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DESCRIPTIONS OP CRANIA.
whether we may be able to meet with another example of this particular age to figure, at least
from this part of the island. Whatever conclusions may be arrived at respecting other ajras in
the dim obscm-ity of those remote ages, the strongly maa-ked British character, impressed on every
feature of this skuU, prevents the assumption of the introduction of any new race on the advent
of the " bronze period." The deduction, that the same people made use of stone and of bronze
weapons and implements in the British Isles, is rendered, as far as the example before us goes, as
secm-e as it is self-evident and unavoidable. The craniological evidence seems to be complete
that there requii-ed neither the subversion nor the destruction of the aboriginal Britons, for that
progressive change which is indicated by the use of metallic weapons. On the contrary the
personal remams of this people present a vivid testimony that the same arms wielded both those
of stone and those of bronze. That the bronze weapons were introduced from without, probably
by Phosmcian traders, receives some additional confirmation by the discovery of the aboriginal
British chieftain in this remote interior of the country, with his highly-prized bronze dagger
interred by his side, whilst the national material-of almost universal appHcation-is represented
in the calcined speai-head of flint. The former was a scarce and precious personal object
probably beyond domestic skiU to produce; the latter by no means gone out of use.
Professor Nilsson, and other Scandinavian authorities, who have studied the deep and
intricate question of races in these early dawnings of human existence, have been led to conclude
that, m Denmark and the northern countries, the people who introduced bronze, as a material
for weapons, was a distinct race invading the country and settling in it with aU their arts and
appliances, especially agriculture. And this weighty doctrine of the existence of an entire race
of people, has been chiefly based on a diversity in the forms of their crania-according to the
observations of these antiquaries. This bronze-introducing race Professor Nilsson concludes to
have been of Celtic origin, an opinion from which Worsaae dissents*. To any similar accession
of a new invading race in the British Islands, making and wielding bronze arms, this fine
ancient British skull from End Lowe lends no countenance whatever. (J. B. D.)
* Nilsson's Skandinariska Ncrdens Ur-In.anare. See also Prof. NUsson's paper, translated by Dr. Norton Shaw, in
Report of the Bnt,sh Assocation," 1847. Worsaae's " Primeval Antiquities of Denmark," by W. J. Thorns, p. 136, 1849.
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