logist and the archaeologist, are the evidences of native primitive races in Scotland prior to
the intrusion of the Celtæ ; and also the probability of these races having succeeded each
other in a different order from the primitive colonists of Scandinavia. Of the former fact,
viz., the existence of primitive races prior to the Celtæ, I think no doubt can be now entertained.
Of the order of their succession, and their exact share in the changes and progressive
development of the native arts which the archaeologist detects, we still stand in
need of further proof. . . .
“ The peculiar characteristic of the primeval Scottish type appears rather to be a narrow
prolongation of the occiput in the region of the cerebellum, suggesting the term already
applied to them of boat-shaped, and for which the name of Kuinbekephalce may perhaps be
conveniently employed to distinguish them from the higher type with which they are otherwise
apt to be confounded. . . .
“ The peculiarity in the teeth of certain classes of ancient crania above referred to is of
very general application, and has been observed as common even among British sailors.
The cause is obvious, resulting from the similarity of food in both cases. The old Briton
of the Anglo-Roman period, and the Saxon both of England and the Scottish Lothians, had
lived to a great extent on barley bread, oaten cakes, parched peas, or the like fare, producing
the same results on his teeth as the hard sea-biscuit does on those of the British
sailor. Such, however, is not generally the case, and in no instance, indeed, to the same
extent in the skulls found in the earlier British tumuli. In the Scottish examples described
above, the teeth are mostly very perfect, and their crowns not at all worn down. . . .
“ The inferences to be drawn from such a comparison are of considerable value in the
indications they afford of the domestic habits and social life of a race, the last survivor of
which has mouldered underneath his green tumulus, perchance for centuries before the era
of our earliest authentic chronicles. As a means of comparison this characteristic appearance
of the teeth manifestly furnishes one means of discriminating between an early and a
still earlier, if not primeval period, and though not in itself conclusive, it may be found of
considerable value when taken in connexion with the other and still more obvious peculiarities
of the crania of the earliest barrows. We perceive from it, at least, that a very decided
change took place in the common food of the country, from the period when the’ native
Briton of the primeval period pursued the chase with the flint lance and arrow, and the
spear of deer’s horn, to that comparatively recent period when the Saxon marauders bégan
to effect settlements and build houses on thé scenes where they had ravaged the villages of
the older British natives. The first class, we may infer, attempted little cultivation of the
noil. .
“ Viewing Archæology as one of the most essential means for the elucidation of primitive
history, it has been employed here chiefly in an attempt to trace out the annals of our
country prior to that comparatively recent medieval period at which the boldest of our historians
have heretofore ventured to begin. The researches of the ethnologist carry us back
somewhat beyond that epoch, and confirm many of those conclusions, especially in relation
to the close affinity between the native arts and Celtic races of Scotland and Ireland, at
which we have arrived by means of arphæological evidence. . . . But we have found from
many independent sources of evidence, that the primeval history of Britain must be sought
for in the annals of older races than the Celtæ, and in the remains of a people of whom we
have as yet no reason to believe that any philological traces are discoverable, though they
probably do exist mingled with later dialects, and especially in the topographical nomenclature,
adopted and modified, but in all likelihood not entirely superseded by later colonists.
With the earliest intelligible indices of that primeval colonization of the British Isles
our archaeological records begin, mingling their dim historic annals with the last giant
traces of elder worlds ; and, as an essentially independent element of historical research,
they terminate at the point where the isolation of Scotland ceases by its being embraced
into the unity of medieval Christendom.” *
* Wilson: Archæol. and Prehist. Annals of Scotland; Edinb. 1851 ; pp. 163-187, 695-6.
Neither in Scotia nor in Scandinavia, then, any more than in Gallia,
are lacking mute, but incontrovertible testimonies to the aboriginal
diversity of mankind, as well as to human antiquity incalculably
beyond all written chronicles. Ere long, “Crania Britannica, or Delineations
of the Skulls of the Aboriginal Inhabitants of the British
Islands, and of the Races immediately succeeding them,” will vouch
for existing evidences of the same unanswerable facts in England.
The forthcoming work of Doctors D a v is and T h u r n am promises —
“ Not merely to reproduce the most lively and forcible traits of the primeval Celtic
hunter or warrior, and his Roman conqueror; succeeded by Saxon or Angle chieftains and
settlers, and later still by the Vikings of Scandinavia; but also to indicate the peculiarities
which marked the different tribes and races who have peopled the diversified regions of the
British Islands.”
We conclude this imperfect sketch with remarks, truthful as they
are eloquent, of M. Boucher de Perthes, on the subject of these pre-
Celtic resuscitations
“ My discoveries may appear trifling to some, for they comprise little save crumbling
bones and rudely sculptured stones. Here are neither medals nor inscriptions, neither bas-
reliefs nor statues — no vases, elegant in form, and precious in material — nothing but
bones and rudely polished flints. But to the observer who values the demonstration of a
truth more than the possession of a jewel, it is not in the finish of a work, nor in its market-
price, that its value consists. The specimen he .considers most beautiful is that which
affords the greatest help in proving a fact or realizing a prevision; and the flint which a
collector would throw aside with contempt, or the bone which has not even the valué of a
bone, rendered precious by the labor it has cost him, is preferred to a Murrhine vase or to
its weight in gold.
“ The arts, even the most simple, those which seem born with nature, have, like nature
herself, had their infancy and their vicissitudes; and industry, properly so called -g^that
is, the indispensable arts — has always preceded the ornamental. It is the same with men
as with animals; and the first nightingale, before he thought of singing or of sporting,
sought a branch for his nest and a worm for food: he was a hunter before he became a
musician.
“ However great the number of ages which shroud the history of a people, there is one
method of interrogating them, and ascertaining their standing and intelligence. It is by
their works. If they have left no specimens of art, it is because they have merely appeared
and vanished; or, even if they have continued stationary for any time, they must have
remained weak and powerless. Experience proves that this total absence of monuments
only exists among a transplanted people — among races who have been cast upon an
abnormal soil and under an unfriendly sky, where they lingered out a miserable existence,
always liable to momentary extinction. But among a people who had a country, and whom
slavery and vice had not entirely brutalized, we may always find some trace, or at least some
tradition of art, evanescent perhaps, but still sufficient to recal by a last reflection the physiognomy
of the people, their social position, and the degree of civilization they had attained
when that art was cultivated.
. “ Among these specimens of primitive industry, some belong to the present, and illustrate
the material life ; while others clearly refer to the future. Such are the arms and
amulets which were intended to accompany their owners into the tomb, or even to follow
them beyond the grave; for, in all ages, men have longed for an existence after death. In
these tokens from the tombjjpf these relics of departed ages — coarse and imperfect as they
appear to an artistic eye, there is nothing that we should despise or reject: last witnesses