226 O B A K I A BRITANNICA. [CHAP. IX.
CHAPTER IX.
CONCLUSION.
Von dem Gehirn unserer Vorfahren, von so vielen ausgestorbenen Völkerschaften werden wir niemals im Stande sej-n, uns
ein Bild anders zu verschaflfen, als durch die Betrachtung seines Gehäuses, das ivir aus dem Schoosse der Erde graben.—Emil
Huschke, Schädel, Hirn und Seele.
IN one of tlie first paragTaphs of this work it was stated that " its original design was merely to
step in, rescue, and perpetuate the faithful lineaments of a sufficient number of the skulls of the
ancient races of Britain, so as to preserve authentic data for the future." In the fulfilment of
this design the most scrupulous attention has been paid to authenticity, and the arohieological
evidence has in each case been elaborately adduced, so as to enable every antiquary to form his
own judgment, and to test that of the writers. This we have held to be one of the first principles
of oiu- undertaking. Having exercised this care in the elimination of the materials, it behoves us
to be equally dehberate and equally candid in forming deductions from the data now brought together.
Anthropology, and its leading branch with which we are engaged, craniology, as they have
been studied, have been made the foundations of the most copious, and also of the most diversified
conclusions. By the assumptions held to be legitimate in branches of knowledge hitherto neither
sufficiently understood nor sufficiently defined, the most positive and the most opposite dogmas
have been maintained—dogmas frequently based on the slenderest elements. A more generous
appreciation of the difficulties of the science, and the maintenance of a more liberal spirit in its
discussion, may have the best tendency towards its real progress *.
In the copious investigations to which these pages have been devoted, bearing upon so remote
an antiquity in the history of the human race within the British Islands, we may be permitted
to say, respecting its origin, that we have not met with any evidence which would contradict
the assumption that the ancient Britons were indigenous. Tliis hypothetic assumption,
it appears to us, would be a testimony to that wisdom, and a proof of that all-pervading and
fertile power, which we do not feel permitted to doubt in deference to any authority in
philosophy. Besides a want of evidence for the conjecture that these islands and other countries
were in the first instance colonized from distant som-ces, there are difficulties attendiag such
a conjecture which seem to be fatal to it. Such colonization on an extensive scale seems to be
quite iaconsistent with what we know of the distribution of organized beings; and, moreover,
we have been long convinced was, in the infancy of the race, both morally and physically
impossible f.
* Dr. Morton, in terminating his great work, " Crania
Americana," restricted himself to the deduction of three propositions
from the mass of facts contained in it. We are desirous
not to deviate too much from so excellent an exemplar.
The chief and general result of Blumenbach's famous Decades,
was to illustrate and to establish more firmlv his quinary
division of mankind.
-f It is totally at variance with all that we know of any human
beings, especially if they be in what is called an " early
stage of civilization," that they should be possessed with an
inherent propensity for divergency, so strong as to scatter them
into every region. On the contrary, man is above every other
animal social, and in an uncultivated state ("Naturvölker")
is unconquerably attached to his natal soil. Even in modern
races most prone to emigration, it requires motives of a very cogent
nature to overcome the repugnance to dispersion in almost
CHAP. IX.] CONCLUSION. 227
Seeing that one uniform stamp of personality is to be so distinctly perceived among the
remains of the ancient Britons of every period, we are entirely unable to admit the progressive
development of man in these islands from any inferior representative of the genus Homo.
We have not met with the least trace of such elementary man in the course of our inquiry *.
That any different and distinct race preceded the tribes who inhabited the islands on the invasion
of Julius Cajsar we cannot but regard as a gratuitous assumption, devoid of evidence
for its support, and at variance with the evidence which exists t. How long the same tribes,
or similar tribes, their predecessors, may have dwelt in the Britannic Isles, there is nothing
before us to determine. The remains of aU those we have had occasion to investigate, although
in many instances of great antiquity, may probably be looked upon as comparatively modern in
the presence of the rude but very curious human implements, now designated " drift implements,"
which in their manipulation, whether found on the continent or in England, bear the
most striking resemblance to each other, and, at the same time, a well-marked and obvious
difference from those of the barrows t- These objects, wrought in the presence of many of the
extinct animals, although larger and much ruder than the barrow implements, are stUl formed
on the same principle, and are much the same in design, and may have been chipped by people
who had to contend with more ferocious enemies, to slaughter fiercer prey, or who had not yet
learned how to form, polish and ornament those nicer weapons and instruments, some of them
all individual cases. To imagine that the contrary could at any
period be spontaneously manifested by any race or races of
men, and pursued for the mere purpose of dissemination, is to
do violence to every principle of the mind, and, by conceiving
of man as devoid of his specific properties, is, in truth, to
contradict his humanity.
In these early ages of mankind emigration from superabundance
of population, the impelling influence most readily
conceived, may safely be put out of view. Conquest is a motive
which alike prevails over the "uncivilized" and the " civilized"
races, although in unequal degrees. The latter immeasurably
exceeds his "brother" in this noble ardour, even to the
extinction of that brother. And in the most potent of modern
"nineteenth century" spurs to expatriation, gain, or
often more properly cupidity, the highly civilized reign sole
and unapproached. The ignoble savage excites astonishment
and even contempt because he cannot feel, or be made to feel,
a desire for more than will satisfy his immediate wants ; the
thirst for illimitable accumulation is an hallucination proper to
civilized man. If inexplicable divergency and dissemination
must be supposed to have been the ruling passion, these adventurous
spirits have had a boldness and indomitable taste for
roaming to which all modern instances at once give way. What
proportion of mankind, constituted as they now are, would persist
in roving without an idea where any of the preceding
rovers had gone, without a trace by which to follow their
steps, without a conception of the existence of any other separate
countries than their own, without a hope that such
countries, if dreamt of, were other than " anters vast and desarts
idle ? " The voyages of Columbus would be as nothing
when put in comparison with the imagined daring flights of
primeval wanderers. Verily there must be a rich field which
the historians of pre-historic man have not yet approached !
The slightest reflection seems sufiicient to convince us that
no state, or combination of states, especially in the infancy of
the race, could, n-ith all the appliances within the compass of
human knowledge and power, efi'ect that universal diff'usion of
mankind which we know to have existed. Phoenicia, or even
England would assuredly fail in such an effort. Could all the
governments of modern Europe, with all the resources of modern
science and the arts, were there a conceivable motive for
such a combined design, carry out such an object ? To suppose
it to have been carried out before the discovery of the
mariner's compass is impossible.
See Rudolphi, Beytrüge zur Anthropologie, 1812. " Ueber
die Verbreitung der organischen Korper." After reasoning
upon the distribution of man from one centre, this acute physiologist
exclaims, "Welche Kette von Unwahrscheinlichkeiten
!" S. 150. Geo. F. Schlatter, ' Die Unwahrscheinlichkeit
der Abstammung des Menschengeschlechts von einem gemeinschafthehen
Urpaare,' 18C1, discusses the question with much
candour. Dr. J . A. N. Perier, "SurTEthnogénie Égyptienne,"
Sect. I I I . "Autochthonie," Mém. de la Soc. d'Anthrop. i.482.
The opinion expressed here has been maintained with his usual
force of argument, by one of the most original and able etlinologists
this country has produced (Notes on Sir Charles
Lyell's 'Antiquity of Man,' by John Crawfurd, F.R.S.).
* The Neanderthal Skull i its peculiar conformation explained
anatomically. By Joseph Barnard Davis, 1864.
t Phillips's 'Rivers, &o. of Yorkshire,' p. 199.
t It is satisfactory to learn that MM. Lartet and Christy
have met with flint implements of the "dr i f t " kind in the Périgord
caves, the relics in which appertain to a very early period,
named, from the great prevalence of the remains of an exiinc't
animal in them, the reindeer period. (Cavernes du Péri»ord
1804.) ° '