also, Ammianus Marcellinus says: "They are frightful from the wildness of their eyes." But the ancient Britons and Irish, the Belgians, Fins, and Scythians are described as of far more savage aspect. According to Strabo, the Irish were voracious cannibals, and considered it praise-worthy to eat the bodies of their parents; and they are noticed in similar terms by Diodorus. St. Hieronymus states that, even in Gaul, the Scoti had been seen eating human flesh. Tacitus relates with respect to the Fins, that they live in a state of astonishing savageness, their food being wild herbs, their clothing skins, their arrow-heads made of bone, and that the children and old people had no other protection from the weather than wattled huts. Adam of Bremen relates that, so late as in the eleventh century, the so-termed Jotuni, the most ancient population of Scandinavia, dwelt in the mountains and forests, clad in the skins of animals, and uttering sounds more like the cries of wild beasts than human speech. Their conquest and extermination are celebrated in the poems of the Skalds.[1] Isigonus of Nicæa, quoted by Pliny,[2] says that a Scythian people dwelling ten days' journey northwards from the Dnieper was addicted to cannibalism, drank out of human skulls, and carried the hairy scalps of the slain on their breast. As in the German traditions and tales, many traces of the mode of life of our ancestors have come down to us from heathen times, so also may the tradition respecting cannibalism, which, from Grimm's researches, though it appears as early as Homer in the history of Polyphemus, is also widely diffused in the legends of the Fins, Tartars, and Germans, have originated in the actual remembrance of that abominable practice.[3]
The considerations which have led us to compare the Neanderthal cranium with those of the most ancient races are still farther confirmed
- ↑ J. C. Prichard, Natural History of Man.
- ↑ Plinii, Sec. Hist. Nat., vii 2.
- ↑ [To these references might be added, perhaps, some lines of Sidonis Apollinaris in describing the Huns, quoted by V. Baer (Die Makrokephalen, &c, p. 36:)—
"Gens animis membrisque minax: ita vultibus ipsis
Infantum suus horror inest. Consurgit in arcem
Massa rotunda caput: geminis sub froute cavernis
Visus adest oculis absentibus: arcta cerebri
In cameram vix ad refugos lux pervenit orbes,
Non tamen et clausos: nam fornix non spatiosa,
Magna vident spatia, et majoris luminis usum
Perspicua in puteis compensant puncta profundis."]
Vesontio, on his march against Ariovistus, reports were spread by the Roman inhabitants of the country, and by the Gauls and traders, of the "incredible valour, expertness in arms, and gigantic stature of the Germani;" and that these reports (which were, probably, not altogether unintentionally made) caused a sudden panic, chiefly, however, among the volunteers who had followed him, and the inexperienced soldiers. He seems to have had little difficulty in quelling the commotion, and in removing some of the dread instilled into his troops, by reminding them that the Germani had been often beaten without difficulty by the Helvetii.
