sequence, before Phœnician commerce had reached the remote shores of the Tyrrhene Sea.
Can it be safely concluded that the palæo-metallic culture which we have been considering was the appanage of any one of the western Eurasiatic races rather than another? Did it arise and develop among the brunet or the blond long-heads or among the brunet short-heads? I do not think there are any means of answering these questions, positively, at present. Schrader has pointed out that the state of culture of the primitive Aryans, deduced from philological data, closely corresponds with that which obtained among the pile-dwellers in the neolithic stage. But the resemblance of the early stages of civilization among the most different and widely separated races of mankind should warn us that archæology is no more a sure guide in questions of race than philology.
With respect to the osteological characters of the people of the Swiss pile-dwellings information is as yet scanty. So far as the present evidence goes, they appear to have comprised both broadheads and long-heads of moderate stature.[1] In France, England, and Germany, both long and broad skulls are found in tumuli belonging to the neolithic stage. In some parts of England the long skulls, and in others the broad skulls, accompany the higher stature. In the Scandinavian Peninsula, nine tenths of the neolithic people are decided long-heads; in Denmark there is a much larger proportion of broad-heads.
In view of all the facts known to me (which can not be stated in greater detail in this place), I am disposed to think that the blond long-heads, the brunet long-heads, and the brunet broadheads have existed on the continent of Europe throughout the Recent period; that only the former two at first inhabited our islands; but that a mixed race of tall broad-heads, like some of the Black-Foresters of the present day, so excellently described by Ecker, migrated from the continent and formed that tall contingent of the population which has been identified (rightly or wrongly) with the Belgæ by Thurnam, and which seems to have subsequently lost itself among the predominant brunet and blond long-heads.
I do not think there is anything to warrant the conclusion that the palæo-metallic culture of Europe took its origin among the
- ↑ Prof. Virchow has guardedly expressed the opinion that the oldest inhabitants of the Swiss pile-dwellings were broad-heads, and that later on (commencing before the bronze stage) there was a gradual infusion of long-heads among them. (Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, xvii, 1885.) There is independent evidence of the existence of broad-heads in the Cevennes during the neolithic period, and I should be disposed to think that this opinion may well be correct; but the examination of the evidence on which it is, at present, based does not lead me to feel very confident about it.
