure another.

xii l^Ki:i-ACH

Several chapters are devoted to the religious beliefs and customs of our ancestors, and it is shown that there is available for study in this connection a mass of evidence which the archc-eological agnostics are too prone to ignore. The problem of the megalithic monuments mus^t evidently be reconsidered in the light of the fuller anthropological data now available. Indeed, it would appear that a firmer basis than that afforded by "crude evolutionary ideas" must be found for British archaeol- ogy as a whole. The evidence of surviving beliefs and customs, of Celtic philology and literature, of early Chris- tian writings, and of recent discoveries in Spain, Meso- potamia, and Egypt, cannot, to say the least of it, be wholly ignored.

In dealing with the race problem, the writer has sifted the available data which throw light on its connection with the history of British culture, and has written as he has written in the hope that the growth of fuller know- ledge on the subject will be accompanied by the growth of a deeper sympathy and a deeper sense of kinship than has hitherto prevailed in these islands of ours, which were colonized from time to time by groups of enterprising pioneers, who have left an enduring impress on the national character. The time is past for beginning a history of Britain with the Roman invasion, and for the too-oft- repeated assertion that before the Romans reached Britain our ancestors were isolated and half civilized.

DONALD A. MACKENZIE.

CONTENTS

Chap.

Page

I. Britons of the Stone Age ----- i

II. Earliest Traces of Modern Man - - - 8

III. The Age of the "Red Man" of Wales - - - 19

IV. Shell Deities and Early Trade • - - 35 V. New Races in Europe ------- 49

VI. The Faithful Dog- -..---- 61

VII. Ancient Mariners Reach Britain - - - - 67

VIII. Neolithic Trade and Industries - - - - 79

IX. Metal Workers and Megalithic Monuments - 87

X. Celts and Iberians as Intruders and Traders • 109

XI. Races of Britain and Ireland ----- 121

XII. Druidism in Britain and Gaul ----- 140

XIII. The Lore of Charms ------ »57

XIV. The World of Our Ancestors ----- 167 XV. Why Trees and Wells were Worshipped - - 176

XVI. Ancient Pagan Deities i95

XVII. Historical Summary . - - 209

Index 231

xiii

LIST OF PLATES

Page

Head of a Cro-Magnon Man - - - Frontispiece Examples of Lower Paleolithic Industries found in

England '-

Western Europe during the Third Inter-glacial Epoch \b

Examples of Paleolithic Art 56

Flint Lance Heads from Ireland So

Chipped and Polished Artifacts from Southern England So

The Ring of Stennis, Orkney 96

Megaliths— Kit's Cotv House, Kent ; Trethevy Stone,

Cornwall ^ - - - - 100

Enamelled Bronze Shield 116

European Types 124

Ruins of Pictish Tower at Carlowav, Lewis - - - 128

A Scottish " Broch " (Mousa, Shetland Isles) - - 132

A Sardinian N'uraghe 136

Megaliths— Dolmen, near Birori, Sardinia; Tvnewydd

Dolmen <6o

One of the Great Trilithons, Stonehenge - - - 172

Bronze Urn and Cauldron 204

Bronze Bucklers or Shields 224

ANCIENT MAN IN BRITAIN

CHAPTER I Britons of the Stone Age

Caricatures of Early Britons — Enterprising- Pioneers — Diseases and Folk-cures— Ancient Surgical Operations— Expert Artisans— Organized Communities — Introduction of Agriculture — Houses and Cooking Utensils — Spinning and Weaving — Different Habits of Life — The Seafarers.

The Early Britons of the Stone Age have suffered much at the hands of modern artists, and especially the humorous artists. They are invariably depicted as rude and irresponsible savages, with semi-negroid features, who had perforce to endure our rigorous and uncertain climate clad in loosely fitting skin garments, and to go about, even in the depth of winter, barefooted and bare- headed, their long tangled locks floating in the wind.

As a rule, the artists are found to have confused ideas regarding the geological periods. Some place the white savages in the age when the wonderful megalithic monuments were erected and civilization was well ad- vanced, while others consign them to the far-distant Cretaceous Age in association with the monstrous reptiles that browsed on tropical vegetation, being unaware, apparently, that the reptiles in question ceased to exist

(D217) 1 2

2 AXCIENT MAN IN BRITAIN

before the appearance of the earliest mammals. Not Linfrequently the geological ages and the early stages of human culture are hopelessly mixed up, and monsters that had been extinct for several million years are shown crawling across circles that were erected by men pos- sessed of considerable engineering skill.

It is extremely doubtful if our remote ancestors of the Stone Age were as savage or as backward as is gener- ally supposed. They were, to begin with, the colonists who made Britain a land fit for a strenuous people to live in. We cannot deny them either courage or enter- prise, nor are we justified in assuming that they were devoid of the knowledge and experience required to enable them to face the problems of existence in their new environment. They came from somewhere, and brought something with them; their modes of life did not have origin in our native land.

Although the early people lived an open-air life, it is doubtful if they were more physically fit than are the Britons of the twentieth century. They were certainly not immune from the ravages of disease. In their graves are found skeletons of babies, youths, and maidens, as well as those of elderly men and women ; some spines reveal unmistakable evidence of the effects of rheumatism, and worn-down teeth are not uncommon. It is possible that the diseases associated with marshy localities and damp and cold weather were fairly preva- lent, and that there were occasional pestilences with heavy death-rates. Epidemics of influenza and measles may have cleared some areas for periods of their inhabi- tants, the survivors taking flight, as did many Britons of the fifth century of our own era, when the country was swept by what is referred to in a Welsh book ^ as "the yellow plague", because "it made yellow and bloodless all whom it attacked". At the same time

> Book of Llaii Da/.

BRITONS OF THE STONE AGE 3

recognition must be given to the fact that the early people were not wholly ignorant of medical science. There is evidence that some quite effective " folk cures " are of great antiquity — that the "medicine-men" and sorcerers of Ancient Britain had discovered how to treat certain diseases by prescribing decoctions in which herbs and berries utilized in modern medical science were important ingredients. More direct evidence is avail- able regarding surgical knowledge and skill. On the Continent and in England have been found skulls on which the operation known as trepanning — the removing of a circular piece of skull so as to relieve the brain from pressure or irritation — was successfully performed, as is shown by the fact that severed bones had healed during life. The accomplished primitive surgeons had used flint instruments, which were less liable than those of metal to carry infection into a wound. One cannot help expressing astonishment that such an operation should have been possible — that an ancient man who had sustained a skull injury in a battle, or by accident, should have been again restored to sanity and health. Sprains and ordinary fractures were doubtless treated with like skill and success. In some of the incantations and charms collected by folk-lorists are lines which suggest that the early medicine-men were more than mere magicians. One, for instance, dealing with the treatment of a fracture, states:

" He put marrow to marrow; he put pith to pith; he put bone to bone; he put membrane to membrane; he put tendon to tendon; he put blood to blood; he put tallow to tallow; he put flesh to flesh; he put fat to fat; he put skin to skin; he put hair to hair; he put warm to warm; he put cool to cool."

" This," comments a medical man, " is quite a wonder- ful statement of the aim of modern surgical * co-aptation ',

4 A\cii-:.\r MAX IN r.RirAix

and we ran hardly believe sucli an exact form of words imaginable witlioiit a very clear comprehension of the natural necessity of correct and precise setting."'

The discovery that Stone Age man was capable of becoming a skilled surgeon is suflicient in itself to make us revise our superficial notions regarding him. A new interest is certainly imparted to our examination of his flint instruments. Apparently these served him in good stead, and it must be acknowledged that, after all, a stone tool may, for some purposes, be quite as adequate as one of metal. It certainly does not follow that the man who uses a sharper instrument than did the early Briton is necessarily endowed with a sharper intellect, or that his ability as an individual artisan is greater. The Stone Age man displayed wonderful skill in chip- ping flint — a most difficult operation — and he shaped and polished stone axes with so marked a degree of mathematical precision that, when laid on one side, they can be spun round on a centre of gravity. His saws were small, but are still found to be quite serviceable for the purposes they were constructed for, such as the cutting of arrow shafts and bows, and the teeth are so minute and regular that it is necessary for us to use a magnifying glass in order to appreciate the workmanship. Some flint artifacts are comparable with the products of modern opticians. The flint workers must have had wonderfully keen and accurate eyesight to have produced, for instance, little "saws" with twenty-seven teeth to the inch, found even in the north of Scotland. In Ancient E!gypt these " saws " were used as sickles.

Considerable groups of the Stone Age men of Britain had achieved a remarkable degree of progress. They lived in organized communities, and had evidently codes of laws and regularized habits of life. They were not

' Dr. Ilufli Cameron C.illiej in //„',,/• l.i/r of thr l/ighlcnlfi!-, Glasgow. 1911. pp. 85 rl srg.

BRITONS OF THK STOXE AGE 5

entirely dependt*nt for their food supply on the fish they caught and the animals they slew and snared. Patches of ground were tilled, and root and cereal crops culti- vated with success. Corn was ground in handmills;^ the women baked cakes of barley and wheat and rye. A rough but serviceable pottery was manufactured and used for cooking food, for storing grain, nuts, and berries, and for carrying water. Houses were con- structed of wattles interwoven between wooden beams and plastered over with clay, and of turf and stones; these were no doubt thatched with heather, straw, or reeds. Only a small proportion of the inhabitants of Ancient Britain could have dwelt in caves, for the simple reason that caves were not numerous. Underground dwellings, not unlike the "dug-outs" made during the recent war, were constructed as stores for food and as winter retreats.

As flax was cultivated, there can be little doubt that comfortable under-garments were w^orn, if not by all, at any rate by some of the Stone Age people. Wool was also utilized, and fragments of cloth have been found on certain prehistoric sites, as well as spindle-whorls of stone, bone, and clay, wooden spindles shaped so as to serve their purpose without the aid of whorls, bone needles, and crochet or knitting-pins. Those who have assumed that the Early Britons were attired in skin garments alone, overlook the possibility that a people who could sew, spin, and weave, might also have been skilled in knitting, and that the jersey and jumper may have a respectable antiquity. The art of knitting is closely related to that of basket-making, and some would have it that many of the earliest potters plastered their clay inside baskets of reeds, and that the decorations of the early pots were suggested by the markings impressed

' A pestle or itone was used to pound grain in hollowed slabs or rocks before the merhanicnl mill was invented.

6 ANCIENT MAN IN BRITAIN

by these. It is of interest to note in this connection that some Roman wares were called bascaiidcc, or "baskets", and that the Welsh basged — basg, from which our word "basket" is derived, signify "network" and "plait- ing". The decoration of some pots certainly suggests the imitation of wickerwork and knitting, but there are symbols also, and these had, no doubt, a religious significance.

It does not follow, of course, that all the Early Britons of the so-called Stone Age were in the same stage of civilization, or that they all pursued the same modes of life. There were then, as there are now, backward as well as progressive communities and individuals, and there were likewise representatives of different races — tall and short, spare and stout, dark and fair men and women, who had migrated at different periods from different areas of origin and characterization. Some peoples clung to the sea-shore, and lived mainly on deep-sea fish and shell-fish ; others were forest and moorland hunters, who never ventured to sea or culti- vated the soil. There is no evidence to indicate that conflicts took place between different communities. It may be that in the winter season the hunters occasionally raided the houses and barns of the agriculturists. The fact, however, that weapons were not common during the Stone Age cannot be overlooked in this connection. The military profession had not come into existence.

Certain questions, however, arise in connection with even the most backward of the Stone Age peoples. How did they reach Britain, and what attracted them from the Continent? Man did not take to the sea except under dire necessity, and it is certain that large numbers could not possibly have crossed the English Channel on logs of wood. The boatbuilder's craft and the science of navigation must have advanced considerably before large migrations across the sea could have taken place.

BRITONS OF THE STONE AGE 7

When the agricultural mode of life was introduced, the early people obtained the seeds of wheat and barley, and, as these cultivated grasses do not grow wild in Britain, they must have been introduced either by traders or settlers.

It is quite evident that the term "Stone Age" is inadequate in so far as it applies to the habits of life pursued by the early inhabitants of our native land. Nor is it even sufficient in dealing with artifacts, for some people made more use of horn and bone than of stone, and these were represented among the early settlers in Britain.

CHAPTER II Earliest Traces of Modern Man

The Culture Ag-es — Aucient Races — The Neanderthals — Cro-Mag-non Man — The Evolution Theory — Pal.Teolithic Ages — The Transition Period — Neanderthal Artifacts — Birth of Cro-Magnon Art — Occupations of Flint- yielding Stations— Ravages of Disease— Duration of Glacial and Inter- glacial I'eriods.

In 1865, Sir John Lubbock (afterwards Lord Ave- bury), writing in the Prehistoric Times, suggested that the Stone Age artifacts found in Western Europe should be classified into two main periods, to which he applied the terms Palaeolithic (Old Stone) and Neolithic (New Stone). The foundations of the classification had pre- viously been laid by the French antiquaries M. Boucher de Perthes and Kdouard Lartet. It was intended that Palaeolithic should refer to rough stone implements, and Neolithic to those of the period when certain artifacts were polished.

At the time very little was known regarding the early peoples who had pursued the flint-chipping and polish- ing industries, and the science of geology was in its infancy. A great controversy, which continued for many years, was being waged in scientific circles regarding the remains of a savage primitive people that had been brought to light. Of these the most notable were a woman's skull found in 1848 in a quarry at Gibraltar, the Cannstadt skull, found in 1700, which had long been lying in Stuttgart Museum undescribed and un- studied, and portions of a male skeleton taken from a

EARLIEST TRACES OF MODERN iMAN 9

limestone cave in Neanderthal, near Dusseldorf, in 1H57. Some refused to believe that these, and other similar remains subsequently discovered, were human at all; others declared that the skulls were those of idiots or that they had been distorted by disease. Professor Huxley contended that evidence had been forthcomin<j;' to prove the existence in remote times of a primitive race from which modern man had evolved.

It is unnecessary here to review the prolonged con- troversy. One of its excellent results was the stimula- tion of research work. A number of important linds have been made during the present century, which have thrown a flood of light on the problem. In 1908 a skeleton was discovered in a grotto near La Chapelle-aux- Saints in France, which definitely established the fact that during the earlier or lower period of the PaLneolithic Age a Neanderthal race existed on the Continent, and, as other remains testify, in England as well. This race became extinct. Some hold that there are no living descendants of Neanderthal man on our globe; others contend that some peoples, or individuals, reveal Neanderthaloid traits. The natives of Australia display certain characteristics of the extinct species, but they are more closely related to Modern Man {Homo sapiens). There were pre-Neanderthal peoples, including Piltdown man and Heidelberg man.

During the Pala3olithic Age the ancestors of modern man appeared in Western Europe. These are now known as the Cro-Magnon races.

In dealing with the Palaeolithic Age, therefore, it has to be borne in mind that the artifacts classified by the archaeologists represent the activities, not only of different races, but of representatives of different species of humanity. Neanderthal man, who differed greatly from Modern man, is described as follows by Professor Elliot Smith:

lo ANCIENT MAN IN BRITAIN

" His short, thick-set, and coarsely built body was carried in a iialf-stooping slouch upon short, powerful, and half- flexed leg-s of peculiarly ungraceful form. His thick neck sloped forward from the broad shoulders to support the massive flattened head, which protruded forward, so as to form an unbroken curve of neck and back, in place of the alteration of curves, which is one of the g^races of the truly erect Homo sapiens. The heavy overhanging eyebrow ridges, and retreating forehead, the great coarse face, with its large eye-sockets, broad nose, and receding chin, combined to complete the picture of unattractiveness, which it is more probable than not was still further emphasized by a shaggy covering of hair over most of the body. The arms were relatively short, and the exceptionally large hands lacked the delicacy and the nicely balanced co-operation of thumb and fingers, which is regarded as one of the most distinctive of human characteristics."^

As Professor Osborn says: " the structure of the hand is a matter of the highest interest in connection with the implement-making powers of the Neanderthals". He notes that in the large and robust Neanderthal hand, "the joint of the metacarpal bone which supports the thumb is of peculiar form, convex, and presenting a veritable convex condyle, whereas in the existing human races the articular surface of the upper part of the thumb joint is saddle-shaped, that is concave from within back- ward, and convex from without inward ". The Nean- derthal fingers were " relatively short and robust".-

The Cro-Magnons present a sharp contrast to the Neanderthals, In all essential features they were of modern type. They would, dressed in modern attire, pass through the streets of a modern city without par- ticular notice being taken of them. One branch of the Cro-Magnons was particularly tall and handsome, with an average height for the males of 6 feet li inches, with

1 Primlth'f Man. " ^frll of the 0!il S/oitf .igf (1916), pp. 240-1.

EARLIEST TRACES OF MODERN MAN ii

chests very broad in the upper part, and remarkably long shin-bones that indicate swiftness of foot. The Neanderthals had short shins and bent knees, and their gait must have been slow and awkward. The Cro- Magnon hand was quite like that of the most civilized men of to-day.

It is of importance to bring out these facts in con- nection with the study of the development of early civilization in our native land, because of the prevalence of the theory that in collections of stone implements, dating from remote Palaeolithic times till the Neolithic Age, a complete and orderly series of evolutionary stages can be traced. " As like needs ", says one writer in this connection, "produce like means of satisfaction, the contrivances with which men in similar stages of pro- gress overcome natural obstacles are in all times very much the same."^ Hugh Miller, the Cromarty stone- mason and geologist, was one of the first to urge this view. In 1835, he wrote in his Sce?ies and Legends^ (ist edition, pp. 31, 32):

"Man in a savage stage is the same animal everywhere, and his constructive powers, whether employed in the forma- tion of a legendary story or of a battleaxe, seem to expatiate almost everywhere in the same rugged track of invention. For even the traditions of this first stage may be identified, like its weapons of war, all the world over. "-

He had written in this vein after seeing the collection of stone weapons and implements in the Northern Insti- tution at Inverness. "The most practised eye", he commented, "can hardly distinguish between the weapons of the Old Scot and the New Zealander."

' British Afiisrum—A Guide to the Antiquities of the Stone Age. p. 76 (1902).

'Miller had adopted the "stratification theory" of Professor William Robertsoo of Edinburgh University, who, in his The History of America (1777), wrote: "Men in their savage state pass their days like the animals round them, without knowledge or venera- tion of any superior power".

12 ANCIENT MAN IN BRITAIN

Kyes have become more practised in dealing with flints since Miller's time. Andrew Lan.i^ remembered his Miller when he wrote:

'• Now just as the (lint arrowheads are scattered everywhere, in all the continents and isles— and everywhere are much alike, and bear no very definite marks of the special influence of race— so it is with the habits and legends investigated by the student of folk-lore ".'

The recent discovery that the early flints found in Western Europe and in England were shaped by the Neanderthals and the pre-Neanderthals compels a re- vision of this complacent view of an extraordinarily diflicult and complex problem. It is obvious that the needs and constructive powers of the Neanderthals, whose big clumsy hands lacked "the delicate play be- tween the thumb and fingers characteristic of modern races", could not have been the same as those of the Cro-Magnons, and that the finely shaped implements of the Cro-Magnons could not have been evolved from the rough implements of the Neanderthals. The craftsmen of one race may, however, have imitated, or attempted to imitate, the technique of those of another.

There was a distinct break in the continuity of culture during the Palaeolithic Age, caused by the arrival in Western Europe of the ancestors of Modern Man. The advent of the Cro-Magnons in Europe "represents on the cultural side", as Professor Elliot Smith says in Primitive Man, "the most momentous event in its history ".

Some urge that the term " Pah-eolithic ' should now be discarded altogether, but its use has become so firmly established that archaeologists are loth to dispense with it. The first period of human culture has, however, had to be divided into "Lower" and "Upper Pala;o-

' Cusfom a'tif Afyfh (iqio edition), p. i v Laiin'* virus rrg^ariliiij< (lints are worfhlrss.

Moiisterian type (from Suffolk)

Photos. Oxford University Press

Chelk'an tvpe (from the Tliames iji-avel)

K.\ AMIM.I'.S ()!•' LOWKK P AL.lCOI.irH Ic: KOr.M) l.\ i:\C.L.\.\D (British .Museum)

INDL'STRIES

EARLIEST TRACES OF MODERN MAN 13

lithic" — Lower closing with the disappearance of the Neanderthals, and Upper beginning with the arrival of the Cro-Magnons. These periods embrace the sub- divisions detected during the latter half of last century by the French archaeologists, and are now classified as follows:

Lower Palaeolithic —

1. Pre-Chellean.

2. Chellean (named after the town of Chelles, east

of Paris).

3. Acheulian (named after vSt. Acheul in Somme

valley).

4. Mousterian (named after the caves of Le Moustier

in the valley of the River Vezere).

Upper Palaeolithic —

1. Aurignacian (named after Aurignac, Haute

Garonne).

2. Solutrean (named after Solutre, Saone-et-Loire).

3. Magdalenian (named after La Madeleine in the

valley of the River Vezere).

Then follows, in France, the Azilian stage (named after Mas d'Azil, a town at the foot of the Pyrenees) which is regarded as the link between LIpper Palaeo- lithic and Neolithic. But in Western Europe, including Britain, there were really three distinct cultures during the so-called "Transition Period". These are the Azilian, the Tardenoisian, and the Maglemosian. These cultures were associated with the movements of new peoples in Europe.

The pre-Chellean flints (also called Eoliths) were wrought by the pre-Neanderthals. Chellean probably represents the earliest work in Europe of a pre-Nean- derthal type like Piltdown man. The most characteristic

H

ANCIENT MAN IN BRITAIN

implement of this phase is the coup de poing, or pear- shaped " hand axe", which was at first roughly shaped and unsymmetrical. It was greatly improved during the Acheulian stage, and after being finely wrought in Mousterian times, when it was not much used, was supplanted by smaller and better chipped implements. The Neanderthals practised the Mousterian industry.

A profound change oc- curred when the Auri- gnacian stage of culture was inaugurated by the intruding Cro-Magnons. Skilled workers chipped flint in a new way, and, like the contemporary in- habitants of North Africa, shaped artifacts from bone; they also used rein- deer horn, and the ivory tusks of mammoths. The birth of pictorial art took place in Europe after the Cro-Magnons arrived. It would appear that the remnants of the Neanderthals in the late Mousterian stage of culture were stimulated by the arrival of the Cro-Magnons to imitate new flint forms and adopt the new methods of workmanship. There is no other evi- dence to indicate that the Cro-Magnons came into con- tact with communities of the Neanderthals. In these far-off days Europe was thinly peopled by hunters who dwelt in caves. The climate was cold, and the hairy mammoth and the reindeer browsed in the lowlands of France and Germany. Italy was linked with Africa; the grass-lands of North Africa stretched southward across the area now known as the Sahara desert, and

Chelleaii Coup 'ir Poiiig or " Hand Axe " RiRlit-hand view shows sinuous cutting edge.

EARLIEST TRACES OF MODERN MAiN 15

dense forests fringed the banks of the River Nile and extended eastward to the Red Sea.

Neanderthal man had originally entered Europe when the climate was much milder than it is in our own time. He crossed over from Africa by the Italian land-bridge, and he found African fauna, including species of the elephant, rhinoceros, hippopotamus, lion, and the hysena, jackal, and sabre-tooth tiger in Spain, France, Germany. Thousands of years elapsed and the summers became shorter, and the winters longer and more severe, until the northern fauna began to migrate southward, and the African fauna deserted the plains and decaying forests of Europe. Then followed the Fourth Glacial phase, and when it was passing away the Neanderthals, who had long been in the Mousterian phase of culture, saw bands of Cro-Magnons prospecting and hunting in southern Europe. The new-comers had migrated from some centre of culture in North Africa, and appear to have crossed over the Italian land-bridge. It is unlikely that many, if any, entered Europe from the east. At the time the Black Sea was more than twice its present size, and glaciers still blocked the passes of Asia Minor.

A great contrast was presented by the two types of mankind. The short, powerfully built, but slouching and slow-footed Neanderthals were, in a conflict, no match for the tall, active, and swift-footed Cro-Magnons, before whom they retreated, yielding up their flint-work- ing stations, and their caves and grottoes. It may be, as some suggest, that fierce battles were fought, but there is no evidence of warfare; it may be that the Neanderthals succumbed to imported diseases, as did so many thousands of the inhabitants of the Amazon Valley, when measles and other diseases were introduced by the Spaniards. The fact remains that the Neander- thals died out as completely as did the Tasmanians

1 6 ANCIENT MAN IN BRITAIN

before the advance of British settlers. We do not know whether or not they resisted, for a time, the intrusion of strangers on their hunting-grounds. It may be that the ravages of disease completed the tragic history of such relations as they may have had with the ancestors of Modern Man.

At this point, before we deal with the arrival in Britain of the representatives of the early races, it should be noted that differences of opinion exist among scientists regarding the geological horizons of the Palaeo- lithic culture stages. In the Pleistocene Age there ap- pear to have been four great glacial epochs and two minor ones. Geological opinion is, however, divided in this connection.

During the First Glacial epoch the musk-ox, now found in the Arctic regions, migrated as far south as Sussex. The Pliocene ^ mammals were not, however, completely exterminated; many of them survived until the First Interglacial epoch, which lasted for about 75,000 years — that is three times longer than the First Glacial epoch. The Second Glacial epoch is believed to have extended over 25,000 years. It brought to the southern shores of the Baltic Sea the reindeer and the hairy mammoth. Then came the prolonged Second Interglacial stage which prevailed for about 200,000 years. The climate of Europe underwent a change until it grew warmer than it is at the present day, and trees, not now found farther north than the Canary Islands, flourished in the forests of southern France. The Third Glacial stage gradually came on, grew in intensity, and then declined during a period estimated at about 25,000 years. It was followed by the Third Interglacial epoch which may have extended over at least 100,000 vears. African animals returned to Europe and mingled with those that wandered from Asia and

' The last divii-ion of tlic Tertiary period.

wi.sn.KX i:rK()iM: dtrixc. tiii-: tiiii;!)

IMKR-liLACIAL EPOCH

(Accordiny to thi* Abbi- Brt-inl the Strait of Gibraltar was open and the Balearic irroup a trreJit island.)

EARLIEST TRACES OF MODERN MAN 17

the survivors in Europe of the Second Interglacial fauna. The Fourth Glacial epoch, which is believed to have lasted for about 25,000 years, was very severe. All the African or Asiatic mammals either migrated or became extinct with the exception of lions and hyaenas, and the reindeer found the western plains of Europe as con- genial as it does the northern plains at the present time.

During the Fourth Post-glacial epoch there were for a period of about 25,000 years ^ partial glaciations and milder intervals, until during the Neolithic Age of the archaeologists the climate of Europe reached the phase that at present prevails.

When, then, did man first appear in Europe? Ac- cording to some geologists, and especially Penck and James Geikie, the Chellean phase of culture originated in the Second Interglacial epoch and the Mousterian endured until the Third Interglacial stage, when the Neanderthals witnessed the arrival of the Cro-Magnon peoples. Boule, Breuil, and others, however, place the pre-Chellean, Chellean, Acheulian, and early Mousterian stages of Lower (or Early) Paleolithic culture in the Third Interglacial epoch, and fix the extermination of Neanderthal man, in his late Mousterian culture stage, at the close of the Fourth Glacial epoch. This view is now being generally accepted. It iinds favour with the archaeologists, and seems to accord with the evidence they have accumulated. The Upper Paleolithic culture of Cro-Magnon man, according to some, began in its Aurignacian phase about 25,000 years ago; others con- sider, however, that it began about five or six thousand years ago, and was contemporaneous with the long pre- Dynastic civilization of Egypt. At the time England was connected with the Continent by a land -bridge,

' It must be borne in mind that the lengths of tliesc pcriorls arc subject to revision. Opinion is growini; that thev wore not nearly so long a> here slater).

{r>2\l) 3

i8 ANCIENT MAN IN BRITAIN

and as the climate grew milder the ancestors of modern man could walk across from France to the white cliffs of Dover which were then part of a low range of moun- tains. As will be shown, there is evidence that the last land movement in Britain did not begin until about 3000 B.C.

CHAPTER III

The Age of the " Red Man " of Wales

An Ancient Welshman — Aurignacian Culture in Britain — Coloured Bones and Luck Charms— The Cave of Aurignac— Discovery at Cro- Magnon Village — An Ancient Tragedy — Significant Burial Customs — Cro-Magnon Characters — New Race Types in Central Europe — Galley Hill Man— The Piltdown Skull— Ancient Religious Beliefs— Life Principle in Blood — Why Body-painting was practised — "Sleepers" in Caves — Red Symbolism in different Countries — The Heart as the Seat of Life — The Green Stone Talisman — "Soul Substance".

The earliest discovery of a representative of the Cro- Magnons was made in 1823, when Dr. Buckland ex- plored the ancient cave-dwelling of Paviland in the vicinity of Rhossilly, Gower Peninsula, South Wales. This cave, known as "Goat's Hole", is situated between 30 and 40 feet above the present sea-level, on the face of a steep sandstone cliff about 100 feet in height; it is 60 feet in length and 200 feet broad, while the roof attains an altitude of over 25 feet. When this com- modious natural shelter was occupied by our remote ancestors the land was on a much lower level than it is now, and it could be easily reached from the sea- shore. Professor Sollas has shown that the Paviland cave-dwellers were in the Aurignacian stage of culture, and that they had affinities wAh the tall Cro-Magnon peoples on the Continent.^

^ JiiWiinl 0/ llir Royal Aiilhrofiological Jnsliliilf, Vol. XLIII, 1913.

20 AXCIHNT MAX IX BRIJAIX

A Imman skeleton of a tall man was found in the cave deposit in association with the skull and tusks of a hairy mammoth, and with implements of Auri^i^nacian type. Apparently the Aurignacian colonists had walked over the land-bride^e connecting England with France many centuries before the land sank and the Channel tides began to carve out the white cliffs of Dover.

In his description of the bones of the ancient cave- man, who has been wrongly referred to as the " Red Lady of Paviland", Dr. Buckland wrote:

"They were all of them stained superficially with a dark brick-red colour, and enveloped by a coating- of a kind of ruddle, composed of red micaceous OKide of iron, which stained the earth, and in some parts extended itself to the distance of about half an inch around the surface of the bones. The body must have been entirely surrounded or covered over at the time of its interment with this red substance."

Near the thighs were about two handfuls of small shells {Ncriia ///oralis) which had evidently formed a waist girdle. Over forty little rods of ivory, which may have once formed a long necklace, lay near the ribs. A few ivory rings and a tongue-shaped implement or ornament lay beside the body, as well as an instrument or charm made of the metacarpal bone of a wolf.

The next great discovery of this kind was made twenty-nine years later. In 1852 a French workman was trying to catch a wild rabbit on a lower slope of the Pyrenees, near the town of Aurignac in Haute Garonne, when he made a surprising find. From the rabbit's burrow he drew out a large human bone. A slab of stone was subsequently removed, and a grotto or cave shelter revealed. In the debris were found portions of seventeen skeletons of human beings of different ages and both sexes. Only two skulls were intact.

L'pptT PaIa;olithic Implements

enacta . oofnt f ^^,»''Vr°" ''?.'."'>• ''J- ;V'^'enacian (keeled scrapers). 4. Aurl- ^af^i^tr% S.MaBdalen.an ("parrot-beak ■ graving tool). 6. Solutrean (laur.l-

lrafpo.pt). 7.8,9. Solutrcan(dr.ll. awl. and -.slu.uldered'point). ,0 a Magdalenian.

21

22 ANCIENT MAN IN BRITAIN

This discovery created a stir in the town of Aurignac, and there was much speculation regarding the tragedy that was supposed to have taken place at some distant date. A few folks were prepared to supply circumstantial details by connecting the discovery with vague local traditions. No one dreamt that the burial-place dated back a few thousand years, or, indeed, that the grotto had really been a burial-place, and the mayor of the town gave instructions that the bones should be interred in the parish cemetery.

Eight years elapsed before the grotto was visited by M. Louis Lartet, the great French archaeologist. Out- side the stone slab he found the remains of an ancient hearth, and a stone implement which had been used for chipping flints. In the outer debris were dis- covered, too, the bones of animals of the chase, and about a hundred flint artifacts, including knives, pro- jectiles, and sling-stones, besides bone arrow^s, tools shaped from reindeer horns, and an implement like a bodkin of roe -deer horn. It transpired that the broken bones of animals included those of the cave- lion, the cave-bear, the hyasna, the elk, the mammoth, and the woolly-haired rhinoceros — all of which had been extinct in that part of the world for thousands of years.

As in the Paviland cave, there were indications that the dead had been interred with ornaments or charms on their bodies. Inside the grotto were found " eighteen small round and flat plates of a white shelly substance, made of some species of cockle {Cardiiim) pierced through the middle, as if for being strung into a brace- let". Perforated teeth of wild animals had evidently been used for a like purpose.

The distinct industry revealed by the grotto finds has been named Aurignacian, after Aurignac. Had the human bones not been removed, the scientists would

THE "RED MAX" OF WALES 23

have definitely ascertained what particular race of ancient men they represented.

It was not until the spring of 1868 that a flood of light was thrown on the Aurignacian racial problem. A gang of workmen were engaged in the construction of a railway embankment in the vicinity of the village of Cro-Magnon, near Les Eyzies, in the valley of the River Vezere, when they laid bare another grotto. Intimation was at once made to the authorities, and the Minister of Public Instruction caused an investigation to be made under the direction of M. Louis Lartet. The remains of five human skeletons were found. At the back of the grotto was the skull of an old man — now known as '* the old man of Cro-Magnon " — and its antiquity was at once emphasized by the fact that some parts of it were coated by stalagmite caused by a calcareous drip from the roof of rock. Near "the old man" was found the skeleton of a woman. Her forehead bore signs of a deep wound that had been made by a cutting instrument. As the inner edge of the bone had partly healed, it was apparent she had survived her injury for a few weeks. Beside her lay the skeleton of a baby which had been prema- turely born. The skeletons of two young men were found not far from those of the others. Apparently a tragic happening had occurred in ancient days in the vicinity of the Cro-Magnon grotto. The victims had been interred with ceremony, and in accordance with the religious rites prevailing at the time. Above three hundred pierced marine shells, chiefly of the periwinkle species {Littorma littorea)^ which are common on the Atlantic coasts, and a few shells of Purpura lapillus (a purple-yielding shell), Turitella comtininis, &c., were discovered besides the skeletons. These, it would ap- pear, had been strung to form necklaces and other ornamental charms. M. Lartet found, too, a flat ivory pendant pierced with two holes, and was given two

24

ANClHiNT .MAN I.\ HKITAIN

ullier pL-ndaiUs picked up by yuung people. Near the skeletons were several perforated teeth, a split block of tl^neiss with a smooth surface, the worked antlers of a reindeer that may have been used as a pick for excavat- ing Hint, and a few chipped flints. Other artifacts of Aurignacian type were unearthed in the debris associated with the grotto, which appears to have been used as a dwelling-place before the interments had taken place.

! I Magiioii Man: front and side views I Gruttc des Enfanls, Mentone. (After Verncau.)

The human remains of the Cro-Magnon grotto were those of a tall and handsome race of which the "Red Man " of Paviland was a representative. Other finds have shown that this race was widely distributed in Europe. The stature of the men varied from 5 feet 10^, inches to 6 feet 4?, inches on the Riviera, that of the women being slightly less. That the Cro-Magnons were people of high intelligence is suggested by the fact that the skulls of the men and women were large, and remarkably well developed in the frontal region. Accordingto a prominent anatomist the Cro-Magnon women had bigger brains than has the average male European of to-day. All these ancient skulls are of the dolichocephalic (long- headed) type. The faces, however, were comparatively

THE ''RED iMAN" OF WALKS 25

broad, and shorter than those of the modern fair North- Europeans, while the eheek bones were high— a charac- teristic, by the way, of so many modern Scottish faces.

This type of head — known as the " disharmonic ", because a broad face is usually a characteristic of a broad skull, and a long face of a long skull — has been found to be fairly common among the modern inhabi- tants of the Dordogne valley. These French descendants of the Cro-Magnons are, however, short and "stocky", and most of them have dark hair and eyes. Cro-Magnon types have likewise been identified among the Berbers of North Africa, and the extinct fair-haired Guanches of the Canary Islands, in Brittany, on the islands of northern Holland, and in the British Isles. ^

A comparatively short race, sometimes referred to as the "Combe-Capelle", after the rock-shelter at Combe- Capelle, near Montferrand, Perigord, was also active during the stage of Aurignacian culture. An adult skeleton found in this shelter was that of a man only 5 feet 3 inches in height. The skull is long and narrow, with a lofty forehead, and the chin small and well de- veloped. It has some similarity to modern European skulls. The skeleton had been subjected for thousands of years to the dripping of water saturated with lime, and had consequently been well preserved. Near the head and neck lay a large number of perforated marine shells {Littorina and Nassd). A collection of finely- worked flints of early Aurignacian type also lay beside the body.

Reference may also be made here to the finds in Moravia. Fragmentary skull caps from Briix and Briinn are regarded as evidence of a race which differed from the tall Cro-Magnons, and had closer aftinities with

' For principal references see The Races of Eurofie, W. Z. Ripley, pp. 172 et seq., and The Anthropological History of Europe, John Bcddoe (Rhind lectures for 1891 ; revised edition, 1911), p. 47.

26 ANCIENT MAN IN BRITAIN

Combe-Capelle man. Some incline to connect the Briinn type with England, the link being provided by a skele- ton called the "Galley Hill" after the place of its dis- covery below Gravesend and near Northfleet in Kent. Scientists regard him as a contemporary of the Auri- gnacian flint-workers of Combe-Capelle and Briinn. "Both the Briix and Briinn skulls", writes Professor Osborn, "are harmonic; they do not present the very broad, high cheek-bones characteristic of the Cro-Ma- gnon race,^ the face being of a narrow modern type, but not very long. There is a possibility that the Briinn race was ancestral to several later dolichocephalic groups which are found in the region of the Danube and of middle and southern Germany." ^

The Galley Hill man had been buried in the gravels of the "high terrace", 90 feet above the Thames. His bones when found were much decayed and denuded, and the skull contorted. The somewhat worn " wisdom tooth" indicates that he was a "fully-grown adult, though probably not an aged individual ". Those who think he was not as old as the flints and the bones of extinct animals found in the gravels, regard him as a pioneer of the Briinn branch of the Aurignacians.

The Piltdown skull appears to date back to a period vastly more ancient than Neanderthal times.

Our special interest in the story of early man in Britain is with the "Red Man" of Paviland and Galley Hill man, because these were representatives of the species to which we ourselves belong. The Nean- derthals and pre -Neanderthals, who have left their Eoliths and Palaioliths in our gravels, vanished like the glaciers and the icebergs, and have left, as has been indicated, no descendants in our midst. Our history begins with the arrival of the Cro-Magnon races, who

• That is, the tall representatives of the Cr6-Magnon races - A fen of the Old Stone Age, pp. 335-6.

THE "RED MAN" OF WALES 27

were followed in time by other peoples to whom Europe offered attractions during the period of the great thaw, when the ice-cap was shrinking towards the north, and the flooded rivers were forming the beds on which they now flow.

We have little to learn from Galley Hill man. His geological horizon is uncertain, but the balance of the available evidence tends to show he was a pioneer of the medium-sized hunters who entered Europe from the east, during the Aurignacian stage of culture. It is otherwise with the "Red Man" of Wales. We know definitely what particular family he belonged to; he was a representative of the tall variety of Cro-Magnons. We know too that those who loved him, and laid his life- less body in the Paviland Cave, had introduced into Europe the germs of a culture that had been radiated from some centre, probably in the ancient forest land to the east of the Nile, along the North African coast at a time when it jutted far out into the Mediterranean and the Sahara was a grassy plain.

The Cro-Magnons were no mere savages who lived the life of animals and concerned themselves merely with their material needs. They appear to have been a people of active, inventive, and inquiring minds, with a social organization and a body of definite beliefs, which found expression in their art and in their burial customs. The "Red Man" was so called by the archaeologists because his bones and the earth beside them were stained, as has been noted, by "red mica- ceous oxide of iron ". Here we meet with an ancient custom of high significance. It was not the case, as some have suggested, that the skeleton was coloured after the flesh had decayed. There was no indication when the human remains were discovered that the grave had been disturbed after the corpse was laid in it. The fact that the earth as well as the bones retained the

2S AXCILiNT .MAN i.\ BRITAIN

coloration affords clear proof that the corpse ha«l been smeared over with red earth which, after the llesh had decayed, fell on the skeleton and the earth and gravel beside it. But why, it will be asked, was the corpse so treated? Did the Cro-Magnons paint their bodies dur- ing life, as do the Australians, the Red Indians, and others, to provide "a substitute for clothing"? Thai cannot be the reason. They could not have concerned themselves about a "substitute" for something they did not possess. In France, the Cro-Magnons have left pictorial records of their activities and interests in their caves and other shelters. Bas reliefs on boulders within a shelter at Laussel show that they did not w^ear cloth- ing during the Aurignacian epoch which continued for many long centuries. We know too that the Austra- lians and Indians painted their bodies for religious and magical purposes — to protect themselves in battle or enable them to perform their mysteries — rain-getting, food-getting, and other ceremonies. The ancient Egyp- tians painted their gods to "make them healthy". Prolonged good health was immortalitv.

The evidence afforded by the Paviland and other Cro- Magnon burials indicates that the red colour was freshly applied before the dead was laid in the sepulchre. No doubt it was intended to serve a definite purpose, that it was an expression of a system of beliefs regard- ing life and the hereafter.

Apparently among the Cro-Magnons the belief was already prevalent that the "blood is the life". The loss of life appeared to them to be due to the loss of the red vitalizing fluid which flowed in the veins. Strong men who received wounds in conflict with their fellows, or with wild animals, were seen to faint and die in con- sequence of profuse bleeding; and those who were stricken with sickness grew ashen pale because, as it seemed, the supply of blood was insufllcient, a condition

THK "Ri:n MAN" OF WALES 29

they may have accounted for, as did the Babylonians of a later period, by conceiving that demons entered the body and devoured the flesh and blood. It is not too much to suppose that they feared death, and that like other Pagan religions of antiquity theirs was deeply con- cerned with the problem of how to restore and prolong life. Their medicine-men appear to have arrived at the conclusion that the active principle in blood was the substance that coloured it, and they identified this sub- stance with red earth. If cheeks grew pale in sickness, the flush of health seemed to be restored by the applica- tion of a red face paint. The patient did not invariably regain strength, but when he did, the recovery was in all likelihood attributed to the influence of the blood substitute. Rest and slumber were required, as experi- ence showed, to work the cure. When death took place, it seemed to be a deeper and more prolonged slumber, and the whole body was smeared over with the vitalizing blood substitute so that, when the spell of weakness had passed away, the sleeper might awaken, and come forth again with renewed strength from the cave-house in which he had been laid.

The many persistent legends about famous "sleepers" that survive till our own day appear to have originally been connected with a belief in the return of the dead, the antiquity of which we are not justified in limiting, especially when it is found that the beliefs connected with body paint and shell ornaments and amulets were introduced into Europe in early post-glacial times. Ancient folk heroes might be forgotten, but from Age to Age there arose new heroes to take their places; the habit of placing them among the sleepers remained. Charlemagne, Frederick of Barbarossa, William Tell, King Arthur, the Fians, and the Irish Brian Boroimhe, are famous sleepers. French peasants long believed that the sleeping Napoleon would one day return to

30 ANCIENT MAN IN BRITAIN

protect their native land from invaders, and during the Russo-Japanese war it was whispered in Russia that General Skobeleff would suddenly awake and hasten to Manchuria to lead their troops to victory. For many generations the Scots were convinced that James IV, whofellat Flodden,wasa "sleeper". His place was taken in time by Thomas the Rhymer, who slept in a cave and occasionally awoke to visit markets so that he might purchase horses for the great war which was to redden Tweed and Clyde with blood. Even in our own day there were those who refused to believe that General Gordon, Sir Hector MacDonald, and Lord Kitchener, were really dead. The haunting belief in sleeping heroes dies hard.

Among the famous groups of sleeping heroes are the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus — the Christians who had been condemned to death by the Emperor Decius and concealed themselves in a cave where they slept for three and a half centuries. An eighteenth century legend tells of seven men in Roman attire, who lay in a cave in Western Germany. In Norse Mythology, the seven sons of Mimer sleep in the Underworld await- ing the blast of the horn, which will be blown at Ragnarok when the gods and demons will wage the last battle. The sleepers of Arabia once awoke to for- tell the coming of Mahomet, and their sleeping dog, according to Moslem beliefs, is one of the ten animals that will enter Paradise.

A representative Scottish legend regarding the sleepers is located at the Cave of Craigiehowe in the Black Isle, Ross-shire, a few miles distant from the Rosemarkie cave. It is told that a shepherd once entered the cave and saw the sleepers and their dog. A horn, or as some say, a whistle, hung suspended from the roof. The shepherd blew it once and the sleepers shook themselves; he blew a second time, and they

THE "RED MAN" OF WALES 31

opened their eyes and raised themselves on their elbows. Terrified by the forbidding aspect of the mighty men, the shepherd refrained from blowing a third time, but turned and fled. As he left the cave he heard one of the heroes call after him: "Alas! you have left us worse than you found us." As whistles are sometimes found in Magdalenian shelters in Western and Central Europe, it may be that these were at an early period connected with the beliefs about the calling back of the Cro- Magnon dead. The ancient whistles were made of hare- and reindeer-foot bone. The clay whistle dates from the introduction of the Neolithic industry in Hungary. The remarkable tendency on the part of mankihd to cling to and perpetuate ancient beliefs and customs, and especially those connected with sickness and death, is forcibly illustrated by the custom of smearing the bodies of the living and dead with red ochre. In every part of the world red is regarded as a particularly "lucky colour", which protects houses and human beings, and imparts vitality to those who use it. The belief in the protective value of red berries is perpetuated in our own Christmas customs when houses are decorated with holly, and by those dwellers in remote parts who still tie rowan berries to their cows' tails so as to prevent witches and fairies from interfering with the milk supply. Egyptian women who wore a red jasper in their waist- girdles called the stone "a drop of the blood of Isis (the mother goddess) ".

Red symbolism is everywhere connected with life- blood and the "vital spark" — the hot "blood of life". Brinton^ has shown that in the North American languages the word for blood is derived from the word for red or the word for fire. The ancient Greek custom f)f painting red the wooden images of gods was evi- dently connected with the belief that a supply of life-

l .Wyl/n: ofthf .\>:< n'ortd, p. i6;,.

32 ANCIENT MAN IN BRITAIN

blood was thus assured, and that the colour animated the Deity, as Homer's ghosts were animated by a blood offerintT when Odysseus visited Hades. "The anoint- ing of idols with blood for the purpose of animating them is", says Farnell, "a part of old Mediterranean magic."' The ancient Egyptians, as has been indi- cated, painted their gods, some of whom wore red garments; a part of their underworld Dewat was " Red Land", and there were "red souls" in it.- In India standing stones connected with deities are either painted red or smeared with the blood of a sacrificed animal. The Chinese regard red as the colour of fire and light, and in their philosophy they identify it with Yang, the chief principle of life;^ it is believed "to expel per- nicious influences, and thus particularly to symbolize good luck, happiness, delight, and pleasure". Red coffins are favoured. The "red gate" on the south side of a cemetery "is never opened except for the passage of an Emperor".* The Chinese put a powdered red stone called /ntn-hongin a drink or in food to destroy an evil spirit which may have taken possession of one. Red earth is eaten for a similar reason by the Poly- nesians and others. Many instances of this kind could be given to illustrate the widespread persistence of the belief in the vitalizing and protective qualities asso- ciated with red substances. In Irish Gaelic, Professor W. J. Watson tells me, " ruadh " means both "red" and "strong".

The Cro-Magnons regarded the heart as the seat of life, having apparently discovered that it controls the distribution of blood. In the cavern of Pindal, in south- western France, is the outline of a hairv mammoth painted in red ochre, and the seat of life is indicated by

' Cults ofthr Crfrk Stairs. Vol. V. p. 14,^.

* Budge, Gods, of thr Egyptians, Vol. 1, p. 20.5.

' DrGroot, Thr Rrlig;ious Systriii o/C/iiiia, Book I, pp. 216-7.

< /&:'(/.. Hook I, pp. 28 and j-jj.

THE "RED MAN" OF WALES

a large red heart. The painting dates back to the early Aurignacian period. In other cases, as in the drawing of a large bison in the cavern of Niaux, the seat of life and the vulnerable parts are indicated by spear- or arrow-heads incised on the body. The ancient Egyp- tians identified the heart with the mind. To them the heart was the seat of intelligence and will-power as well as the seat of life. The germ of this belief can appar- ently be found in the pictorial art and burial customs of the Auri- gnacian Cro-Magnons. Another interesting burial custom has been traced in the Grimaldi caves. Some of the skeletons were found to have small green stones between their teeth or inside their mouths.^ No doubt these were amulets. Their colour suggests that green sym- bolism has not neces- sarily a connection with agricultural religion, as some have supposed. The Cro-Magnons do not appear to have paid much attent'on to vegetation. In ancient Egypt the green stone (Khepera) amulet "typified the germ of life". A text says, "A scarab of green stone . . . shall be placed in the heart of a man, and it shall perform for him the 'opening of the mouth'" — that is, it will enable him to speak and eat again. The scarab is addressed in a funerary text, "My heart, my mother. My heart whereby I came into being." It is believed by

Outline of a Mammoth painted in red ochre in the Cavern of Pindal, France

The scat of life is indicated by a large red heart. (After Brcuil.)

• I am indebted to the Abbd Brcuil for thi course of a conversation. ( D 217 )

ifurmation which he gave mc during; the

34 ANCIENT MAN IN BRITAIN

Budge that the Flgyptian custom of "burying green basalt scarabs inside or on the breasts of the dead " is as old as the first Dynasty {c. 3400 B.c.).^ How much older it is one can only speculate. " The Mexicans ", accord- ing to Brinton, "were accustomed to say that at one time all men have been stones, and that at last they would all return to stones, and acting literally on this conviction they interred with the bones of the dead a small green stone, which was called ' the principle of life'."- In China the custom of placing jade tongue amulets for the purpose of preserving the dead from decay and stimulating the soul to take flight to Paradise is of considerable antiquity.^ Crystals and pebbles have been found in ancient British graves. It may well be that these pebbles were regarded as having had an intimate connection with deities, and perhaps to have been coagulated forms of what has been called "life substance ". Of undoubted importance and signifi- cance was the ancient custom of adorning the dead with shells. As we have seen, this was a notable feature of the Paviland cave burial. The "Red Man "was not only smeared with red earth, but "charmed" or pro- tected by shell amulets. In the next chapter it will be shown that this custom not only aftbrds us a glimpse of Aurignacian religious beliefs, but indicates the area from which the Cro-Magnons came.

Professor G. Elliot Smith was the first to emphasize the importance attached in ancient times to the beliefs associated with the divine " giver of life ".

> Budge, Gods of i/ie Egyptians. Vol. 1. p. 358. These scarabs have not been found In the early Dynastic graves. Green malachite charms, however, were used in even the pre- Dynastic period.

i TIu! Myths of the Nriv World, p. 194. According to liancroft the fjreen stones were oftrn placcfl ill the moullis of the dead.

» I.aufer, Jade, pp. 194 el scq. (Cliicago, 1911).

CHAPTER IV

Shell Deities and Early Trade

Early Culture and Early Races— Did Civilization originate in Europe? —An Important Clue— Trade in Shells between Red Sea and Italy — Traces of Early Trade in Central Europe— Religious Value of Personal Ornaments— Importance of Shell Lore— Links between Far East and Europe— Shell Deities- A Hebridean Shell Goddess— " Milk of Wisdom " —Ancient Goddesses as Providers of Food— Gaelic "Spirit Shell" and Japanese "God Body"— Influence of Deities in Jewels, &c. — A Shake- spearean Reference— Shells in Cro-Magnon Graves— Early Sacrifices- Hand Colours in Palaeolithic Caves— Finger Lore and " Hand Spells".

When the question is asked, "Whence came the Cro- Magnon people of the Aurignacian phase of culture?" the answer usually given is, "Somewhere in the East". The distribution of the Aurignacian sites indicates that the new-comers entered south-western France by way of Italy — that is, across the Italian land -bridge from North Africa. Of special significance in this connec- tion is the fact that Aurignacian culture persisted for the longest period of time in Italy. The tallest Cro- Magnons appear to have inhabited south-eastern France and the western shores of Italy. " It is prob- able ", says Osborn, referring to the men six feet four and a half inches in height, "that in the genial climate of the Riviera these men obtained their finest development; the country was admirably protected from the cold winds of the north, refuges were abun- dant, and game by no means scarce, to judge from the quantity of animal bones found in the caves. Under

36

ANCIENT MAN IN BRITAIN

such conditions of life the race enjoyed a fine physical development and dispersed widely."^

It does not follow, however, that the tall people originated Aurignacian culture. As has been indicated, the stumpy people represented by Combe-Capelle skele- tons were likewise exponents of it. " It must not be assumed", as Elliot vSmith reminds us, "that the Auri- gnacian culture was necessarily invented by the same people who introduced it into Europe, and whose re- mains were associated with it . . . for any culture can be transmitted to an alien people, even when it has not been adopted by many branches of the race which was responsible for its invention, just as gas illumination, oil lamps, and even candles are still in current use by the people who invented the electric light, which has been widely adopted by many foreign peoples. This elemen- tary consideration is so often ignored that it is necessary thus to emphasize it, because it is essential for any proper understanding of the history of early civilization. "^

No trace of Aurignacian culture has, so far, been found outside Europe. " May it not, therefore," it may be asked, "have originated in Italy or France?" In absence of direct evidence, this possibility might be admitted. But an important discovery has been made at Grimaldi in La Grotte des Enfants (the "grotto of infants" — so called because of the discovery there of the skeletons of young Cro-Magnon children). Among the shells used as amulets by those who used the grotto as a sepulchre was one {Cassis ni/a) that had been carried either by a migrating folk, or by traders, along the North African coast and through Italy from some south- western Asian beach. The find has been recorded by Professor Marcellin Boule.^

1 .!/<'« o//lir Olii Sloiie Agr. pp. 297-8.

■ Primitive Man (Pmcredings of thr Rrilish Acadfiiiy. Vol. VII).

* Les Grottn dr Grimaldi (Baousse-Rousse), Tome I, fate. W—GMogie el Palionlologie (.Monaco, 1906), p. 113.

SHELL DEITIES AND EARLY TRADE 37

'f physical

^1 people vindicated, pelleskele- '-it not be it the Auri- y the same ; "hose re. culture can n it has not • which was 'iMination, Tent use by ;ch has been j "his eleinen- [ IS necessary ' r any proper

on,"'

far, been j

-e," it may j ranee?" In |

might be |

been made '■'grotto of

•jiereofthe ,

Among the j he grotto as 1

been carried , s. along the ■

>ome south- ;

-corded by |

In a footnote, G. Dollfus writes:

''Cassis ru/a, L., an Indian ocean shell, is represented in the collection at Monaco by two fragments; one was found in the lower habitation level D, the other is probably of the same origin. The presence of this shell is extraordinary, as it has no analogue in the Mediterranean, neither recent nor fossil; there exists no species in the North Atlantic or off Senegal with which it could be confounded. The fragments have traces of the reddish colour preserved, and are not fossil ; one of them presents a notch which has determined a hole that seems to have been made intentionally. The species has not yet been found in the Gulf of Suez nor in the raised beaches of the Isthmus. M. Jousseaume has found it in the Gulf of Tadjoura at Aden, but it has not yet been encountered in the Red Sea nor in the raised beaches of that region. The common habitat of Cassis ru/a is Socotra, besides the Seychelles, Madagascar, Mauritius, New Caledonia, and perhaps Tahiti. The fragments discovered at Mentone have therefore been brought from a great distance at a very ancient epoch by prehistoric man."

After the Cro-Magnon peoples had spread into Western and Central Europe they imported shells from the Mediterranean. At Laugerie Basse in the Dordogne, for instance, a necklace of pierced shells from the Medi- terranean was found in association with a skeleton. Atlantic shells could have been obtained from a nearer seashore. It may be that the Rhone valley, which later became a well-known trade route, was utilized at an exceedingly remote period, and that cultural influences occasionally "flowed" along it. "Prehistoric man" had acquired some experience as a trader even during the "hunting period", and he had formulated definite religious beliefs.

It has been the habit of some archaeologists to refer to shell and other necklaces, &c., as " personal ornaments ". The late Dr. Robert Munro wrote in this connection:

I

36 ANCIENT MAN IN BRITAIN

such conditions of life the race enjoyed a fine physical development and dispersed widely." '

It does not follow, however, that the tall people originated Aurignacian culture. As has been indicated, the stumpy people represented by Combe-Capelle skele- tons were likewise exponents of it. "It must not be assumed", as Elliot vSmith reminds us, "that the Auri- gnacian culture was necessarily invented by the same people who introduced it into Europe, and whose re- mains were associated with it . . . for any culture can be transmitted to an alien people, even when it has not been adopted by many branches of the race which was responsible for its invention, just as gas illumination, oil lamps, and even candles are still in current use by the people who invented the electric light, which has been widely adopted by many foreign peoples. This elemen- tary consideration is so often ignored that it is necessary thus to emphasize it, because it is essential for any proper understanding of the history of early civilization. "^

No trace of Aurignacian culture has, so far, been found outside Europe. " May it not, therefore," it may be asked, "have originated in Italy or France?" In absence of direct evidence, this possibility might be admitted. But an important discovery has been made at Grimaldi in La Grotte des Enfants (the "grotto of infants" — so called because of the discovery there of the skeletons of young Cro-Magnon children). Among the shells used as amulets by those who used the grotto as a sepulchre was one (Cassis rufa) that had been carried either by a migrating folk, or by traders, along the North African coast and through Italy from some south- western Asian beach. The find has been recorded by Professor Marcellin Boule.'*

I M,u o/thr Old Sloiie Agr. pp. 297-8.

"- Primitive Man (r^mrreiiings o/thr Rritish Aindfniy. Vol. \'II).

*Le!: Crolirs df Griiiialdi (Baotmse-Kousse), Tome I, fa»c. W—GMosie el Palionlologie (Monaco, 1906), p. tj.5.

SHELL DEITIES AND EARLY TRADE 37

In a footnote, G. Dollfus writes:

" Cassis riifa, L., an Indian ocean shell, is represented in the collection at Monaco by two fragments; one was found in the lower habitation level D, the other is probably of the same origin. The presence of this shell is extraordinary, as it has no analogue in the Mediterranean, neither recent nor fossil; there exists no species in the North Atlantic or off Senegal with which it could be confounded. The fragments have traces of the reddish colour preserved, and are not fossil ; one of them presents a notch which has determined a hole that seems to have been made intentionally. The species has not yet been found in the Gulf of Suez nor in the raised beaches of the Isthmus. M. Jousseaume has found it in the Gulf of Tadjoura at Aden, but it has not yet been encountered in the Red Sea nor in the raised beaches of that region. The common habitat of Cassis rufa is Socotra, besides the Seychelles, Madagascar, Mauritius, New Caledonia, and perhaps Tahiti. The fragments discovered at Mentone have therefore been brought from a great distance at a very ancient epoch by prehistoric man."

After the Cro-Magnon peoples had spread into Western and Central Europe they imported shells from the Mediterranean. At Laugerie Basse in the Dordogne, for instance, a necklace of pierced shells from the Medi- terranean was found in association with a skeleton. Atlantic shells could have been obtained from a nearer seashore. It may be that the Rhone valley, which later became a well-known trade route, was utilized at an exceedingly remote period, and that cultural influences occasionally "flowed" along it. "Prehistoric man" had acquired some experience as a trader even during the "hunting period", and he had formulated definite religious beliefs.

It has been the habit of some archaeologists to refer to shell and other necklaces, &c., as " personal ornaments ". The late Dr. Robert Munro wrote in this connection:

38 ANCIENT MAN IN BRITAIN

"We have no knowledg-e of any phase of humanity in which the love of personal ornament does not play an im- portant part in the life of the individual. The savage of the present day, who paints or tattoos liis body, and adorns it with shells, feathers, teeth, and trinkets made of the more gaudy materials at his disposal, may be accepted as on a parallel with the Neolithic people of Europe. . . . Teeth are often perforated and used as pendants, especially the canines of carnivorous animals, but such ornaments are not peculiar to Neolithic times, as they were equally prevalent among- the later Palaeolithic races of Europe." ^

Modern savages have very definite reasons for wearing the so-called "ornaments", and for painting and tattoo- ing their bodies. They beheve that the shells, teeth, &c., afford them protection, and bring them luck. Ear- piercing, distending the lobe of the ear, disfiguring the body, the pointing, blackening, or knocking out of teeth, are all practices that have a religious significance. Even such a highly civilized people as the Chinese per- petuate, in their funerary ceremonies, customs that can be traced back to an exceedingly remote period in the history of mankind. It is not due to *' love of personal ornament" that they place cowries, jade, gold, &c., in the mouth of the dead, but because they believe that by so doing the body is protected, and given a new lease of life. The Far Eastern belief that an elixir of ground oyster shells will prolong life in the next world is evidently a relic of early shell lore. Certain deities are associated with certain shells. Some deities have, like snails, shells for "houses"; others issue at birth from shells. The goddess Venus (Aphrodite) springs from the froth of the sea, and is lifted up by Tritons on a shell ; she wx^ars a love-girdle. Hathor, the Egyptian Venus, had originally a love-girdle of shells. She appears to have originated as the personification of a

• Prehistoric Britain, pp. 142-3.

SHELL DEITIES AND EARLY TRADE 39

shell, and afterwards to have personified the pearl within the shell. In early Egyptian graves the shell-amulets have been found in thousands. The importance of shell lore in ancient religious systems has been emphasized by Mr. J. Wilfrid Jackson in his Shells as Evidence of the Migrations of Early Culture.^ He shows why the

Necklace of Sea Shells,

the cave ot Cro-Mngrnon. (After E. Larlet.)

cowry and snail shells were worn as amulets and charms, and why men were impelled "to search for them far and wide and often at great peril". "The murmur of the shell was the voice of the god, and the trumpet made of a shell became an important instrument in initiation ceremonies and in temple worship." Shells protected wearers against evil, including the evil eye. In like manner protection was afforded by the teeth and claws of carnivorous animals. In Asia and Africa the

' London, 1917.

40 ANCIENT MAN IN BRITAIN

belief that tigers, liuns, ike, will not injure those who are thus protected is still quite widespread.

It cannot have been merely for love of personal orna- ments that the Cro-Mag-nons of southern PVance im- ported Indian Ocean shells, and those of Central and Western Europe created a trade in Mediterranean shells. Like the ancient inhabitants of the Nile Valley who in remote pre-dynastic times imported shells, not only from the Mediterranean but from the Red Sea, along a long and dangerous desert trade-route, they evidently had imparted to shells a definite religious significance. The "luck-girdle" of snail-shells worn by the "Red Man of Paviland " has, therefore, an interesting history. When the Cro-Magnons reached Britain they brought w^ith them not only implements invented and developed elsewhere, but a heritage of religious beliefs connected with shell ornaments and with the red earth with which the corpse was smeared when laid in its last resting- place.

The ancient religious beliefs connected with shells appear to have spread far and wide. Traces of them still survive in districts far separated from one another and from the area of origin — the borderlands of Asia and Africa. In Japanese mythology a young god, Ohonamochie — a sort of male Cinderella — is slain by his jealous brothers. His mother makes appeal to a sky deity who sends to her aid the two goddesses Princess Cockleshell and Princess Clam. Princess Cockleshell burns and grinds her shell, and with w-ater provided by Princess Clam prepares an elixir called "nurse's milk" or " mother's milk". As soon as this "milk" is smeared over the young god, he is restored to life. In the Hebrides it is still the custom of mothers to burn and grind the cockle-shell to prepare a lime-water for children who suffer from what in Gaelic is called "wasting". In North America shells of L^/i/o were placed in the graves

SHELL DEITIES AND EARLY TRADE 41

of Red Indians " as food for the dead during the journey to the land of spirits". The pearls were used in India as medicines. " The burnt powder of the gems, if taken with water, cures haemorrhages, prevents evil spirits working mischief in men's minds, cures lunacy and all mental diseases, jaundice, &c. . . . Rubbed over the body with other medicines it cures leprosy and all skin diseases."^ The ancient Cretans, whose culture was carried into Asia and through Europe by their enterpris- ing sea-and-land traders and prospectors, attached great importance to the cockle-shell which they connected with their mother goddess, the source of all life and the giver of medicines and food. Sir Arthur Evans found a large number of cockle-shells, some in Faeince, in the shrine of the serpent goddess in the ruins of the Palace of Knossos. The fact that the Cretans made artificial cockle-shells is of special interest, especially when we find that in Egypt the earliest use to which gold was put was in the manufacture of models of snail-shells in a necklace. '^ In different countries cowrie shells were similarly imitated in stone, ivory, and metal. ^

Shells were thought to impart vitality and give protection, not only to human beings, but even to the plots of the earliest florists and agriculturists. "Mary, Mary, quite contrairie", who in the nursery rhyme has in her garden "cockle-shells all in row", was perpetuating an ancient custom. The cockle-shell is still favoured by conservative villagers, and may be seen in their garden plots and in graveyards. Shells placed at cottage doors, on window-sills, and round fire-places are supposed to bring luck and give security, like the horse-shoe on the door.

The mother goddess, remembered as the fairy queen,

' Shells as Evidmce of the Migrations of Early Culture, pp. 84-91.

' G. A. Reisner, Early Dynastic Cemeteries 0/ Saga-ed-Der, Vol. I, 1908, Plates 6 and 7.

» Jackson's Shells, pp. 138. 174. 176, 178.

42 ANXltXT MAX iX BRITAIX

is still connected with shells in Hebridean folk-lore. A Gaelic poet refers to the i^oddess as "the maiden queen of wisdom who dwelt in the beauteous bovver of the single tree where she could see the whole world and where no fool could see her beauty". She lamented the lack of wisdom among women, and invited them to her knoll. When they were assembled there the god- dess appeared, holding in her hand the copan Moire ("Cup of Mary"), as the blue-eyed limpet shell is called. The shell contained " the ais (milk) of wisdom ", which she gave to all who sought it. "Many", we are told, "came to the knoll too late, and there was no wisdom left for them."^ A Gaelic poet says the "maiden queen" was attired in emerald green, silver, and mother- of-pearl.

Here a particular shell is used by an old goddess for a specific purpose. She imparts knowledge by provid- ing a magic drink referred to as *' milk ". The question arises, however, if a deity of this kind was known in early times. Did the Cro-Magnons of the Aurignacian stage of culture conceive of a god or goddess in human form who nourished her human children and instructed them as do human mothers? The figure of a woman, holding in her hand a horn which appears to have been used for drinking from, is of special interest in this con- nection. As will be shown, the Hebridean "maiden" links with other milk-providing deities.

The earliest religious writings in the world are the

' Dr. Alexander Carmicliael. Catmina Gadelica, Vol. U, pp. 147 et arq. Mr. Wilfrid Jackson, author of Shells as Evidence of thr Mis^ralions of F.arly Cutturr, tells me that the "blue-eyed limpet" is our common Wmpet— Patella vulgala—ihc Lepas. Patclle, Jambc, (Eil dc boue, Bernicle, or Flic of the French. In Cornwall it is the "Crogan", the " Bornigan ", and the " Brennick ". It is "flither" of the Engliih, "flia" of the Farocse, and " lapn " of the Portuguese. A Cornish giant was once, according to a folk-tale, set to perform the hopeless task of emptying a pool with a single limpet which had a hole in it. Limpets are found in early British graves and in the "kitchen middens". TIk-v are met with in abundance in cromlechs, on the Channel Isles and in Brittany, covering the bones ami the skulls of the dead. Mr. Jackson thinks they were used like cowries for vitali/.iiig and protecting llie dead.

SHELL DEITIES AND EARLY TRADE 43

Pyramid Texts of ancient Egypt which, as Professor Breasted so finely says, "vaguely disclose to us a vanished world of thought and speech". They abound " in allusions to lost myths, to customs and usages long since ended". Withal, they reflect the physical con- ditions of a particular area— the Nile Valley, in which the sun and the river are two outstanding natural features. There was, however, a special religious reason for connecting the sun and the river.

In these old Pyramid Texts are survivals from a period apparently as ancient as that of early Aurignacian civil- ization in Europe, and perhaps, as the clue afforded by the Indian shell found in the Grimaldi cave, not un- connected with it. The mother goddess, for instance, is prayed to so that she may suckle the soul of the dead Pharaoh as a mother suckles her child and never wean him.^ Milk was thus the elixir of life, and as the mother goddess of Egypt is found to have been identified with the cowrie — indeed to have been the spirit or personification of the shell — the connection between shells and milk may have obtained even in Aurignacian times in south- western Europe. That the mother goddess of Cro- Magnons had a human form is suggested by the representations of mothers which have been brought to light. An Aurignacian statuette of limestone found in the cave of Willendorf, Lower Austria, has been called the "Venus of Willendorf". She is very cor- pulent— apparently because she was regarded as a giver of life. Other statues of like character have been un- earthed near Mentone, and they have a striking re- semblance to the figurines of fat women found in the pre-dynastic graves of Egypt and in Crete and Malta. The bas-relief of the fat woman sculptured on a boulder inside the Aurignacian shelter of Laussel may similarly have been a goddess. In her right hand she holds a

' Hreasted, Religion anti Thot4ght in Ancient F.g\pt, p. 130.

44 ANCIENT MAN IN BRITAIN

bison's horn — perhaps a drinking horn containing an elixir. Traces of red colouring remain on the body. A notable fact about these mysterious female forms is that the heads are formal, the features being scarcely, if at all, indicated.

Even if no such "idols" had been found, it does not follow that the early people had no ideas about super- natural beings. There are references in Gaelic to the coich anama (the "spirit case", or "soul shell", or "soul husk"). In Japan, which has a particularly rich and voluminous mythology, there are no idols in Shinto temples. A deity is symbolized by the shintai (God body), which may be a mirrof, a weapon, or a round stone, a jewel or a pearl. A pearl is a tama\ so is a precious stone, a crystal, a bit of worked jade, or a neck- lace of jewels, ivory, artificial beads, &c. The soul of a supernatural being is called mi-tania — mi being now a honorific prefix, but originally signifying a water serpent (dragon god). The shells, of which ancient deities were personifications, may well have been to the Cro-Magnons pretty much what a tama is to the Japanese, and what magic crystals were to mediaeval Europeans who used them for magical purposes. It may have been believed that in the shells, green stones, and crystals remained the influence of deities as the power of beasts of prey remained in their teeth and claws. The ear-rings and other Pagan ornaments which Jacob buried with Laban's idols under the oak at Shechem were similarly supposed to be god bodies or coagulated forms of " life substance". All idols were temporary or permanent bodies of deities, and idols were not necessarily large. It would seem to be a reasonable conclusion that all the so-called ornaments found in ancient graves were supposed to have had an intimate connection with the supernatural beings who gave origin to and sustained life. These ornaments, or

SHELL DEITIES AND EARLY TRADE 45

charms, or amulets, imparted vitality to human beings, because they were regarded as the substance of life itself. The red jasper worn in the waist girdles of the ancient Egyptians was reputed, as has been stated, to be a coagulated drop of the blood of the mother goddess Isis. Blood was the essence of life.

The red woman or goddess of the Laussel shelter was probably coloured so as to emphasize her vitalizing attributes; the red colour animated the image.

An interesting reference in Shakespeare's Hamlet to ancient burial customs may here be quoted, because it throws light on the problem under discussion. When Ophelia's body is carried into the graveyard^ one of the priests says that as '* her death was doubtful" she should have been buried in "ground unsanctified " — that is, among the suicides and murderers. Having taken her own life, she was unworthy of Christian burial, and should be buried in accordance with Pagan customs. In all our old churchyards the takers of life were interred on the north side, and apparently in Shakespeare's day traditional Pagan rites were observed in the burials of those regarded as Pagans. The priest in Hamlet ^ therefore, says of Ophelia:

She should in ground unsanctified have lodged Till the last trumpet ; for charitable prayers^ Shards y flints y and pebbles should be thrown on her.

There are no shards (fragments of pottery) in the Cro-Magnon graves, but flints and pebbles mingle with shells, teeth, and other charms and amulets. Vast numbers of perforated shells have been found in the burial caves near Mentone. In one case the shells are so numerous that they seem to have formed a sort of burial mantle. " Similarly," says Professor Osborn, describing another of these finds, "the female skeleton

1 llamlrl. \\ i.

46 ANCIENT MAN IN BRITAIN

was enveloped in a bed of shells not perforated; the legs were extended, while the arms were stretched beside the body; there were a few pierced shells and a few bits of silex. One of the large male skele<-ons of the same grotto had the lower limbs extended, the upper limbs folded, and was decorated with a gorget and crown of perforated shells; the head rested on a block of red stone." In another case "heavy stones protected the body from disturbance ; the head was decorated with a circle of perforated shells coloured in red, and implements of various types were carefully placed on the forehead and chest". The body of the Combe-Capelle man "was decorated with a necklace of perforated shells and surrounded with a great number of fine Aurignacian flints. It appears", adds Osborn, "that in all the numerous burials of these grottos of Aurignacian age and industry of the Cro-Magnon race we have the burial standards which prevailed in western Europe at this time."^

It has been suggested by one of the British archaeolo- gists that the necklaces of perforated cowrie shells and the red pigment found among the remains of early man in Britain were used by children. This theory does not accord with the evidence afforded by the Grimaldi caves, in which the infant skeletons are neither coloured nor decorated. Occasionally, however, the children were interred in burial mantles of small perforated shells, while female adults were sometimes placed in beds of unperforated shells. Shells have been found in early British graves. These include Nerifa litoralis, and even Patella vulgata, the common limpet. Holes were rubbed in them so that they might be strung together. In a megalithic cist unearthed in Phoenix Park, Dublin, in 1838, two male skeletons had each beside them perfor- ated shells {Nerita litoralis). During the construction of

I ^fl•n of Ihr Old Stoiir Agr, pp. 304-5.

SHELL DEITIES AND EARLY TRADE 47

the Edinburgh and Granton railway there was found beside a skeleton in a stone cist a quantity of cockle- shell rings. Two dozen perforated oyster-shells were found in a single Orkney cist. Many other examples of this kind could be referred to.^

In the Cro-Magnon caverns are imprints of human hands which had been laid on rock and then dusted round with coloured earth. In a number of cases it is shown that one or more finger joints of the left hand had been cut off.

The practice of finger mutilation among Bushman, Australian, and Red Indian tribes, is associated with burial customs and the ravages of disease. A Bushman woman may cut off a joint of one of her fingers when a near relative is about to die. Red Indians cut off finger-joints when burying their dead during a pes- tilence, so as " to cut off deaths"; they sacrificed a part of the body to save the whole. In Australia finger mutilation is occasionally practised. Highland Gaelic stories tell of heroes who lie asleep to gather power which will enable them to combat with monsters or fierce enemies. Heroines awake them by cutting off a finger joint, a part of the ear, or a portion of skin from the scalp.'-

The colours used in drawings of hands in Palaeolithic caves are black, white, red, and yellow, as the Abbe Breuil has noted. In Spain and India, the hand prints are supposed to protect dwellings from evil influences. Horse-shoes, holly with berries, various plants, shells, Sic, are used for a like purpose among those who in our native land perpetuate ancient customs.

The Arabs have a custom of suspending figures of an

' A Red Sea cowry shell (Cyfirtra minor) found on the site of Hur-itbourne station (L. & S. W. Railway, main line) in Hampshire, was associated.' with "Early Iron Age" artifacts. (Paper read by J. R. le B. Tomlin at meeting of Linnsean Society, June 14, 1911.)

' For references see my Myths 0/ Crete and Pre-Hellrnic Europe, pp. 30-31,

48 ANCIENT MAN IN BRITAIN

open hand from the necks of their children, and the Turks and Moors paint hands upon their ships and houses, *' as an antidote and counter charm to an evil eye ; for five is with them an unlucky number; and 'five (fingers, perhaps) in your eyes' is their proverb of cursing and defiance". In Portugal the hand spell is called the /7.^^. Southey suggests that our common phrase "a fig for him" was derived from the name of the Portuguese hand amulet.^

"The figo for thy friendship" is an interesting refer- ence by Shakespeare.'- Fig or figo is probably from fico, a snap of the fingers, which in French is fairc la figue, and in Italian /7r le fiche. Finger snapping had no doubt originally a magical significance.

1 Notes to Thalaba, Book V, Canto .?6. » //eniy I', V, iii, 6.

CHAPTER V New Races in Europe

The Solutreaii Industry — A Racial and Cultural Intrusion— Decline of Aurig^nacian Art — A God-cult — The Solutrean Thor — Open-air Life — Magfdalenian Culture — Decline of Flint Working- — Horn and Bone Weapons and Implements — Revival of Cro-Magnon Art — The Lamps and Palettes of Cave Artists — The Domesticated Horse — Eskimos in Europe — Magdalenian Culture in England — The Vanishing Ice — Rein- deer migrate Northward — New Industries — Tardenoisian and Azilian Industries — Pictures and Symbols of Azilians — "Long-heads" and " Broad-heads " — Maglemosian Culture of Fair Northerners — Pre- Neolithic Peoples in Britain.

In late Aurignacian times the influence of a new industry was felt in Western Europe. It first came from the south, and reached as far north as England where it can be traced in the caverns. Then, in time, it spread westward and wedge-like through Central Europe in full strength, with the force and thoroughness of an invasion, reaching the northern fringe of the Spanish coast. This was the Solutrean industry which had distinctive and independent features of its own. It was not derived from Aurignacian but had developed somewhere in Africa — perhaps in Somaliland, whence it radiated along the Libyan coast towards the west and eastward into Asia. The main or " true" Solutrean influence entered Europe from the south-east. It did not pass into Italy, which remained in the Aurignacian stage until Azilian times, nor did it cross the Pyrenees or invade Spain south of the Cantabrian Mountains. The earlier "influence" is referred to as " proto-Solutrean ".

50 ANCIENT MAN IN BRITAIN

Solutrcan is well represented in Hungary where no trace of Aurignacian culture has yet been found. Apparently that part of Europe had offered no attrac- tions for the Cro-Magnons.

Who the carriers of this new culture were it is as yet impossible to say with confidence. They may have been a late "wave" of the same people who had first introduced Aurignacian culture into Europe, and they may have been representative of a different race. Some ethnologists incline to connect the Solutrean culture w^ith a new people whose presence is indicated by the skulls found at Briinn and Briix in Bohemia, These intruders had lower foreheads than the Cro-Magnons, narrower and longer faces, and low cheek-bones. It may be that they represented a variety of the Mediter- ranean race. Whoever they were, they did not make much use of ivory and bone, but they worked flint with surpassing skill and originality. Their technique was quite distinct from the Aurignacian. With the aid of wooden or bone tools, they finished their flint artifacts by pressure, gave them excellent edges and points, and shaped them with artistic skill. Their most character- istic flints are the so-called laurel-leaf (broad) and willow- leaf (narrow) lances. These were evidently used in the chase. There is no evidence that they were used in battle. Withal, their weapons had a religious signifi- cance. Fourteen laurel-leaf spear-heads of Solutrean type which were found together at Volgu, Saone-et- Loire, are believed to have been a votive offering to a deity. At any rate, these were too finely worked and too fragile, like some of the peculiar Shetland and Swedish knives of later times, to have been used as implements. One has retained traces of red colouring. It may be that the belief enshrined in the Gaelic saying, " Every weapon has its demon ", had already come into existence. In Crete tlie double-axe was in Minoan times

NEW RACES IN EUROPE 51

a symbol of a deity ;^ and in northern Egypt and on the Libyan coast the crossed arrows symbolized the god- dess Neith; while in various countries, and especially in India, there are ancient stories about the spirits of weapons appearing in visions and promising to aid great hunters and warriors. The custom of giving weapons personal names, which survived for long in Europe, may have had origin in Solutrean times.

Art languished in Solutrean times. Geometrical figures were incised on ivory and bone; some engrav- ing of mammoths, reindeer, and lions have been found in Moravia and France. When the human figure was depicted, the female was neglected and studies made of males. It may be that the Solutreans had a god-cult as distinguished from the goddess-cult of the Aurignacians, and that their "flint-god" was an early form of Zeus, or of Thor, whose earliest hammer was of flint. The Romans revered "Jupiter Lapis" (silex). When the solemn oath was taken at the ceremony of treaty-making, the representative of the Roman people struck a sacri- ficial pig with the stlex and said, " Do thou, Diespiter, strike the Roman people as I strike this pig here to-day, and strike them the more, as thou art greater and stronger". Mr. Cyril Bailey {The Religio7i of Ancient Rome, p. 7) expresses the view that " in origin the stone is itself the god ".

During Solutrean times the climate of Europe, although still cold, was drier that in Aurignacian times. It may be that the intruders seized the flint quarries of the Cro-Magnons, and also disputed with them the possession of hunting-grounds. The cave art declined or was suspended during what may have been a military regime and perhaps, too, under the influence of a new religion and new social customs. Open-air camps

' For other examples sco !\Ir. LegRc's article in Piocrcdiugs of the Socirly of Biblical Archtrology, 1899, p. 310.

^2 A\Cli:.\r .MAX l.\ BRITAIN

bcsidf rock -shelters were greatly favoured. It may be, as has been suggested, that the Solutreans were as expert as the modern Eskimos in providing clothing and skin-tents. Hone needles were numerous. They fed well, and horse-flesh was a specially favoured food.

In their mountain retreats, the Aurignacians may have concentrated more attention than they had pre- viously done on the working of bone and horn ; it may be that they were reinforced by new races from north- eastern Europe, who had been developing a distinctive industry on the borders of Asia. At any rate, the in- dustry known as Magdalenian became widespread when the ice-fields crept southward again, and southern and central Europe became as wet and cold as in early Aurignacian times. Solutrean culture gradually declined and vanished and Magdalenian became supreme.

The Magdalenian stage of culture shows affinities with Aurignacian and l^etrays no influence of Solutrean technique. The method of working flint was quite dif- ferent. The .Magdalenians, indeed, appear to have attached little importance to flint for implements of the chase. They often chipped it badly in their own way and sometimes selected flint of poor quality, but they had beautiful "scrapers" and "gravers" of flint. It does not follow, however, that they were a people on a lower stage of culture than the Solutreans. New inventions had rendered it unnecessary for them to adopt Solutrean technicjue. Most effective implements of horn and bone had come into use and, if wars were waged — there is no evidence of warfare — the Magdalenians were able to give a good account of themselves with javelins and exceedingly strong spears which were given a greater range by the introduction of spear-throwers — "cases" from which spears were thrown. The food supplv was increased by a new method of catching fish. Barbed harpoons of reindeer-horn had been invented, and no

NEW RACES IN EUROPE 53

doubt many salmon, ike, were caught at river-side stations.

The Cro-Magnons, as has been found, were again in the ascendant, and their artistic genius was given full play as in Aurignacian times, and, no doubt, as a result of the revival of religious beliefs that fostered art as a cult product. Once again the painters, engravers, and sculptors adorned the caves with representations of wild animals. Colours were used with increasing skill and taste. The artists had palettes on which to mix their colours, and used stone lamps, specimens of which have been found, to light up their "studios" in deep cave recesses. During this Magdalenian stage of culture the art of the Cro-Magnons reached its highest standard of excellence, and grew so extraordinarily rich and varied that it compares well with the later religious arts of ancient Egypt and Babylonia.

The horse appears to have been domesticated. There is at Saint Michel d'Arudy a "Celtic" horse depicted with a bridle, while at La Madeleine was found a " baton de commandement " on which a human figure, with a stave in his right hand, walks past two horses which betray no signs of alarm.

Our knowledge is scanty regarding the races that occupied Europe during Magdalenian times. In addi- tion to the Cro-Magnons there were other distinctive types. One of these is represented by the Chancelade skeleton found at Raymonden shelter. Some think it betrays Eskimo affinities and represents a racial "drift" from the Russian steppes. in his Ancient Hunters Professor Sol las shows that there are resemblances be- tween Eskimo and Magdalenian artifacts.

The Magdalenian culture reached England, although it never penetrated into Italy, and was shut out from the greater part of Spain. It has been traced as far north as Derbvshire, on the north-eastern border of which the

54 AXCIHNT MAX IN r>RlTAI\

Cresswi'll caves luivc yielded Magdalcnian relics, in- dudini: flint-borers, eni^ravers, &c., and bone imple- ments, including a needle, an awl, chisels, an enf:^raving of a horse on bone, &c. Kent's Cavern, near Torquay in Devonshire, has also yielded Magdalenian flints and implements of bone, including pins, awls, barbed har- poons, Sec.

During early Magdalenian times, however, our native land did not offer great attractions to Continental people. The final glacial epoch may have been partial, but it was severe, and there was a decided lowering of the temperature. Then came a warmer and drier spell, which was followed by the sixth partial glaciation. Thereafter the *' great thaw" opened up Europe to the invasion of new races from Asia and Africa.

Three distinct movements of peoples in Europe can be traced in post-Magdalenian times, and during what has been called the "Transition Period", between the Upper PaKxolithic and Lower Neolithic Ages or stages. The ice-cap retreated finally from the mountains of Scot- land and Sweden, and the reindeer migrated northward. Magdalenian civilization was gradually broken up, and the cave art suffered sharp decline until at length it perished utterly. Trees flourished in areas where formerly the reindeer scraped the snow to crop moss and lichen, and rich pastures attracted the northward migrating red deer, the roe-deer, the ibex, the wild boar, wild cattle, &c.

The new industries are known as the Tardenoisian, the Azilian, and the Maglemosian.

Tardenoisian flints are exceedingly small and beauti- fully worked, and have geometric forms; they are known as '* microliths " and "pygmy flints". They were evidently used in catching fish, some being hooks and others spear-heads; and they represent a culture that spread round the Mediterranean basin: these flints are

NEW RACES IN EUROPE

found in northern Egypt, Tunis, Algeria, and Italy ; from Italy they passed through Europe into England and Scotland. A people who decorated with scenes of daily life rock shelters and caves in Spain, and hunted red deer and other animals with bows and arrows, were pressing northward across the new grass-lands towards the old Magdalenian stations. Men wore pants and

H^

Geometric or " Pygmy " Flints. (After Brciiil.)

I. From Tunis and Southern Spain. 2, From Portugal. 3, 4, Azilian types. 5. 6, 7, Tardenoisian types.

feather head-dresses; women had short gowns, blouses, and caps, as had the late Magdalenians, and both sexes wore armlets, anklets, and other ornaments of magical potency. Females were nude when engaged in the chase. The goddess Diana had evidently her human prototypes. There were ceremonial dances, as the rock pictures show; women lamented over graves, and affec- tionate couples — at least they seem to have been affec- tionate— walked hand in hand as they gradually migrated towards northern Spain, and northern France and Bri- tain. The horse was domesticated, and is seen being

56 AXCIliNT MAN IN HIUTAIN

Ird by the halter. Wild animal "drives" were organ- ized, and many victims fell to archer and spearman. Arrows were feathered; bows were large and strong. Symbolic signs indicate that a script similar to those of the /Iigean area, the northern African coast, and pre- dynastic Egypt was freely used. Drawings became conventional, and ultimately animals and human beings were represented by signs. This culture lasted after the introduction of the Neolithic industry in some areas, and in others after the bronze industry had been adopted by sections of the people.

When the Magdalenian harpoon of reindeer horn was imitated by the flat harpoon of red-deer horn, this new culture became what is known as Azilian. It met and mingled with Tardenoisian, which appears to have arrived later, and the combined industries are referred to as Azilian-Tardenoisian.

While the race-drifts, represented by the carriers of the Azilian and Tardenoisian industries, were moving into France and Britain, another invasion from the East was in progress. It is represented in the famous Ofnet cave where long-heads and broad-heads were interred. The Asiatic Armenoids (Alpine type) had begun to arrive in Europe, the glaciers having vanished in Asia Minor. Skulls of broad-heads found in the Belgian cave of Furfooz, in which sixteen human skeletons were un- earthed in 1867, belong to this period. The early Armenoids met and mingled with representatives of the blond northern race, and were the basis of the broad- headed blonds of Holland, Denmark, and Belgium.

Maglemosian culture is believed to have been intro- duced by the ancestors of the fair peoples of Northern Europe. It has been so named after the finds at Magle- mose in the "Great Moor", near Mullerup, on the western coast of Zeeland. A lake existed at this place at a time when the Baltic was an inland water completely

.j^-.,^p^.. -^^^^^^

EXAMPLES OF PAL.E* )LITII1C ART

The obiects incUuie: handles of knives and daggers carved in ivory and b""^. line

perforated bdton de commandement. of , , ,

cave bear. &c., and perforated amulets.

stalking a bison, of seal, cow, reindeer,

NEW RACES IN EUROPE 57

shut off from the North Sea. In a peat bog, formerly the bed of the lake, were found a large number of flint and bone artifacts. These included Tardenoisian micro- liths, barbed harpoons of bone, needles of bone, spears of bone, &c. Bone was more freely used than horn for implements and weapons. The animals hunted included the stag, roe-deer, moose, wild ox, and wild boar. Dogs were domesticated. It appears that the Magle- mosians were lake-dwellers. Their houses, however, had not been erected on stilts, but apparently on a floating platform of logs, which was no doubt anchored or moored to the shore. There are traces of Magdalenian influence in Maglemosian culture. Although many decorative forms on bone implements and engravings on rocks are formal and symbolic, there are some fine and realistic representations of animals worthy of the Magdalenian cave artists. Traces of the Maglemosian racial drift have been obtained on both sides of the Baltic and in the Danish kitchen middens. Engravings on rocks at Lake Onega in Northern Russia closely resemble typical Maglemosian work. Apparently the northern fair peoples entered Europe from Western Siberia, and in time were influenced by Neolithic culture. But before the Europeans began to polish their stone implements and weapons, the blond hunters and fisher- men settled not only in Denmark and Southern Sweden and Norway but also in Britain.

At the time when the Baltic was an inland fresh-water lake, the southern part of the North Sea was dry land, and trees grew on Dogger Bank, from which fishermen still occasionally lift in their trawls lumps of " moor-log" (peat) and the bones of animals, including those of the reindeer, the red deer, the horse, the wild ox, the bison, the Irish elk, the bear, the wolf, the beaver, the woolly rhinoceros, the mammoth, and the walrus. No doubt the Maglemosians found their way over this "land-

58

AXClhXr MAN IN BRITAIN

briiJ<;e", crossinj,^ the rivers in rude boats, and on foot when the rivers were frozen. Evidence has been forth- comin^r that they also followed the present coast line towards Boulogne, near which a typical Maglemosian harpoon has been discovered.

Traces of Maglemosian iniluence have been found as far north as Scotland on the Hebridean islands of

^^:$^Z^^^^

A Notable Example of late Magdalenian Culture: engraving on bone of browsing- reindeer. From Kesserloch, Switzerland. (After Hcini.)

Oronsay and Risga. The MacArthur cave at Oban reveals Azilian artifacts. In the Victoria cave near vSettle in Yorkshire a late Magdalenian or proto-Azilian harpoon made of reindeer-horn is of special interest, displaying, as it does, a close connection between late Magdalenian and early Azilian. Barbed harpoons, found at the shelter of Druimvargie, near Oban, are Azilian, some displaying Maglemosian features. Barbed harpoons of bone, and especially those with barbs on one side only, are generally Maglemosian, while those of horn and double-barbed are typically Azilian.

iV 9

^11

iloiii and Bone Implement-

14

Harpoons: i and j. from MacArthur Cave. Oban; 3. from Laueeric Basse rock-shelter.

?l""v*' '''■°'" sh-JI-'u-ap. Oronsav. Hebrides; 5. from bed of River Dee near Kirk- cudbright; 6, from Palude Brabbie, Italy— all of Azilian type. 8. Reindeer-horn harpoon of late Mag^^dalenian. or proto-Azilian. type from Victoria Cave, near Settle, Vorks. 9, Maglemosian. or Azilian-Maglemosian. harpoon from rock-shelter. Druimvargie. Oban.

7, lu, II. 12, 13, and 14, bone and deer-horn implements from MacArthur Cave, Oban.

Go ANCIENT MAN IN BRITAIN

Apparently the fair Ni)rtherners, the carriers of Magle- mosian culture, and the dark Iberians, the carriers of Azilian culture, met and mingled in Scotland and Eng- land k)ng before the Neolithic industry was introduced. There were also, it would appear, communities in Britain of Cro-Magnons, and perhaps of other racial types that existed on the Continent and in late Magdalenian times. The fair peoples of England and Wales, Scotland and Ireland are not therefore all necessarily descendants of Celts, Angles, Saxons, and Vikings. The pioneer settlers in the British Isles, in all probability, included blue and grey-eyed and fair or reddish-haired peoples who in Scotland may have formed the basis of the later Caledonian type, compared by Tacitus to the Germans, but bearing an undoubted Celtic racial name, the mili- tary aristocrats being Celts. ^

•The Abh<5 Breuil, having examined the artifacts associattd with the Western Scottish harpoons, inchncs to refer to the culture as " Aiilian-Tardenoisian ". At tlie same time he considers the view that IMajjlcmosian influence was operating is worthy of consideration. He notes that traces of Maglemosian culture have been reported from England. The Abbe has detected Magdalenian influence in artifacts from Campbeltown, .\rgyllshire (Procerdinsi of the Society o/ Antiquaries in Scotland, igii-2).

CHAPTER VI

The Faithful Dog

Transition Period between Palaeolithic and Neolithic Ages — Theory of the Neolithic Edge — Cro-Magnon Civilization was broken up by Users of Bow and Arrow— Domesticated Dog of Fair Northerners — Dogs as Guides and Protectors of Man — The Dog in Early Religion — Dog Guides of Souls— The Dog of Hades — Dogs and Death — The Scape-dog in Scot- land— Souls in Dog Form — Traces of Early Domesticated Dogs — Romans imported British Dogs.

The period we have now reached is regarded by some as that of transition between the Palceolithic and Neo- lithic Ages, and by others as the Early Neolithic period. It is necessary, therefore, that we should keep in mind that these terms have been to a great extent divested of the significance originally attached to them. The tran- sition period was a lengthy one, extending over many centuries during which great changes occurred. It was much longer than the so-called *' Neolithic Age ". New races appeared in Europe and introduced new habits of life and thought, new animals appeared and animals formerly hunted by man retreated northward or became extinct; the land sank and rose; a great part of the North Sea and the English Channel was for a time dry land, and trees grew on the plateau now marked by the Dogger Bank during this "Transition Period", and before it had ended the Strait of Dover had widened and England was completely cut off from the Continent.

Compared with these great changes the invention of the polished axe edge seems almost trivial. Yet some

62 ANCIENT MAN IN BRITAIN

writers have regarded this change as being all-important. "On the edge ever since its discovery", writes one of them with enthusiasm, "has depended and probably will depend to the end of time the whole artistic and artificial environment of human existence, in all its infinite varied complexity. ... By this discovery was broken down a wall that for untold ages had dammed up a stagnant, unprogressive past, and through the breach were let loose all the potentialities of the future civilization of mankind. It was entirely due to the dis- covery of the edge that man was enabled, in the course of time, to invent the art of shipbuilding."^

This is a very sweeping claim and hardly justified by the evidence that of late years has come to light. Much progress had been achieved before the easy method of polishing supplanted that of secondary working. The so-called Paleolithic implements were not devoid of edges. What really happened was that flint-working was greatly simplified. The discovery was an impor- tant one, but it was not due to it alone that great changes in habits of life were introduced. Long before the in- troduction of the Neolithic industry, the earliest traces of which in Western Europe have been obtained at Campigny near the village of Blangy on the River Bresle, the Magdalenian civilization of the Cro-Magnons had been broken up by the Azilian-Tardenoisian in- truders in Central and Western Europe and by the Maglemosians in the Baltic area.

The invading hordes in Spain, so far as can be gathered from rock pictures, made more use of bows and arrows than of spears, and it may be that their social organization was superior to that of the Magdalenians. Their animal "drives" suggest as much. It may be that they were better equipped for organized warfare — if there was warfare— and for hunting by organizing

1 ririkr M.agmiisoii in Xoirs on Shif>huiliiitii; mtd Nautical Tfimx. London. I9f^>.

THE FAITHFUL DOG 63

drives than the taller and stronger Cro-Magnons. When they reached the Magdalenian stations they adopted the barbed harpoon, imitating reindeer-horn forms in red-deer horn.

The blond Maglemosians in the Baltic area introduced from Asia the domesticated dog. They were thus able to obtain their food supply with greater ease than did the Solutreans with their laurel-leaf lances, or the Mag- dalenians with their spears tipped with bone or horn. When man was joined by his faithful ally he met with more success than when he pursued the chase unaided. Withal, he could take greater risks when threatened by the angry bulls of a herd, and operate over more extended tracks of country with less fear of attack by beasts of prey. His dogs warned him of approaching peril and guarded his camp by night.

Hunters who dwelt in caves may have done so partly for protection against lions and bears and wolves that were attracted to hunters' camps by the scent of flesh and blood. No doubt barriers had to be erected to shield men, women, and children in the darkness; and it may be that there were fires and sentinels at cave entrances.

The introduction of the domesticated dog may have influenced the development of religious beliefs. Cro- Magnon hunters appear to have performed ceremonies in the depths of caverns where they painted and carved wild animals, with purpose to obtain power over them. Their masked dances, in which men and women repre- sented wild animals, chiefly beasts of prey, may have had a similar significance. The fact that, during the Transition Period, a cult art passed out of existence, and the caves were no longer centres of culture and political power, may have been directly or indirectly due to the domestication of the dog and the supremacv achieved by the intruders who possessed it.

64 AXCIKXT MAX IX BRITAIX

There can be no doubt that the dog played its part in the development of civilization. As much is suf];^c[ested by the lore attaching to this animal. It occupies a prominent place in mythology. The dog which guided and protected the hunter in his wanderings was supposed to guide his soul to the other world.

He thout^^ht admitted to that equal sky, His faithful doi^ would bear him company.

In Ancient Egypt the dog-headed god Anubis was the guide and protector of souls. Apuatua, an early form of Osiris, was a dog god. Yama, the Hindu god of death, as Dharma, god of justice, assumed his dog form to guide the Panadava brothers to Paradise, as is related in the Sanskrit epic the Malici-blidrata^ . The god Indra, the Hindu Jupiter, was the " big dog", and the custom still prevails among primitive Indian peoples of torturing a dog by pouring hot oil into its ears so that the "big dog" may hear and send rain. In the MaJid-bhdrata there is a story about Indra appearing as a hunter fol- lowed by a pack of dogs. As the "Wild Huntsman " the Scandinavian god Odin rides through the air fol- lowed by dogs. The dog is in Greek mythology the sentinel of Hades; it figures in a like capacity in the Hades of Northern Mythology. Cuchullin, the Gaelic hero, kills the dog of Hades and takes its place until another dog is found and trained, and that is why he is called " Cu " (the dog) of Culann. A pool in Kildonan, vSutherland, which was reputed to contain a pot of gold, was supposed to be guarded by a big black dog with two heads. A similar legend attaches to Hound's Pool in the parish of Dean Combe, Devonshire. In different parts of the world the dog is the creator and ancestor of the human race, the symbol of kinship, &c. The star Sirius was associated with the dog. In Scotland and

THE FAITHFUL DOG 65

Ireland "dog stones" were venerated. A common sur- viving belief is that dogs howl by night when a sudden death is about to occur. This association of the dog with death is echoed by Theocritus. "Hark!" cries Simaetha, "the dogs are barking through the town. Hecate is at the crossways. Haste, clash the brazen cymbals." The dog-god of Scotland is remembered as an cu sith ("the supernatural dog"); it is as big as a calf, and by night passes rapidly over land and sea. A black demon-dog— the " Moddey Dhoo "—referred to by Scott in Pevertl of the Peak was supposed to haunt Peel Castle in the Isle of Man. A former New Year's day custom in Perthshire was to send away from a house door a scape-dog with the words, "Get away you dog! Whatever death of men or loss of catde would happen in this house till the end of the present year, may it all light on your head." A similar custom obtained among Western Himalayan peoples. Early man appears to have regarded his faithful companion as a supernatural being. There are Gaelic references to souls appearing in dog form to assist families in time of need. Not only did the dog attack beasts of prey; in Gaelic folk-tales it is the enemy of fairies and demons, and especially cave- haunting demons. Early man's gratitude to and depen- dence on the dog seems to be reflected in stories of this kind.

When the Baltic peoples, who are believed to be the first "wave" of blond Northerners, moved westward to- wards Denmark during the period of the " great thaw ", they must have been greatly assisted by the domesticated dog, traces of which are found in Maglemosian stations. Bones of dogs have been found in the Danish kitchen middens and in the MacArthur cave at Oban. It may be that the famous breed of British hunting dogs which were in Roman times exported to Italy were descended from those introduced by the Maglemosian hunters.

66 ANCIENT MAN IN BRITAIN

Seven Irish dogs were in the fourth century presented to Symmachus, a Roman consul, by his brother. " All Rome", the grateful recipient wrote, "view them with wonder and thought they must have been brought hither in iron cages."

Great dogs were kept in Ancient Britain and Ireland for protection against wolves as well as for hunting wild animals. The ancient Irish made free use in battle of large fierce hounds. In the folk-stories of Scotland dogs help human beings to attack and overcome supernatural beings. Dogs were the enemies of the fairies, mer- maids, &c.

Dog gods figure on the ancient sculptured stones of Scotland. The names of the Irish heroes Cuchullin and Con-chobar were derived from those of dog deities. " Con " is the genitive of " Cu " (dog).

CHAPTER VII Ancient Mariners Reach Britain

Reindeer in Scotland — North Sea and Eng-lish Channel Land-bridges — Early River Rafts and River Boats— Breaking of Land-bridges— Coast Erosion — Tilbury Man— Where were first Boats Invented? — Ancient Boats in Britain — "Dug-out" Canoes — Imitations of Earlier Papyri and Skin Boats — Cork Plug in Ancient Clyde Boat — Early Swedish Boats— An African Link — Various Types of British Boats — Daring Ancient Mariners— The Veneti Seafarers— Attractions of Early Britain for Colonists.

The Maglemosian (Baltic)and Azilian (Iberian) peoples, who reached and settled in Britain long before the in- troduction of the Neolithic industry, appear, as has been shown, to hav^e crossed the great land-bridge, which is now marked by the Dogger Bank, and the narrowed land-bridge that connected England and France. No doubt they came at first in small bands, wandering along the river banks and founding fishing communities, fol- lowing the herds of red deer and wild cows that had moved northward, and seeking flints, &c. The Cro- Magnons, whose civilization the new intruders had broken up on the Continent, were already in Britain, where the reindeer lingered for many centuries after they had vanished from France. The reindeer moss still grows in the north of Scotland. Bones and horns of the reindeer have been found in this area in associa- tion with human remains as late as of the Roman period. In the twelfth century the Norsemen hunted reindeer in

68 ANCIENT MAN IN liRITAlN

Caithness.^ Caesar refers to the reindeer in the Her- cynian forest of Germany {Gallic War, VI, 26).

The early colonists of fair Northerners who introduced the Mac^lemosian culture into Britain from the Baltic area could not have crossed the North Sea land-bridge without the aid of rafts or boats. Great broad rivers were flowing towards the north. The Elbe and the Weser joined one another near the island of Heligoland, and received tributaries from marshy valleys until a long estuary wider than is the Wash at present was formed. Another long river flowed northward from the valley of the Zuyder Zee, the mouth of which has been traced on the north-east of the Dogger Bank. The Rhine reached the North Sea on the south-west of the Dogger Bank, off Elamborough Head; its tributaries included the Meuse and the Thames. The Humber and the rivers flowing at present into the Wash were united before entering the North Sea between the mouth of the Rhine and the coast of East Riding.

The Dogger Bank was then a plateau. Trawlers, as has been stated, sometimes lift from its surface in their trawl nets lumps of peat, which they call "moor-log", and also the bones of wild animals, including the wild ox, the wild horse, red deer, reindeer, the elk, the bear, the wolf, the hyaena, the beaver, the walrus the woolly rhinoceros, and the hairy mammoth. In the peat have been found the remains of the white birch, the hazel, sallow, and willow, seeds of bog-bean, fragments of fern, &c. All the plants have a northern range. In some pieces of peat have been found plants and insects that still flourish in Britain. ^

The easiest crossing to Britain was over the English Channel land-bridge. It was ultimately cut through by

• The Orbtieyinga Saga. p. iSj, Ediiilnirgh. 187V anH /'rocrrdings of the Society of A til iquaries of Scotland, Vol. VUI. ' Clement Reid, Submerged Forests, pp. 45-7, Loniion, 1913.

ANCIENT MARINERS REACH BRITAIN 69

the English Channel river, so tiiat the dark Azilian- Tardenoisian peoples from Central and Western Europe and the fair Maglemosians must have required and used rafts or boats before polished implements of Neolithic type came into use. In time the North Sea broke through the marshes of the river land to the east of the Thames Estuary and joined the waters of the English Channel. The Strait of Dover was then formed. At first it may have been narrow enough for animals to swim across or, at any rate, for the rude river boats or rafts of the early colonists to be paddled over in safety between tides. Gradually, however, the strait grew wider and wider; the chalk cliffs, long undermined by boring molluscs and scouring shingle, were torn down by great billows during winter storms.

It may be that for a long period after the North Sea and English Channel were united, the Dogger Bank remained an island, and that there were other islands between Heligoland and the English coast. Pliny, who had served with the Roman army in Germany, writing in the first century of our era, refers to twenty-three islands between the Texel and the Eider in Schleswig- Holstein. Seven of these have since vanished. The west coast of Schleswig has, during the past eighteen hundred years, suffered greatly from erosion, and alluvial plains that formerly yielded rich harvests are now repre- sented by sandbanks. The Goodwin Sands, which stretch for about ten miles off the Kentish coast, were once part of the fertile estate of Earl Godwin which was destroyed and engulfed by a great storm towards the end of the eleventh century. The Gulf of Zuyder Zee was formerly a green plain with many towns and villages. Periodic inundations since the Roman period have de- stroyed flourishing Dutch farms and villages and eaten far into the land. There are records of storm-floods that drowned on one occasion 20,000, and on another no

70 ANCIENT MAN IN I^RITAIN

fewer than 100,000 inhabitants.^ It is beheved that large tracts of land, the remnants of the ancient North Sea land-bridge, have been engulfed since about 3000 B.C., as a result not merely of erosion but the gradual sub- mergence of the land. This date is suggested by Mr. Clement Reid.

"The estimate", he says, "may have to be modified as we obtain better evidence; but it is as well to realize clearly that we are not dealing with a long period of great geological antiquity; we are dealing with times wiien the Egyptian, Babylonian, and Minoan (Cretan) civilizations flourished. Northern Europe was then probably barbarous, and metals had not come into use;'- but the amber trade of the Baltic was probably in full swing. Rumours of any great disaster, such as the submergence of thousands of square miles and the dis- placement of large populations, might spread far and wide along the trade routes." It may be that the legend of the Lost Atlantis was founded on reports of such a disaster, that must have occurred when areas like the Dogger Bank were engulfed. It may be too that the gradual wasting away of lands that have long since vanished propelled migrations of peoples towards the smiling coasts of England. According to Ammianus the Druids stated that some of the inhabitants of Gaul were descendants of refugees from sea-invaded areas.

The gradual sinking of the land and the process of coast erosion has greatly altered the geography of Eng- land. The beach on which Julius Caesar landed has long since vanished, the dwellings of the ancient Azilian and Maglemosian colonists, who reached England in post-Glacial times, have been sunk below the E!nglish Channel. When Tilbury Docks were being excavated

' The datet of the greatest disasters on record are 1421, ij^j, and 1570. There were also terrible inundations in the seventeenth and finhtci-nth centuries, and in 18^5 and 1855. * It was not necessarily barbarous bicausc inital weapons had not bicn invented.

ANCIENT MARINERS REACH BRITAIN 71

Roman remains were found embedded in clay several feet below high-water mark. Below several layers of peat and mud, and immediately under a bank of sand in which were fragments of decomposed wood, was found the human skeleton known as "Tilbury man". The land in this area was originally 80 feet above its present level. ^ But while England was sinking Scot- land was rising. The MacArthur cave at Oban, in which Azilian hunters and fishermen made their home on the sea-beach, is now about 30 feet above the old sea-level.

Before Dover Strait had been widened by the gradual sinking of the land and the process of coast erosion, and before the great islands had vanished from the southern part of the North Sea, the early hunters and fishermen could have experienced no great difficulty in reaching England. It is possible that the Azilian, Tardenoisian, and Maglemosian peoples had made considerable pro- gress in the art of navigation. Traces of the Tarde- noisian industry have been obtained in Northern Egypt, along the ancient Libyan coast of North Africa where a great deal of land has been submerged, and especially at Tunis, and in Algiers, in Italy, and in England and Scodand, as has been noted. There were boats on the Mediterranean at a very early period. The island of Crete was reached long before the introduction of copper- working by seafarers who visited the island of Melos, and there obtained obsidian (natural glass) from which sharp implements were fashioned. Egyptian mariners, who dwelt on the Delta coast, imported cedar, not only from Lebanon but from Morocco, as has been found from the evidence afforded by mummies packed with the sawdust of cedar from the Atlas Mountains.^ When this trade with Morocco began it is impossible to say

' Submerged Forests, p. 1 20.

2 The Cairo Scientific Jouruii!, Vol. Ml. No. j* (May, 1909), p loj.

72 ANCIHNT MAX l.\ BRITAIN

with certainty. Loiifr before 3000 B.C., however, the Hgyptians were building boats that were fitted with masts and sails. The ancient mariners were active as explorers and traders before implements of copper came into use.

Here we touch on a very interesting problem. Where were boats first invented and the art of navigation de- veloped? Rafts and floats formed by tying together two trees or, as in Egypt, two bundles of reeds, were in use at a very early period in various countries. In Baby- lonia the "kufa", a great floating basket made water- tight with pitch or covered with skins, was an early invention. It was used as it still is for river ferry boats. But ships were not developed from "kufas ". The dug- out canoe is one of the early prototypes of the modern ocean-going vessel. It reached this country before the Neolithic industry was introduced, and during that period when England was slowly sinking and Scotland was gradually rising. Dug-out canoes continued to come during the so-called " Neolithic" stage of culture ere yet the sinking and rising of land had ceased. "That Neolithic man lived in Scotland during the formation of this beach (the 45- to 50-foot beach) is proved", wrote the late Professor James Geikie, "by the frequent occurrence in it of his relics. At Perth, for example, a dug-out canoe of pine was met with towards the bottom of the carse clays; and similar finds have frequently been recorded from the contemporaneous deposits in the valleys of the Forth and the Clyde."'

How did early man come to invent the dug-out? Not only did he hollow out a tree trunk by the laborious pro- cess of burning and by chipping with a flint adze, he dressed the trunk so that his boat could be balanced on the water. The early shipbuilders had to learn, and

' Aiiti</Hity 0/ .yfiin in Rurofir. p. 274, Edinburgh, 1914. Tlir term " Neolithic" is here rather va^ue. It ajiplicit to the Azih'ans and Ma^leniosiaiis us well as to later peoples.

ANCIENT MARINERS REACH BRITAIN 73

did learn, for themselves, "the values of length and beam, of draught and sweet lines, of straight keel ; with high stem to breast a wave and high stern to repel a following sea". The fashioning of a sea-worthy, or even a river-worthy boat, must have been in ancient times as difficult a task as was the fashioning of the first aeroplane in our own day. Many problems had to be solved, many experiments had to be made, and, no doubt, many tragedies took place before the first safe model-boat was paddled across a river. The early experimenters may have had shapes of vessels suggested to them by fish and birds, and especially by the aquatic birds that paddled past them on the river breast with dignity and ease. But is it probable that the first experiments were made with trees? Did early man undertake the laborious task of hewing down tree after tree to shape new models, until in the end he found on launching the correctly shaped vessel that its balance was perfect? Or was the dug-out canoe an imitation of a boat already in existence, just as a modern ship built of steel or concrete is an imitation of the earlier wooden ships? The available evidence regarding this important phase of the shipping problem tends to show that, before the dug-out was invented, boats were constructed of light material. Ancient Egypt was the earliest ship- building country in the world, and all ancient ships were modelled on those that traded on the calm waters of the Nile. Yet Egypt is an almost treeless land. There the earliest boats — broad, light skiffs — were made by bind- ing together long bundles of the reeds of papyrus. Ropes were twisted from papyrus as well as from palm fibre.^ It would appear that, before dug-outs were made, the problems of boat construction were solved by those who had invented papyri skiffs and skin boats. In the case of the latter the skins were stretched round a frame-

1 Brrasted. A llistoty of EK>pt. PP- 9^-

74 ANCIENT MAN IN BRITAIN

u'drk, sewed together and made watertight wiih pitch. We still refer to the "seams " and the "skin " of a boat.

The art of boat-building spread far and wide from the area of origin. Until recently the Chinese were building junks of the same type as they did four or five hundred years earlier. These junks have been compared by more than one writer to the deep-sea boats of the Egyptian Empire period. The Papuans make "dug- outs " and carve eyes on the prows as did the ancient Egyptians and as do the Maltese, Chinese, &c., in our own day. Even when only partly hollowed, the Papuan boats have perfect balance in the water as soon as they are launched.^ The Polynesians performed religious ceremonies when cutting down trees and con- structing boats.- In their incantations, &c., the lore of boat-building was enshrined and handed down. The Polynesian boat was dedicated to the 7710-0 (dragon-god). We still retain a relic of an ancient religious ceremony when a bottle of wine is broken on the bows of a vessel just as it is being launched.

After the Egyptians were able to secure supplies of cedar wood from the Atlas Mountains or Lebanon, by drifting rafts of lashed trees along the coast line, they made dug-out vessels of various shapes, as can be seen in the tomb pictures of the Old Kingdom period. These dug-outs were apparently modelled on the earlier papyri and skin boats. A ship with a square sail spread to the wind is depicted on an Ancient Egyptian two-handed jar in the British Museum, which is of pre-dynastic age and may date to anything like 4000 or 5000 B.C. At that remote period the art of navigation was already well advanced, no doubt on account of the experience gained on the calm waters of the Nile.

' WoUaston, f^x"'''" <""i Pupuana (The Stone Agx To-day in Dutch Sew Ouiuen). London. iq\2. pp. 53 W seg.

- Wcstrrvrlt, l.ff^ends of Old Honolulu, pp. 97 rl seq.

ANCIENT MARINERS REACH BRITAIN 75

The existence of these boats on the Nile at a time when great race migrations were in progress may well account for the early appearance of dug-outs in Northern Europe. One of the Clyde canoes, found embedded in Clyde silt twenty-five feet above the present sea-level, was found to have a plug of cork w^hich could only have come from the area in which cork trees grow — Spain,

#Mv^VAWAWrt;^

('^)

(fl) Sketch i)f a boat from Victoria Nyanza, after the drawing In Sir Henry Stanley's Darkest Africa. Only the handles of the oars are shown. In outline the positions of some of the oarsmen are roughly represented.

(i) Crude drawing of a similar boat carved upon the rocks In Sweden during the Early Bronze Age. after Montelius. By comparison with (a) it will be seen that the vertical projections were probably intended to represent the oarsmen.

The upturned hook-like appendage at the stern is found in ancient Egyptian and Mediterranean ships, but is absent in the modern African vessel shown in (a). These fig^ires are taken from Elliot Smith's Ancient Mariners (1918).

Southern France, or Italy.^ It may have been manned by the Azilians of Spain whose rock paintings date from the Transition period. Similar striking evidence of the drift of culture from the Mediterranean area towards Northern Europe is obtained from some of the rock paintings and carvings of Sweden. Among the canoes depicted are some with distinct Mediterranean character- istics. One at Tegneby in Bohuslan bears a striking resemblance to a boat seen by Sir Henr>^ Stanley on

* Lyell, Autiquily 0/ Man. p. 48.

76 ANCIEXT MAN IN BRITAIN

Lake Victoria Nyan/a. It set-nis undoubted that the designs are of common origin, although separated not only by centuries but by barriers of mountain, desert, and sea extending many hundreds of miles. From the Maglemosian boat the Viking ship was ultimately developed; the unprogressive Victoria Nyanza boat- builders continued through the Ages repeating the design adopted by their remote ancestors. In both vessels the keel projects forward, and the figure-head is that of a goat or ram. The northern vessel has the characteristic inward curving stern of ancient Egyptian ships. As the rock on which it was carved is situated in a metal-yielding area, the probability is that this type of vessel is a relic of the visits paid by searchers for metals in ancient times, who established colonies of dark miners among the fair Northerners and introduced the elements of southern culture.

The ancient boats found in Scotland are of a variety of types. One of those at Glasgow la\', when discovered, nearly vertical, with prow uppermost as if it had foundered; it had been built " of several pieces of oak, though with- out ribs". Another had the remains of an outrigger attached to it: beside another, which had been partly hollowed by fire, lay two planks that appear to have been wash-boards like those on a Sussex dug-out. A Clyde clinker-built boat, eighteen feet long, had a keel and a base of oak to which ribs had been attached. An interesting find at Kinaven in Aberdeenshire, several miles distant from the Ythan, a famous pearling river, was a dug-out eleven feet long, and about four feet broad. It lay embedded at the head of a small ravine in five feet of peat which ^appears to have been the bed of an ancient lake. Near it were the stumps of big oaks, apparently of the Upper Forestian period.

Among the longest of the ancient boats that have been discovered are one forty-two feet long, with an animal

ANCIENT MARINERS REACH BRITAIN 77

head on the prow, from Loch Arthur, near Dumfries, one thirty-five long from near the River Arun in Sussex, one sixty-three feet long- excavated near the Rother in Kent, one forty -eight feet six inches long, found at Brigg, Lincolnshire, with wooden patches where she had sprung a leak, and signs of the caulking of cracks and small holes with moss.

These vessels do not all belong to the same period. The date of the Brigg boat is, judging from the geo- logical strata, between iioo and 700 B.C. It would appear that some of the Clyde vessels found at twenty- five feet abpve the present sea-level are even older. Beside one Clyde boat was found an axe of polished greenstone similar to the axes used by Polynesians and others in shaping dug-outs. This axe may, however, have been a religious object. To the low bases of some vessels were fixed ribs on which skins were stretched. These boats were eminently suitable for rough seas, being more buoyant than dug-outs. According to Himilco the inhabitants of the CEstrymnides, the islands "rich in tin and lead", had most sea-worthy skiffs. "These people do not make pine keels, nor", he says, " do they know how to fashion them ; nor do they make fir barks, but, with wonderful skill, fashion skiffs \vith sewn skins. In these hide-bound vessels, they skim across the ocean." Apparently they were as daring mariners as the Oregon Islanders of whom Washington Irving has written :

" It is surprising to see uitli what fearless unconcern these savages venture in their light barks upon the roughest and most tempestuous seas. They seem to ride upon the wave like sea-fowl. Should a surge throw the canoe upon its side, and endanger its over turn, those to the windward lean over the upper gunwale, thrust their paddles deep into the wave, and by this action not merely regain an equilibrium, but give their bark a \ igorous impulse forward."

78 ANCIENT MAN IN BRITAIN

The ancient mariners whose rude vessels have been excavated around our coasts were the forerunners of the Celtic sea-traders, who, as the Gaelic evidence shows, had names not only for the North Sea and the English Channel but also for the Mediterranean Sea. They cultivated what is known as the "sea sense", and de- veloped shipbuilding and the art of navigation in accord- ance with local needs. When Julius Caesar came into conflict with the Veneti of Brittany he tells that their vessels were greatly superior to those of the Romans. "The bodies of the ships", he says, "were built en- tirely of oak, stout enough to withstand any shock or violence. . . . Instead of cables for their anchors they used iron chains. . . . The encounter of our fleet with these ships was of such a nature that our fleet excelled in speed alone, and the plying of oars; for neither could our ships injure theirs with their rams, so great was their strength, nor was a weapon easily cast up to them owing to their height. . . . About 220 of their ships . . . sailed forth from the harbour." In this great allied fleet were vessels from our own country.^

It must not be imagined that the "sea sense" was cultivated because man took pleasure in risking the perils of the deep. It was stern necessity that at the beginning compelled him to venture on long voyages. After England was cut off from France the peoples who had adopted the Neolithic industry must have either found it absolutely necessary to seek refuge in Britain, or were attracted towards it by reports of prospectors who found it to be suitable for residence and trade.

>Ca.sars (iallk Har, Bo.k HI, c. ij-ij.

CHAPTER VIII Neolithic Trade and Industries

Attractions of Ancient Britain— Romans search for Gold, Silver, Pearls, &c.— The Lure of Precious Stones and Metals— Distribution of Ancient British Population— Neolithic Settlements in Flint-yielding- Areas —Trade in Flint— Settlements on Lias Formation— Implements from Basic Rocks— Trade in Body-painting: Materials— Search for Pearls- Gold in Britain and Ireland— Agriculture— The Story of Barley— Neolithic Settlers in Ireland— Scottish Neolithic Traders— Neolithic Peoples not Wanderers — Trained Neolithic Craftsmen.

The "drift" of peoples into Britain which began in Aurignacian times continued until the Roman period. There were definite reasons for early intrusions as there were for the Roman invasion. " Britain contains to reward the conqueror", Tacitus wrote/ "mines of gold and silver and other metals. The sea produces pearls." According to Suetonius, who at the end of the first century of our era wrote the Lives of the Ccesars, Julius Caesar invaded Britain with the desire to enrich himself with the pearls found on different parts of the coast. On his return to Rome he presented a corselet of British pearls to the goddess Venus. He was in need of money to further his political ambitions. He found what he required elsewhere, however. After the death of Queen Cleopatra sufficient gold and silver flowed to Rome from Egypt to reduce the loan rate of interest from 12 to 4 per cent. Spain likewise contributed its share to enrich the great predatory state of Rome.-

Long ages before the Roman period the early peoples

' Agricoln, Cliap. XII. - Smith, Roman Eiiif>ire.

ACIEXT MAX IX BRITAIX

of peuls, p»o	ckms Stones, and
--?? had a	irligioas wahie.
rat quail	tides of gold «o
	ndals ia dbeir
-ts.	PkaeaduMiife of
~ -	* ^dieRonans
	^and nanjof
	7 r in tbean ".
	- J in these
	^ Ajto-
	•«'-?-

Africa- I

jn- 5^ «=i »3^

OMJPtfIDD Jl3'

I3:x

NEOLITHIC TRADE AND INDUSTRIES 8i

known to the ancient mariners who reached our shores in vessels of Mediterranean type.

The colonists who were attracted to Britain at various periods settled in those districts most suitable for their modes of life. It was necessary that they should obtain an adequate supply of the materials from which their implements and weapons were manufactured. The dis- tribution of the population must have been determined by the resources of the various districts.

At the present day the population of Britain is most dense in those areas in which coal and iron are found and where commerce is concentrated. In ancient times, before metals were used, it must have been densest in those areas where flint was found — that is, on the upper chalk formations. If worked flints are discovered in areas which do not have deposits of flint, the only con- clusion that can be drawn is that the flint was obtained by means of trade, just as Mediterranean shells were in Aurignacian and Magdalenian times obtained by hunters who settled in Central Europe. In Devon and Cornwall, for instance, large numbers of flint implements have been found, yet in these counties suitable flint was f'xceedingly scarce in ancient times, except in East Devon, where, however, the surface flint is of inferior character. In Wilts and Dorset, however, the finest quality of flint was found, and it was no doubt from these areas that the early settlers in Cornwall and Devon received their chief supplies of the raw material, if not of the manufactured articles.

In England, as on the Continent, the most abundant finds of the earliest flint implements have been made in those areas where the early hunters and fishermen could obtain their raw materials. River drift implements are discovered in largest numbers on the chalk formations of south-eastern England between the Wash and the estuary of the Thames.

(I>217) 7

S2 AXCIHXT MAX I\ UKirAlX

The Xeolithic peoples, who made less use of horn and bone than did the Azilians and Ma^lemosians, had many village settlements on the upper chalk in Dorset and Wiltshire, and especially at Avebury where there were veritable flint factories, and near the famous flint mines at Grimes Graves in the vicinity of Weeting in Norfolk and at Cissbury Camp not far from Worthing in Sussex. Implements were likewise made of basic rocks, including quartzite, ironstone, greenstone, horn- blende schist, granite, mica-schist, &c. ; while ornaments were made of jet, a hydrocarbon compound allied to cannel coal, which takes on a fine polish, Kimeridge shale and ivory. Withal, like the Aurignacians and Magdalenians, the Neolithic-industry people used body paint, which was made with pigments of ochre, hc'ema- tite, an ore of iron, and ruddle, an earthy variety of iron ore.

In those districts, where the raw materials for stone implements, ornaments, and body paint were found, traces survive of the activities of the Neolithic peoples. Their graves of long-barrow type are found not only in the chalk areas but on the margins of the lias formations. Haematite is found in large quantities in West Cumber- land and north Lancashire and in south-western Eng- land, while the chief source of jet is Whitby in Yorkshire, where it occurs in large quantities in beds of the Upper Lias shale.

Mr. W. J. Perry, of Manchester University, who has devoted special attention to the study of the distribution of megalithic monuments, has been drawing attention to the interesting association of these monuments with geological formations.^ In the Avebury district stone circles, dolmens, chambered barrows, long barrows, and Neolithic settlements are numerous; another group of megalithic monuments occurs in Oxford on the margin

■ l^ioccedings of the Mamhester Literary ami Ptiilosof<hiral Sorifty. 19JI.

ENGLAND & WALES

showing: distribution of

Megalithic Monuments

and deposits of metals and minerals

Enjj'lish ^flle9 o lo 20 30 40 50

Areas in which Megalithic Monuments ..•.••

are situated v-V-.v

84 AXCIKNT MAN IN liKlTAlN

of tlie lias formation, and at the south-end of the great iron field extending as far as the Clevelands. Accord- ing to the memoir of the geological survey, there are traces of ancient surface iron-workings in the Middle Lias formation of Oxfordshire, where red and brown haematite were found. Mr. Perry notes that there are megalithic monuments in the vicinity of all these sur- face workings, as at Fawler, Adderbury, Hook Norton, Woodstock, Steeple Aston, and Hanbury. Apparently the Neolithic peoples were attracted to the lias formation because it contains haematite, ochre, shale, &c. There are significant megaliths in the Whitby region where the jet is so plentiful. Amber was obtained from the east coast of England and from the Baltic.

The Neolithic peoples appear to have searched for pearls, which are found in a number of English, Welsh, Scottish, and Irish rivers, and in the vicinity of most, if not all, of these megaliths occur. Gold was the first metal worked by man, and it appears to have attracted some of the early peoples who settled in Britain. The ancient seafarers who found their way northward may have included searchers for gold and silver. The latter metal was at one time found in great abundance in Spain, while gold w-as at one time fairly plentiful in south-western Elngland, in North Wales, in various parts of Scotland and especially in Lanarkshire, and in north-eastern, eastern, and western Ireland. That there was a "drift" of civilized peoples into Britain and Ireland during the period of the Neolithic industry is made evident by the fact that the agricultural mode of life was introduced. Barley does not grow wild in Europe. The nearest area in which it grew wild and was earliest cultivated was the delta area of Egypt, the region from which the earliest vessels set out to explore the shores of the Mediterranean. It may be that the barley seeds were carried to Britain not bv the overland routes alone

XEOLITIIIC TRADE AND INDUSTRIES S5

to Channel ports, but also by the seafarers whose boats, like the Glasgow one with the cork plug, coasted round by Spain and Brittany, and crossed the Channel to south- western England and thence went northward to Scot- land. As Irish flints and ground axe-heads occur chiefly in Ulster, it may be that the drift of early Neolithic settlers into County Antrim, in which gold was also found, was from south-western Scotland. The Neolithic settlement at Whitepark Bay, five miles from the Giant's Causeway, was embedded at a considerable depth, show- ing that there has been a sinking of the land in this area since the Neolithic industry was introduced.

Neolithic remains are widely distributed over Scot- land, but these have not received the intensive study devoted to similar relics in England. Mr. Ludovic Mann, the Glasgow archaeologist, has, however, com- piled interesting data regarding one of the local indus- tries that bring out the resource and activities of early man. On the island of Arran is a workable variety of the natural volcanic glass, called pitch-stone, that of other parts of Scotland and of Ireland being " too much cracked into small pieces to be of use ". It was used by the Neolithic settlers in Arran for manufacturing arrow- heads, and as it was imported into Bute, Ayrshire, and Wigtownshire, a trade in this material must have existed. "If", writes Mr. Mann, "the stone was not locally worked up into implements in Bute, it was so manipu- lated on the mainland, where workshops of the Neolithic period and the immediately succeeding overlap period yielded long fine flakes, testifying to greater expertness in manufacturing there than is shown by the remains in the domestic sites yet awaiting adequate exploration in Arran. The explanation may be that the Wigtownshire flint knappers, accustomed to handle an abundance of flint, were more proficient than in most other places, and that the pitch-stone was brought to them as experts,

SG ASClEXr MAX l.\ ilUlTAlX

because the material required even more skilful hand- ling than flint ".^ In like manner obsidian, as has been noted, was imported into Crete from the island of Melos by seafarers, long before the introduction of metal working.'^

It will be seen that the Neolithic peoples were no mere wandering hunters, as some have represented them to have been, but they had their social organiza- tion, their industries, and their system of trading by land and sea. They settled not only in those areas where they could procure a regular food supply, but those also in which they obtained the raw materials for implements, weapons, and the colouring material which they used for religious purposes. They made pottery for grave offerings and domestic use, and wooden imple- ments regarding which, however, little is known. Withal, they had their spinners and weavers. The conditions prevailing in Neolithic settlements must have been similar to those of later times. There must have been systems of laws to make trade and peaceful social intercourse possible, and no doubt these had, as else- where, a religious basis. Burial customs indicate a uniformity of beliefs over wide areas. The skill dis- played in working stone was so great that it cannot now be emulated. Ripple-flaking has long been a lost art. Craftsmen must have undergone a prolonged period of training which was intelligently controlled under settled conditions of life. It is possible that the so-called Neo- lithic folk were chiefly foreigners who exploited the riches of the country. The evidence in this connection will be found in the next chapter.

' Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, 1917-18. pp. ngetseq. " See my Myths of Crete and pre- Hellenic Europe under "Obsidian" in Index.

CHAPTER IX

Metal Workers and Megalithic Monuments

"Broad-heads" of Bronze Age— The Irish Evidence— Bronze Intro- duced by Traders— How Metals were Traced— A Metal Working- Tribe— Damnonii in England, Scotland, and Ireland— Miners as Slaves— The Lot of Women Workers— Megalithic Monuments in English Metal-yielding Areas— Stone Circles in Barren Localities— Early Colonies of Easterners in Spain— Egyptian and Babylonian Relics associated with British Jet and Baltic Amber- A New Flint Industry of Eastern Origin— British Bronze identical with Continental— Ancient Furnaces of Common Origin — "Stones of Worship" adorned with Metals— The " Maggot God " of Stone Circles— Ancient Egyptian Beads at Stonehenge— Earliest Authentic Date in British History — The Aim of Conquests.

It used to be thought that the introduction of metal working into Britain was the result of an invasion of alien peoples, who partly exterminated and partly en- slaved the long-headed Neolithic inhabitants. This view was based on the evidence afforded by a new type of grave known as the "Round Barrow". In graves of this class have been found Bronze Age relics, a distinc- tive kind of pottery, and skulls of broad-heads. The invasion of broad-heads undoubtedly took place, and their burial customs suggest that their religious beliefs were not identical with those of the long -heads. But it remains to be proved that they were the actual introducers of the bronze industry. They do not appear to have reached Ireland, where bronze relics are as- sociated with a long-headed people of comparatively low stature.

ss

ANCIENT MAN IN B 1^1 IAIN

The early Irish bronze forms were obviously obtained from Spain, while early English bronze forms resemble those of F"rance and Italy. Cutting implements were the first to be introduced. This fact does not suggest

l,oiig-head (DoliiJiocephalic) Skull

u:,^

liroad-head (Brachycephalic) Skull

specimens were found in " Round " Barrow!> i of Yorkshire

the East Riding

that a contjuest took place. The implements may have been obtained by traders. Britain apparently had in those ancient times its trading colonies, and was visited by active and enterprising seafarers.

The discovery of metals in Britain and Ireland was,

METAL WORKERS 89

no doubt, first made by prospectors who had obtained experience in working them elsewhere. They may have simply come to exploit the country. How these men conducted their investigations is indicated by the report found in a British Museum manuscript, dating from about 1603, in which the prospector gives his reason for believing that gold was to be found on Crawford Moor in Lanarkshire. He tells that he saw among the rocks what Scottish miners call "mothers" and English miners "leaders" or "metalline fumes". It was believed that the "fumes" arose from veins of metal and coloured the rocks as smoke passing upward through a tunnel blackens it, and leaves traces on the outside. He professed to be able to distinguish between the colours left by "fumes" of iron, lead, tin, copper, or silver. On Crawford Moor he found " sparr, keel, and brimstone " between rocks, and regarded this discovery as a sure indication that gold was in situ. The " mothers " or "leaders" were more pronounced than any he had ever seen in Cornwall, Somersetshire, about Keswick, or " any other mineral parts wheresoever I have travelled ".' Gold was found in this area of Lanarkshire in consider- able quantities, and was no doubt worked in ancient times. Of special interest in this connection is the fact that it was part of the territory occupied by Damnonians,^ who appear to have been a metal -working people. Besides occupying the richest metal-yielding area in Scotland, the Damnonians were located in Devon and Cornwall, and in the east-midland and western parts of Ireland, in which gold, copper, and tin-stone were found as in south-western England. The Welsh Dyfneint (Devon) is supposed by some to be connected with a form of this tribal name. Another form in a Yarrow inscrip- tion is Dumnogeni. In Ireland Inber Domnann is the

> R. W. Cochrane Patrick, Early Records relating to Mining in Scotland. Edinburgh, 1878, p. xxviii. * The Damnonii ot Dumnonii.

go ANCIENT MAN IN BRITAIN

old name of Malahide Bay north of Dublin. Domnu, the genitive of which is Domnann, was the name of an ancient goddess. In the Irish manuscripts these people are referred to as Fir-domnann/ and associated witli the Fir-bolg (the men with sacks). A sack-carrying people are represented in Spanish rock paintings that date from the Azilian till early " Bronze Age" times. In an Irish manuscript which praises the fair and tall people, the i'ir-boig and Fir-domnann are included among the black-eyed and black-haired people, the descendants of slaves and churls, and "the promoters of discord among the people ".

The reference to " slaves " is of special interest because the lot of the working miners was in ancient days an extremely arduous one. In one of his collected records which describes the method "of the greatest antiquity " Diodorus Siculus (a.d. first century) tells how gold- miners, with lights bound on their foreheads, drove galleries into the rocks, the fragments of which were carried out by frail old men and boys. These were broken small by men in the prime of life. The pounded stone was then ground in handmills by women: three women to a mill and "to each of those who bear this lot, death is better than life". Afterwards the milled quartz was spread out on an inclined table. Men threw water on it, work it through their fingers, and dabbed it with sponges until the lighter matter was removed and the gold was left behind. The precious metal was placed in a clay crucible, which was kept heated for five days and five nights. It may be that the Scandinavian references to the nine maidens who turn the handle of the "world mill" which grinds out metal and soil, and the Celtic references to the nine maidens who are associ-

' The Fir-domnann were known as "the men who used to deepen the earth", or "dig pits ■ Professor J. MacNeil in Labor Gabula, p. 119. They were thus called " Dij^gers" like the modern Australians. The name of the goddess referred to the depths (the I'nder- world). It i^ probable she was the personification of the metal-yielding earth.

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ated with the Celtic cauldron, survive from beliefs that reflected the habits and methods of the ancient metal workers.

It is difficult now to trace the various areas in which gold was anciently found in our islands. But this is not to be wondered at. In Egypt there were once rich goldfields, especially in the Eastern Desert, where about 100 square miles were so thoroughly worked in ancient times that "only the merest traces of gold remain ".^ Gold, as has been stated, was formerly found in south- western England, North Wales, and, as historical records, archaeological data, and place names indicate, in various parts of Scotland and Ireland. During the period of the " Great Thaw" a great deal of alluvial gold must have distributed throughout the country. Silver was found in various parts. In Sutherland it is mixed with gold as it is elsewhere with lead. Copper was worked in a number of districts where the veins cannot in modern times be economically worked, and tin was found in Ireland and Scotland as well as in south-western England, where mining operations do not seem to have been begun, as Principal Sir John Rhys has shown, ^ until after the supplies of surface tin were exhausted. Of special interest in connection with this problem is the association of megalithic monuments with ancient mine workings. An interesting fact to be borne in mind in connection with these relics of the activities and beliefs of the early peoples is that they represent a distinct culture of complex character. Mr. T. Eric Peet • shows that the megalithic buildings "occupy a very remark- able position along a vast seaboard which includes the Mediterranean coast of Africa and the Atlantic coast of Europe. In other words, they lie entirely along a

' Alford, A Report on Ancient and Prospective Gold ^flning in Egypt, ipoo. and Mining in Egypt (by Egfyptologist).

"^ Celtic Britain, pp. 44 et seq. (4th edition).

' Rough Slone Monuments, London, 1912, pp. 147-8.

92

ANCIENT MAN IN IIKITAIN

natural sea route." He gives forcible reasons for arriv- ing at the conclusion that "it is impossible to consider megalithic building as a mere phase through which many nations passed, and it must therefore have been a system originating with one race, and spreading far and wide, owing either to trade influence or migration". He adds:

" Great movements of races by sea were not by any means unusual in primitive days. In fact, the sea has always been less of an obstacle to early man than the land with its deserts, mountains, and unfordable rivers. There is nothing in- herently impossible or even improbable in the suggestion thai a gTeat immigration brought the megalithic monuments from .Sweden to India or vice versa. History is full of instances of such migrations."

But there must have been a definite reason for these race movements. It cannot be that in all cases they were forced merely by natural causes, such as changes of climate, invasions of the sea, and the drying up of ^ once fertile districts, or^by the propelling influences of stronger races in every country from the British Isles to Japan — that is, in all countries in which megalithic monuments of similar type are found. The fact that the megalithic monuments are distributed along "a vast seaboard " suggests that they were the work of people who had acquired a culture of common origin, and were attracted to different countries for the same reason. What that attraction was is indicated by studying the elements of the megalithic culture. In a lecture delivered before the British Association in Manchester in 1915, Mr. W. J. Perry threw much light on the problem by showing that the carriers of the culture practised weaving linen, and in some cases the use of Tyrian purple, pearls, precious stones, metals, and conch-shell trumpets, as well as curious beliefs and superstitions attached to the

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latter, while they ''adopted certain definite metallurgical methods, as well as mining". Mr. Perry's paper was subsequently published by the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society. It shows that in Western Europe the megalithic monuments are distributed in those areas in which ancient pre-Roman and pre-Greek mine work- ings and metal washings have been traced. " The same correspondence", he writes, "seems to hold in the case of England and Wales. In the latter country the counties where megalithic structures abound are pre- cisely those where mineral deposits and ancient mine- workings occur. In England the grouping in Cumber- land, Westmorland, Northumberland, Durham, and Derbyshire is precisely that of old mines; in Cornwall the megalithic structures are mainly grouped west of Ealmouth, precisely in that district where mining has always been most active."

Pearls, amber, coral, jet, &c., were searched for as well as metals. The megalithic monuments near pearling rivers, in the vicinity of Whitby, the main source of jet, and in Denmark and the Baltic area w^here amber was found were, in all likelihood, erected by people who had come under the spell of the same ancient culture.

When, therefore, we come to deal with groups of monuments in areas which were unsuitable for agricul- ture and unable to sustain large populations, a reasonable conclusion to draw is that precious metals, precious stones, or pearls were once found near them. The pearling beds may iTave been destroyed or greatly re- duced in value, ^ or the metals may have been worked out, leaving but slight if any indication that they were ever in situ. Reference has been made to the traces left by ancient miners in Egypt where no gold is now

' The Scottish pearling^ beds have suffered great injury in historic times. They are the property of the "Crown", and no one takes any interest in them except the "pearl poachers ".

94 AXCIHXT MAN I\ BRITAIN

found. In our own day rich goldfields in Australia and North America have been exhausted. It would be unreasonable for us to suppose that the same thing did not happen in our country, even although but slight traces of the precious metal can now be obtained in areas which were thoroughly explored by ancient miners.

When early man reached Scotland in search of suit- able districts in which to settle, he was not likely to be attracted by the barren or semi-barren areas in which nature grudged soil for cultivation, where pasture lands were poor and the coasts were lashed by great billows for the greater part of the year, and the tempests of winter and spring were particularly severe. Yet in such places as Carloway, fronting the Atlantic on the west coast of Lewis, and at Stennis in Orkney, across the dangerous Pentland Firth, are found the most imposing stone circles north of Stonehenge and Avebury. Traces of tin have been found in Lewis, and Orkney has yielded traces of lead, including silver-lead, copper and zinc, and has flint in glacial drift. Traces of tin have likewise been found on the mainlands of Ross-shire and Argyll- shire, in various islands of the Hebrides and in Stirling- shire. The great Stonehenge circle is like the Callernish and Stennis circles situated in a semi-barren area, but it is an area where surface tin and gold were anciently obtained. One cannot help concluding that the early people, who populated the wastes of ancient Britain and erected megalithic monuments, were attracted by some- thing more tangible than the charms of solitude and wild scenery. They searched for and found the things they required. If they found gold, it must be recognized that there was a psychological motive for the search for this precious metal. They valued gold, or whatever other metal they worked in bleak and isolated places, because they had learned to value it elsewhere.

NVho were the people that first searched for, found,

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and used metals in Western Europe? Some have assumed that the natives themselves did so "as a matter of course". Such a theory is, however, difficult to maintain. Gold is a useless metal for all practical pur- poses. It is too soft for implements. Besides, it cannot be found or worked except by those who have acquired a great deal of knowledge and skill. The men who first "washed" it from the soil in Britain must have obtained the necessary knowledge and skill in a country where it was more plentiful and much easier to work, and where — and this point is a most important one — the magical and religious beliefs connected with gold have a very definite history. Copper, tin, and silver were even more difficult to find and work in Britain. The ancient people who reached Britain and first worked metals or collected ores were not the people who were accustomed to use implements of bone, horn, and flint, and had been attracted to its shores merely because fish, fowl, deer, and cows, were numerous. The searchers for metals must have come from centres of Eastern civiliza- tion, or from colonies of highly skilled peoples that had been established in Western Europe. They did not necessarily come to settle permanently in Britain, but rather to exploit its natural riches.

This conclusion is no mere hypothesis. Siret,^ the Belgian archieologist, has discovered in southern Spain and Portugal traces of numerous settlements of Flasterners who searched for minerals, &c., long before the introduc- tion of bronze working in Western Europe. They came during the archaeological "Stone Age"; they even introduced some of the flint implements classed as Neolithic by the archaeologists of a past generation.

These Eastern colonists do not appear to have been an organized people. Siret considers that they were merely groups of people from Asia — probably the Syrian coast

> LAiithropologie. igai, contains a lonp account of his discov.-rics.

96 ANCIENT MAN IN BRITAIN

— who were in contact with Egypt. During the Empire period of Egypt, the Egyptian sphere of influence extended to the borders of Asia iMinor. At an earlier period Babylonian influence permeated the Syrian coast and part of Asia Minor. The religious beliefs of seafarers from Syria were likely therefore to bear traces of the Egyptian and Babylonian religious systems. Evidence that this was the case has been forthcoming in Spain.

These Eastern colonists not only operated in Spain and Portugal, but established contact with Northern Europe, They exported what they had searched for and found to their Eastern markets. No doubt, they employed native labour, but they do not appear to have instructed the natives how to make use of the ores they themselves valued so highly. In time they were expelled from Spain and Portugal by the people or mixed peoples who introduced the working of bronze and made use of bronze weapons. These bronze carriers and workers came from Central Europe, where colonies of peoples skilled in the arts of mining and metal work- ing had been established. In the Central European colonies /Egean and Danubian influences have been detected.

Among the archaeological finds, which prove that the Easterners settled in Iberia before bronze working was introduced among the natives, are idol-like objects made of hippopotamus ivory from Egypt, a shell {Dentalium elcpJiantum) from the Red Sea, objects made from ostrich eggs which must have been carried to Spain from Africa, alabaster perfume flasks, cups of marble and alabaster of Egyptian character which had been shaped with copper implements. Oriental painted vases with decorations in red, black, blue, and green, ^ mural paintings on layers of plaster, feminine statuettes in alabaster which Siret considers to be of Babylonian type,

• TliL- colours blue and Brecn were nbtaincil Irom copper.

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for they differ from JEgean and Egyptian statuettes, a cult object (found in graves) resembling the Egyptian ded amulet, &c. The Iberian burial places of these Eastern colonists have arched cupolas and entrance corridors of Egyptian-IMycenasan character.

Of special interest are the beautifully worked flints associated with these Eastern remains in Spain and Portugal. Siret draws attention to the fact that no trace has been found of "flint factories". This particular flint industry was an entirely new one. It was not a development of earlier flint-working in Iberia. Appar- endy the new industry, which suddenly appears in full perfection, was introduced by the Eastern colonists. It afterwards spread over the whole maritime west, includ- ing Scandinavia where the metal implements of more advanced countries were imitated in flint. This impor- tant fact emphasizes the need for caution in making use of such a term as " Neolithic Age ". Siret's view in this connection is that the Easterners, who established trading colonies in Spain and elsewhere, prevented the local use of metals which they had come to search for and export. It was part of their policy to keep the natives in ignor- ance of the uses to which metals could be put.

Evidence has been forthcoming that the operations of the Eastern colonies in Spain and Portugal were ex- tended towards the maritime north. Associated with the Oriential relics already referred to, Siret has dis- covered amber from the Baltic, jet from Britain (appar- ently from Whitby in Yorkshire) and the green-stone called "callais" usually found in beds of tin. The Eastern seafarers must have visited Northern Europe to exploit its virgin riches. A green-stone axe was found, as has been stated, near the boat with the cork plug, which lay embedded in Clyde silt at Glasgow. Artifacts of callais have been discovered in Brittany, in the south of France, in Portugal, and in south-eastern Spain. In the

98 ANCIENT MAN IN BRITAIN

latter area, as Sirct has proved, the Easterners worked silver-bearing lead and copper.

The colonists appear to have likewise searched for and found gold. A diadem of gold was discovered in a necropolis in the south of Spain, where some eminent ancient had been interred. This find is, however, an exception. Precious metals do not as a rule appear in the graves of the period under consideration.

As has been suggested, the Easterners who exploited the wealth of ancient Iberia kept the natives in ignor- ance. " This ignorance", Siret says, "was the guarantee of the prosperity of the commerce carried on by the strangers. . . . The first action of the East on the West was the exploitation for its exclusive and personal profit of the virgin riches of the latter." These early Westerners had no idea of the use and value of the metals lying on the surface of their native land, while the Orientals valued them, were in need of them, and were anxious to obtain them. As Siret puts it:

" The West was a cow to be milked, a sheep to be fleeced, a field to be cultivated, a mine to be exploited."

In the traditions preserved by classical writers, there are references to the skill and cunning of the Phoenicians in commerce, and in the exploitation of colonies founded among the ignorant Iberians. They did not inform rival traders where they found metals. "Formerly", as Strabo says, "the Phoenicians monopolized the trade from Gades (Cadiz) with the islanders (of the Cassiter- ides); and they kept the route a close secret." A vague ancient tradition is preserved by Pliny, who tells that "tin was first fetched from Cassiteris (the tin island) by Midacritus".' We owe it to the secretive Phoenicians that the problem of the Cassiterides still remains a difficult one to solve.

I yat. Uisi.. Vll. .sf'(57V S 197-

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To keep the native people ignorant the Easterners, Siret believes, forbade the use of metals in their own colonies. A direct result of this policy was the great development which took place in the manufacture of the beautiful flint implements already referred to. These the natives imitated, never dreaming that they were imi- tating some forms that had been developed by a people who used copper in their own country. When, therefore, we pick up beautiful Neolithic flints, we cannot be too sure that the skill displayed belongs entirely to the "Stone Age", or that the flints "evolved" from earlier native forms in those areas in which they are found.

The Easterners do not appear to have extracted the metals from their ores either in Iberia or in Northern Europe. Tin-stone and silver-bearing lead were used for ballast for their ships, and they made anchors of lead. Gold washed from river beds could be easily packed in small bulk. A people who lived by hunting and fishing were not likely to be greatly interested in the laborious process of gold-washing. Nor were they likely to attach to gold a magical and religious value as did the ancient Egyptians and Sumerians.

So far as can be gathered from the Iberian evidence, the period of exploitation by the colonists from the East was a somewhat prolonged one. How many centuries it covered we can only guess. It is of interest to find, in this connection, however, that something was known in Mesopotamia before 2000 B.C. regarding the natural riches of Western Europe. Tablets have recently been found on the site of Asshur, the ancient capital of Assyria, which was originally a Sumerian settlement. These make reference to the Empire of Sargon of Akkad {c. 2600 B.C.), which, according to tradition, extended from the Persian Gulf to the Syrian coast. Sargon was a great conqueror. "He poured out his glory over the world ", declares a tablet found a good many years ago.

loo ANCIENT MAN IN BRITAIN

It was believed, too, that Sargon embarked on the Medi- terranean and occupied Cyprus. The fresh evidence from the site of Asshur is to the eftect that he conquered Kaptara (? Crete) and '*the Tin Land beyond the Upper Sea " (the Mediterranean). The explanation may be that he obtained control of the markets to which the Easterners carried from Spain and the coasts of Northern Europe the ores, pearls, &c., they had searched for and found. It may be, therefore, that Britain was visited by Easterners even before Sargon's time, and that the Glasgow boat with the plug of cork was manned by dark Orientals who were prospecting the Scottish coast before the last land movement had ceased — that is, some time after 3000 B.C.

When the Easterners were expelled from Spain by a people from Central Europe who used weapons of bronze, some of them appear to have found refuge in Gaul. Siret is of opinion that others withdrew from Brittany, where subsidences were taking place along the coast, leaving their megalithic monuments below high- water mark, and even under several feet of water as at Morbraz. He thinks that the settlements of Easterners in Brittany were invaded at one and the same time by the enemy and the ocean. Other refugees from the colonies may have settled in Etruria, and founded the Etruscan civilization. Etruscan menhirs resemble those of the south of France, while the Etruscan crpzier or wand, used in the art of augury, resembles the croziers of the megaliths, &c., of France, Spain, and Portugal. There are references in Scottish Gaelic stories to *' magic wands" possessed by "wise women", and by the mothers of Cyclopean one-eyed giants. Ammianus Marcellinus, quoting Timagenes,^ attributes to the

• Timacfnrs(r. 85-5 B.' . ). an Alexandrian hiKlorian, wrote a hi»tor> of the Gauls which was made iisr of by Ammianus Marrrllinus (a. P. fourth century), a Greek of Antioch, and the author of a history of the Roman Emperors.

MKCALITIIS L'ppcr: Kit's Coly Hoiisl-, Kent. Lower: Tnthcvy Stone, Cornwall.

METAL WORKERS loi

Druids the statement that part of the inhabitants of Gaul were indigenous, but that some had come from the farthest shores and districts across the Rhine, "having been expelled from their own lands by frequent wars and the encroachments of the ocean ".

The bronze-using peoples who established overland trade routes in Europe, displacing in some localities the colonies of Easterners and isolating others, must have instructed the natives of Western Europe how to mine and use metals. Bronze appears to have been introduced into Britain by traders. That the ancient Britons did not begin quite spontaneously to work copper and tin and manufacture bronze is quite evident, because the earliest specimens of British bronze which have been found are made of ninety per cent of copper and ten per cent of tin as on the Continent. " Now, since a know- ledge of the compound ", wrote Dr. Robert Munro, "implies a previous acquaintance with its component elements, it follows that progress in metallurgy had already reached the stage of knowing the best combina- tion of these metals for the manufacture of cutting tools before bronze was practically known in Britain."'

The furnaces used were not invented in Britain. Pro- fessor Gowland has shown that in Europe and Asia the system of working mines and melting metals was iden- tical in ancient times.' Summarizing Professor Gow- land's articles in Archceologia and the Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, Mr. W. J. Perry writes in this connection :2 "The furnaces employed were similar; the crucibles were of the same material, and generally of the same form; the process of smelting, first on the surface and then in the crucibles was found t'xery where, even persisting down to present times in

• Prehistoric Britain, p. 145.

• The Relationship hetvxen thr aros>af>hiral Distribution of MegaliiUic Monuments )ii Ancient Mines, pp. 21 et seg.

I02 ANCIENT MAN IN BRITAIN

the absence of any fresh cultural influence. The study of the technique of mining and smelting has served to consolidate the floating mass of facts which we have accumulated, and to add support for the contention that one cultural influence is responsible for the earliest mining and smelting and washing of metals and the getting of precious stones and metals. The cause of the distribution of the megalithic culture was the search for certain forms of material wealth."

That certain of the megalithic monuments were in- timately connected with the people who attached a religious value to metals is brought out very forcibly in the references to pagan customs and beliefs in early Christian Gaelic literature. There are statements in the Lives of St. Patrick regarding a pagan god called **Cenn Cruach " and "Crom Cruach " whose stone statue was "adorned with gold and silver, and surrounded by twelve other statues with bronze ornaments". The "statue" is called "the king idol of Erin", and it is stated that "the twelve idols were made of stone, but he (' Crom Cruach ') was of gold ". -To this god of a stone circle were offered up "the firstlings of every issue and the chief scions of every clan ". Another idol was called Crom Dubh ("Black Crom"), and his name "is still connected ", O'Curry has written, " with the first Sunday of August in Munster and Connaught". An Ulster idol was called Crom Chonnaill, which was either a living animal or a tree, or was "believed to have been such", O'Curry says. De Jubainville translates Ceyin Cruach as "Bloody Head" and Crom Cruach as "Bloody Curb" or "Bloody Crescent". O'Curry, on the other hand, translates Crom Cruach as "Bloody Maggot" and Crom Dubh as "Black Maggot". In Gaelic legends " maggots" or " worms" are referred to as forms of supernatural beings. The maggot which appeared on the flesh of a slain animal was apparently

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regarded as a new form assumed by the indestructible soul, just as in the Egyptian story of Bata the germ of life passes from his bull form in a drop of blood from which two trees spring up, and then in a chip from one of the trees from which the man is restored in his original form.^ A similar belief, which is widespread, is that bees have their origin as maggots placed in trees. One form of the story was taken over by the early Christians, which tells that Jesus was travelling with Peter and Paul and asked hospitality from an old woman. The woman refused it and struck Paul on the head. When the wound putrified maggots were pro- duced. Jesus took the maggots from the wound and placed them in the hollow of a tree. When next they passed that way, "Jesus directed Paul to look in the tree hollow where, to his surprise, he found bees and honey sprung from his own head".- The custom of placing crape on hives and "telling the bees" when a death takes place, which still survives in the south of England and in the north of Scotland, appears to be connected with the ancient belief that the maggot, bee, and tree were connected with the sacred animal and the sacred stone in which was the spirit of a deity. Sacred trees and sacred stones were intimately connected. Tacitus tells us that the Romans invaded Mona (Angle- sea), they destroyed the sacred groves in which the Druids and black-robed priestesses covered the altars with the blood of captives.^ There are a number of dolmens on this island and traces of ancient mine- workings, indicating that it had been occupied by the early seafarers who colonized Britain and Ireland and worked metals. A connection between the tree cult of the Druids and the cult of the builders of megaliths is

' A worm crept from the heart of a dead Phcenix, and gave origin to a new Pho-nix.— Herodotus, II, 73. » Rendel Harris, The Ascent of Olympus, p. a. * Annals of Tacitus. Book XIV, Chapter »<t-y>.

I04 AXCIKNT MAN IN BRITAIN

thus suggested by Tacitus, as well as by the Irish evidence regarding the Ulster idol Crom Chonnaill, referred to above (see also Chapter XII).

Who were the people that followed the earliest Easterners and visited our shores to search like them for metals and erect megalithic monuments? It is impos- sible to answer that question with certainty. There were after the introduction of bronze working, as has been indicated, intrusions of aliens. These included the intro- ducers of the short-barrow method of burial and the later introducers of burial by cremation. It does not follow that all intrusions were those of conquerors. Traders and artisans may have come with their families in large numbers and mingled with the earlier peoples. Some intruders appear to have come by overland routes from southern and central France and from Central Europe and the Danube valley, while others came across the sea from Spain. That a regular over-seas trade-route was in existence is indicated by the references made by classical writers to the Cassiterides (Tin Islands). Strabo tells that the natives "bartered tin and hides with merchants for pottery, salt, and articles of bronze". The Phoenicians, as has been noted, "monopolized the trade from Gades (Cadiz) with the islanders and kept the route a close secret". It was probably along this sea- route that Egyptian blue beads reached Britain. Pro- fessor Sayce has identified a number of these in Devizes Museum, and writes:

"They are met with plentifully in the Early Bronze Age tumuli of Wiltshire in association with amber beads and barrel-shaped beads of jet or lignite. Three of them come from Stoneb.enge itself. Similar beads of ivory have been found in a Bronze Age cist near Warminster: if the material is really ivory it must have been derived from the East. The cylindrical faience beads, it may be added, have been dis- covered in Dorsetshire as well as in Wiltshire."

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105

Professor Sayce emphasizes that these blue beads ''belong to one particular period in Egyptian history, the latter part of the Eighteenth Dynasty and the earlier part of the Nineteenth Dynasty. . . . The period to which they belong may be dated 1450- 1250 B.C., and as

Beads from Bronze Age Barrows on Salisbury Plain

The large central bead and the small round ones are of amber; the long plain ones are of jet; and the long segmented or notched beads are of an opaque blue substance (faience).

we must allow some time tor their passage across the trade routes to Wiltshire an approximate date for their presence in the British barrows will be 1300 B.C."

Dr. H. R. Hall, of the British Museum, who dis- covered, at Deir el-Bahari in Egypt, "thousands of blue glaze beads of the exact particular type of those found in Britain", says that they date back till "about 1500 B.C. ". He noted the resemblance before Professor

loG ANCIENT MAN IN BRITAIN

Sayce had written. "It is gratifying", he comments, "that the Professor agrees that the Devizes beads are undoubtedly Egyptian, as an important voice is thereby added to the consensus of opinion on the subject." Similar beads have been found in the "Middle Bronze Age in Crete and in Western Europe". Dr. Hall thinks the Egyptian beads may have reached Britain as early as "about 1400 B.C. ".^ We have thus provided for us an early date in British history, based on the well authenticated chronology of the Empire period of Ancient Egypt. Easterners, or traders in touch with Easterners, reached our shores carrying Egyptian beads shortly before or early in the fourteenth century B.C. At this time amber was being imported into the south of England from the Baltic, while jet was being carried from Whitby in Yorkshire.

After the introduction of bronze working in Western Europe the natives began to work and use metals. These could not have been Celts, for in the fourteenth century B.C. the Celts had not yet reached Western Europe. 2 The earliest searchers for metals who visited Britain must therefore have been the congeners of those who erected the megalithic monuments in the metal- yielding areas of vSpain and Portugal and north-western France.

It would appear that the early Easterners exploited the virgin riches of Western Europe for a long period — perhaps for over a thousand years — and that, after their Spanish colonies were broken up by a bronze-using people from Central Europe, the knowledge of how to work metals spread among the natives. Overland trade routes were then opened up. At first these were controlled in Western Europe by the Iberians. In time the Celts

« The Journal 0/ Egyptian Archtrolosy, Vol. I, part I, pp. 18-19.

* It may be that Celtic chronology will have to be readjusted in the light of recent discoveries.

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swept westward and formed with the natives mixed communities of Celtiberians. The Easterners appear to have inaugurated a new era in Western European com- merce after the introduction of iron working. They had colonies in tlie south and west of Europe and on the North African coast, and obtained supplies of metals, &c., by sea. They kept the sea-routes secret. British ores, &c., were carried to Spain and Carthage. After Pytheas visited Britain (see next chapter) the overland trade-route to Marseilles was opened up. Supplies of surface tin having become exhausted, tin-mines were opened in Cornwall. The trade of Britain then came under the control of Celtiberian and Celtic peoples, who had acquired their knowledge of shipbuilding and navigation from the Easterners and the mixed descen- dants of Eastern and Iberian peoples.

It does not follow that the early and later Easterners were all of one physical type. They, no doubt, brought with them their slaves, including miners and seamen, drawn from various countries where they had been pur- chased or abducted.

The men who controlled the ancient trade were not necessarily permanent settlers in Western Europe. When the carriers of bronze from Central Europe obtained control of the Iberian colonies, many traders may have fled to other countries, but many colonists, and especially the workers, may have become the slaves of the intruders, as did the Firbolgs of Ireland who were subdued by the Celts. The Damnonians of Britain and Ireland who occupied mineral areas may have been a "wave" of early Celtic or Celtiberian people. Ulti- mately the Celts came, as did the later Normans, and formed military aristocracies over peoples of mixed descent. The idea that each intrusion involved the extermination of earlier peoples is a theory which does not accord with the evidence of the ancient Gaelic manu-

io8 ANCIENT MAN IN BRITAIN

scripts, of classical writers, of folk tradition, and of exist- ing race types in different areas in Britain and Ireland. A people who exterminated those they conquered would have robbed themselves of the chief fruits of conquest. In ancient as in later times the aim of C(jnquest was to obtain the services of a subject people and the control of trade.

CHAPTER X

Celts and Iberians as Intruders and Traders

Few Invasions in looo Years — Broad-heads — Tiie Cremating^ People— A New Religion— Celtic People in Britain— The Continental Celts— Were Celts Dark or Fair?— Fair Types in Britain and Ireland- Celts as Pork Traders— The Ancient Tin Trade— Early Explorers— Pytheas and Himilco— The Cassiterides— Tin Mines and Surface Tin- Cornish Tin — Metals in Hebrides and Ireland — Lead in Orkney — Dark People in Hebrides and Orkney— Celtic Art— Homeric Civilization in Britain and Ireland— Why Romans were Conquerors.

The beginnings of the Bronze and Iron Ages in Britain are, according to the chronology favoured by archae- ologists, separated by about a thousand years. During this long period only two or three invasions appear to have taken place, but it is uncertain, as has been indicated, whether these came as sudden outbursts from the Con- tinent or were simply gradual and peaceful infiltrations of traders and settlers. We really know nothing about the broad-headed people who introduced the round- barrow system of burial, or of the people who cre- mated their dead. The latter became predominant in south-western England and part of Wales. In the north of England the cremating people were less numerous. If they were conquerors they may have, as has been sug- gested, represented military aristocracies. It may be, however, on the other hand, that the cremation custom had in some areas more a religious than a racial signifi-

1 lO

ANCIENT MAN IN BRITAIN

cance. The beliefs associated with cremation of the dead may have spread farther than the people who in- troduced the new religion. It would appear that the habit of burning the dead was an expresssion of the beliefs that souls were transported by means of fire to the Other- world paradise. As much is indicated by Greek evidence. Homer's heroes burned their dead, and when the ghost of Patroklos appeared to his friend Achilles in a dream, he said: **Thou sleepest, and hast forgotten me, O Achilles. Not in my life wast thou unmindful of me, but in my death. Bury me with all speed, that I may pass the gates of Hades. Far off the spirits banish me, the phantoms of men outworn, nor suffer me to mingle with them beyond the River, but vainly I wander along the wide-gated dwelling of Hades. Now give me, I pray pitifully of thee, thy hand, for never more again shall I come back from Hades, when ye have given me my due of fire."^ The Arab traveller Ibn Haukal, who describes a tenth-century cremation ceremony at Kieff, was addressed by a Russ, who said: " As for you Arabs you are mad, for those who are the most dear to you, and whom you honour most, you place in the ground, where they will become a prey to worms, whereas with us they are burned in an instant and go straight to Paradise." "^

The cremating people, who swept into Greece and became the over-lords of the earlier settlers, were repre- sented in the western movement of tribes towards Gaul and Britain. It is uncertain where the cremation custom had origin. Apparently it entered Europe from Asia. The Vedic Aryans who invaded Northern India worshipped the fire-god Agni, who was believed to carry souls to Paradise; they cremated their dead and com-

• Iliad, XXUI. 7s (Lang. Leaf, and Myers' translation, p. 4Sa)-

« The Mythology of the Eddas, pp. 538-9 {Transactions of the Royal Society 0/ Litera- turf, second series. Vol. XII).

CELTS AND IBERIANS iii

bined with it the practice of suttee, that is, of burning the widows of the dead. In Gaul, however, as we gather from Julius C^sar, only those widows suspected of being concerned in the death of their husbands were burned. The Norsemen, however, were acquainted with suttee. In one of the Volsung lays Brynhild rides towards the pyre on which Sigurd is being burned, and casts herself into the flames. The Russians strangled and burned widows when great men were cremated.

The cremating people erected megalithic monuments, some of which cover their graves in Britain and else- where.

In some districts the intruders of the Bronze Age were the earliest settlers. The evidence of the graves in Buchan, Aberdeenshire, for instance, shows that the broad-heads colonized that area. It may be that, like the later Norsemen, bands of people sought for new homes in countries where the struggle for existence would be less arduous than in their own, which suffered from over population, and did not land at points where resistance was offered to them. Agriculturists would, no doubt, select areas suitable for their mode of life and favour river valleys, while seafarers and fishermen would cling to the coasts. The tendency of fishermen and agriculturists to live apart in separate communities has persisted till our own time. There are fishing villages along the east coast of Scotland the inhabitants of which rarely intermarry with those who draw their means of sustenance from the land.

During the Bronze Age Celtic peoples were filter- ing into Britain from Gaul. They appear to have come originally from the Danube area as conquerors who imposed their rule on the people they subjected. Like the Achaeans who overran Greece they seem to have originally been a vigorous pastoral people who had herds of pigs, were "horse-tamers", used chariots, and

112 ANCIENT MAX IX BRITAIN

were fierce and impetuous in battle. In time they crossed the Rhine and occupied Gaul. They overcame the Etruscans. In 390 B.C. they sacked Rome, Their invasion of Greece occurred in the third century, but their attempt to reach Delphi was frustrated. Crossing into Asia Minor they secured a footin^r in the area subsequently known as Galatia, and their descendants there were addressed in an epistle by St. Paul.

Like the Achasans, the Celts appear to have absorbed the culture of the ^Egean area and that of the ^gean colony at Hallstatt in Austria. They were withal the "carriers" of the La Tene Iron Age culture to Britain and Ireland. The potter's wheel was introduced by them into Britain during the archaeological early Iron Age. It is possible that the cremating people of the Bronze Age were a Celtic people. But later "waves" of the fighting charioteers did not cremate their dead.

Sharp difference of opinion exists between scholars regarding the Celts. Some identify them with the dark- haired, broad-headed Armenoids, and others with the tall and fair long-headed people of Northern Europe. It is possible that the Celts were not a pure race, but rather a confederacy of peoples who were influenced at different periods by different cultures. That some sec- tions were confederacies or small nations of blended people is made evident by classic references to the Celtiberians, the Celto-Scythians, the Celto-Ligyes, the Celto-Thracians, and the Celtillyrians. On reaching Britain they mingled with the earlier settlers, forming military aristocracies, and dominating large areas. The fair Caledonians of Scotland had a Celtic tribal name, and used chariots in battle like the Continental Celts. Two Caledonian personal names are known — Calgacus ("swordsman ") and Argentocoxus (" white foot "). In Ireland the predominant tribes before and during the early Roman period were of similar type. Queen Meave

Weapons and Religious Objects (British Museum)

Bronze socketed celts, bronze dagger, sword and spuar-hcads from Thames; two brnnre

boars with "sun-dKc" ears, which were worn on armour; bronze "sun-disc" from

Ireland; '•chalk drum" from grave (Yorkshire), with ornamentation showing buttcrHy

and St. Andrew's Cross symbols; warrior with shield, from rock carvmg (Denmark).

(r.ai7) n:^ 9

114 ANCIENT MAN IN BRITAIN

of Connaught was like Queen Boadicea^ of the Iceni, a fair-haired woman who rode to battle in a chariot.

The Continental trade routes up the Danube and Rhone valleys leading towards Britain were for some centuries under the control of the Celts. It was no doubt to obtain a control over trade that they entered Britain and Ireland. On the Continent they engaged in pork curing, and supplied Rome and indeed the whole of Italy with smoked and salted bacon. Dr. Sullivan tells that among the ancient Irish the general name for bacon was tini. Smoke-cured hams and flitches were called tineiccas, which "is almost identical in form with the Gallo-Roman word taniaccae or tanacae used by Varro for hams imported from Transalpine Gaul into Rome and other parts of Italy ". Puddings prepared from the blood of pigs — now known as " black puddings" — were, we learn from Varro, likewise ex- ported from Gaul to Italy. The ancient Irish were partial to "black puddings".' It would appear, therefore, that the so-called dreamy Celt was a greasy pork merchant.

According to Strabo the exports from Britain in the early part of the first century consisted of gold, silver, and iron, wheat, cattle, skins, slaves, and dogs; while the imports included ivory ornaments, such as bracelets, amber beads, and glass. Tin was exported from Corn- wall to Gaul, and carried overland to Marseilles, but this does not appear to have been the earliest route. As has been indicated, tin appears to have been carried, before the Celts obtained control of British trade, by the sea route to the Carthaginian colonies in Spain.

The Carthaginians had long kept secret the sources of their supplies of tin from the group of islands known

' Roudicca was her real name.

= Introduction to O'Ciirry's Manners nud Ciis/oms of thr Atnieiit Irtsli, Vol. 1, pp. rclxix et srg.

CELTS AND IBERIANS 115

as the Cassiterides. About 322 B.C., however, the Greek merchants at Marseilles fitted out an expedition which was placed in charge of Pytheas, a mathematician, for the purpose of exploring the northern area. This scholar wrote an account of his voyage, but only frag- ments of it quoted by different ancient authors have come down to us. He appears to have coasted round Spain and Brittany, and to have sailed up the English Channel to Kent, to have reached as far north as Orkney and Shetland, and perhaps, as some think, Iceland, to have crossed the North Sea towards the mouth of the Baltic, and explored a part of the coast of Norway. He returned to Britain, which he appears to have partly explored before crossing over to Gaul. In an extract from his diary, quoted by Strabo, he tells that the Britons in certain districts not detailed grew corn, millet, and vegetables. Such of them as had corn and honey made a beverage from these materials. They brought the corn ears into great houses (barns) and threshed them there, for on account of the rain and lack of sunshine out-door threshing floors were of little use to them. Pytheas noted that in Britain the days were longer and the nights brighter than in the Mediterranean area. In the northern parts he visited the nights were so short that the interval between sunset and sunrise was scarcely perceptible. The farthest north headland of Britain was Cape Orcas.^ Six days