51, CRANIA BEITANNICA. [CHAP. V. CHAP. V . ] HISTORICAL ETHNOLOGY OE BRITAIN. 55
VT
I I
inference from this is as free to tlie inquirer of tlie present century as it was to Tacitus. In
respect to tlie opinions on this point, it is safe to say that the Germanic hypothesis is whoUy,
the Iheric nearly, unnecessary. The Scotch conformation is equally Celtic and Germanic: that
of the South "Welsh is less easily explained. It re-appears, however, in certain parts of England.
Tho fact stiU requii-es solution*." Notwithstanding the difficulties wliich the varieties in
physical conformation here pointed out present, the conchision at which Tacitus seems to
arrive, fr-om a consideration of the similarity of language, manners, and religious rites, is, that the
ancestors of the Britons in general were the Gauls of the opposite coast. In this opinion the
majority of modern ethnologists have concm-red, and it is usually assumed, that, at the commencement
of the true historical period, which for Britain is about 55 years B.C., the population
was Celtic in its characteristics and origin.
Even if we admit that the inhabitants of Britain, in the age of Csesar and Diodoms, were
essentially Celtic, it may be inquired whether such population had not succeeded to one of
altogether different origin. This is a hypothesis which has latterly found several able advocates
as regards the European continent, and particularly the western parts of it. The ground for it
is found in the remarkable fact of the existence to the present day of a people, now confined to
the Pyrenees and adjacent parts of Spain and Erance—though once, as the ancient Iberians,
extensively spread through the Peninsula, the south of Gaul and north-west of Italy,—whose
language, the Euskarian or Basque, differs in its entire formation, both fr'om the class of the
Indo-Em-opean or Arian, and the Syro-Arabian or Semitic languages. The analogies of the
Basque, so far as yet made out, are with the family of languages of the Lapps, Einns, and
other Hgrian tribes of the north of Europe and of the Turanian nations of high Asiaf. In
Scandinavia, we find a precisely similar distinction between the Lapponic and Einnish languages
of the far north and the Teutonic languages of that great peninsula; whence Nilsson, Keyser
and others have inferred, that the former race were once the sole occupants of the country, and
were pushed to the north by the conquests of their Gothic, and, as some think, Celtic
invaders. Dr. Prichard distinguishes the isolated people thus separated from the rest of the
inhabitants of the old continent by the structure of theii' languages, by the term AUophylian,
referring to then- aKen character. " The AUophylian nations," Dr. Prichard remarks, " appear
to have been spread in the earliest times, thi-ough all the most remote regions of the old
continent, to the northward, eastward and westward of the Indo-Eiu-opean (or Atian) tribes,
whom they seem everywhere to have preceded; so that they appear, in comparison with the
Indo-European colonies, in the light of aboriginal or native inhabitants, vanquished, and often
banished, into remote and inaccessible tracts, by more powerful and invading tribes J." As to
the more precise question, whether this inference is capable of apphcation to the British Isles,
Dr. Prichard expresses no decided opinion; though such seems doubtfully implied, when he
observes, " In the west, as Aborigines of western Europe, we have the Euskaldunes, or ancient
serves, "but though the black eye still remains, I have not
been able to ascertain that the hair of the present Silurians has
a greater tendency to curl than that of their neighbours; nor
is their complexion darker than that which in Britain naturally
accompanies the melanic temperament." By colorati^ Tacitus
must clearly have intended dark—not florid.
* Smith's " Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography,"
1854, vol. i. p. 439.
"t" As was first shown by Arndt, and afterwards adopted by
the celebrated Rask. (See Prichard, " Researches," vol. iii.
p. 22.) Niehuhr says, " The Basque language is foreign to all
European languages known to us, and belongs as it were to
another part of the world." (Lectures on Ethnography, &c.,
vol. ii. p. 254.) The modern travellers, Mr. Ford and M.
de Qnatrefages, agree that " Foreigners find it almost impossible
to acquire the Basqne language."
t "Natural History of Man," 3rd edit. p. 108. "Researches,"
vol. iii. p. 9.
Iberians * * Separated from the Euskaldunes by the whole country occupied, and perhaps
lorested from them, by the Celtic and German races before the beginning of history, are the
Sotuuo or Hgrian race" ("the Einnish and Lappish tribes, the Tschudes, the Vogules of the
Ural Moimtains and Ostiaks of Siberia"), "the remains as it should seem of the aborigmes of
tho north of Em-ope and Asia*."
The Scandinavian ethnologists, however, exhibit no such reserve, and more or less expressly
claim a pre-Celtic population of Tm-anian origin for Britain, though whether of an Iberian, or
southern, or of a Tschudic, or northern origin, they are not agreed. Professors Retzius and Keyser
appear both to incline to the former view, which certainly seems the more probable, and is not
mthout some show of geographical and historical foundation. Professor Keyser asserts decidedly
that " a Turanian population has preceded the Iranian in the whole of Europe," and maintams
that " the Iberians were quite certainly the Tm-anian aborigines of the south and west of Europe,
as the Einn-Lapps were those of the north." " I t is," says he, " scarcely a hasty conclusion, that
the Iberians were the stone-using people, who were overcome by the Celtic hronze-using hordes, and
that the former were either extii-pated by, or became fused with the latter. It is highly probable
that the Iberians were the original inhabitants of Ireland and several parts of Britain, and were
there the stone-using people, of whom there are so many traces f." A succeeding section wiR be
the place to show that the notion of the use of bronze having been introduced into Britain by a
conquering people, as here impUed, is in opposition to weU-ascertained archffiological facts,
wliich appear to estabUsh the gradual introduction and diffusion of that metal in this
country.
The doctrine of a pre-Celtic population for the British Isles has been boldly adopted by some
writers. Professor D. WHson has given it Ms support, in his attractive and valuable work,
" The Pre-historic Annals of Scotland;" and thinks, as regards North Britain, at least, that " of
the existence of primitive races prior to the Celtic, no doubt can now be entertainedi." The
conclusions as to the form of skull in these races at which Dr. WHson arrives, from the
examination of crania from ancient Scottish tumuli, have afready been aUuded to§, and it need
only here be added that the data seem altogether inadequate to the conclusions even suggestively
deduced from them 1|. Previous to inquiry as to the form of the skuR in any possible pre-Celtic
race, it is necessary to determine the form of the Celtic skull itself. Proceeding from the known
to the unknown, we may then hope to trace the form of the skuR in races which may possibly have
preceded, or been mingled with, the early Celtic population of Britain: such an inquii-y is an important
object of the present work. So far as our investigations have yet proceeded, we are not
prepared either to accept or positively reject the hypothesis under consideration. It is, however,
we think, worthy of great, attention and supported by much a priori, probability. Refusing,
as we must, to regard it as an induction from ascertained data, we may assent to the
* "Researches," vol. iii. p. 17. Arndt and some others
have supposed that the Celts are in part a Fiimish race. See
Prichard, " Researches," vol. iii. p. 51.
t Keyser, " Om Nordmeendenes Herkomst," &c. (History
of tho Northmen), 1839, p. 144. Retzius, " Ofversigt af
Kongl. Vetenskaps-Akademiens," &c., 1849, p. 125 ; and
Midler's Archiv, 1849, p. 554.
t Page 177.
% Chap. ii. ante, " Views of Preceding Observers," p. 20.
II Through the very liberal intervention of Professor D.
Wilson, the writer was enabled to esamme minutely the greater
part of the series of Crania in the Museums of the Society of
Antiquaries of Scotland, and of the Phrenological Society of
Edinburgh, from which his conclusions were drawn. The
skulls were some weeks in the possession of the writer, who
had careful drawings and measurements of the whole made
under his immediate superintendence. Their examination, he
is bound to add, failed to satisfy him as to the conclusions
which Professor "Wilson thought they estabUshed.
i 2