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Austria, Switzerland, southern Germany, and Belgium was all occupied throughout the Hallstatt period by la
mme race celtique.[758]
Moritz Hoernes, Professor of Prehistoric Archaeology in the University of Vienna, who made a special study of
the Hallstatt period, [499] did not use the word Celtic in quite the same sense. He recognized four great groups
of people who practised the Hallstatt culture in somewhat different styles, so that their works of art can be
distinguished. These were the illyrische Gruppe, occupying the east Adriatic region from Herzegovina to
Carinthia; the ostkeltische in Upper and Lower Austria, southern Bohemia, and Moravia; the germanische of
northern Germany from the Elbe to the Oder; and the westkeltische of south and west Germany, eastern France,
and northern Switzerland.[499, 500] Thus the Celtic peoples extended over a broad territory from France to
Moravia. Hallstatt itself lay near the boundary between the west and east Celtic groups, but its culture
approximated more closely to that of the former.
At one time Hoernes had been slightly equivocal as to whether it was legitimate to regard the Celts as an ethnic
taxon,[499] but seven years later, in his book,[500] he makes it clear that for him the Celts were those people who
occupied a particular geographical area and made objects that could be recognized as essentially similar (though
slight differences warranted the recognition of a western and an eastern sub-area). The Celts, in his view, were not
people of any particular nation or any particular ethnic taxon.
During the fifth century B.C., particularly from about 450 B.C. onwards, certain objects of another culture, that of
La Tne, began to infiltrate into
38
A graphical comparison of Iron Age skulls from Glasinac with those of nineteenth-century
Serbo-Croat soldiers from the same region.
The heights of the columns represent the proportions of dolicho-, meso-, and brachycranial skulls in
each of the two groups of persons. The data for the soldiers are adjusted from measurements taken in
life. The scales at the sides show the numbers of skulls or heads on which the heights of the columns
are based, in each of the two groups.
The diagram is constructed from the data of
Weisbach.[1132]
39 The north-eastern end of the Lake of Neuchtel, to show the position of La Tne
The famous Iron Age site is marked by an oblique arrow. The vertical arrow points to the former River Thick, now
converted into a canal. The photograph was taken from Chaumont, in the hills above Neuchtel.
Photograph by the author. 1966.
Whoever the artists and technicians of Glasinac may have been, they eventually adopted the Celtic art-styles of La
Tne, though they did not produce any masterpieces in this genre. For these one looks naturally to the
fountainhead itself.
From Chaumont, on the high ground above the city of Neuchtel in Switzerland, one may look down on one of the
most celebrated sites of Iron Age culture, and picture to oneself a hive of splendid industry on the lake-shore
below (Fig. 39). The distant view is best, for on the site itself one sees little more than a modern bathing-beach,
revealing no trace of former glories.
The axis of the long, narrow Lake of Neuchtel extends from south-west to north-east. The River Thiele flows in
at its south-western end and used to flow out at the north-eastern, into the Bielersee; the latter is connected
through the River Aare with the Rhine at Koblenz. The short stretch of the Thiele between the two lakes has been
replaced by a canal in roughly the same position. All the way along the north-western side of the two lakes and of
the river that connected them, there formerly lived Iron Age people of the westkeltische Gruppe of Hoernes.
During the Hallstatt period they made objects typical of their group and buried some of them with their inhumed
or cremated dead. Some of these objects are good examples of the art of the period. In the Cantonal Museum of
Archaeology at Neuchtel there is, for instance, a fine girdle-plate from near Bussy, some three or four kilometres
from Neuchtel; it is decorated with an elaborate geometrical design. It was in the neighbourhood of this city that
a later upsurge of originality in design produced a novel art and technology that eventually replaced those of
Hallstatt, even in Hallstatt itself.
Just beside the outflow of the Thiele from the Lake of Neuchtel, on its left (north-Western) bank, was (and is) La
Tne (Fig. 39), famous throughout the civilized world for the development of a culture that everyone seems to
agree on calling Celtic. The archaeological exploration of the site was begun in 1856 by Col. Schwab of Bienne;
its area was extended some twenty years later by the artificial lowering of the water-level of the lake. It is
supposed that the people who produced the industry and art of La Tne migrated from the basin of the Danube to
this tributary of the Rhine soon after 500 B.C.; the culture persisted in the same place until well into the first
century B.C., though the latest products were inferior in design. Although the majority of the people concerned in
the industry may perhaps have come from Danubian territory, yet there is reason to suppose that the features of the
La Tne culture that distinguish it from those of Mhlhart and Hallstatt spread hither from the middle region of
the Rhine Valley, for the earliest examples are seen in the war-chariot graves of this region. La Tne art is perhaps
to be regarded as part of an aristocratic culture derived from this source,[857] but its full development was
attained beside this remote lacustrine tributary of the great river.
La Tne appears to have been a workshop and an art-centre, a repository for manufactured goods, and a military
frontier-post (for the culture is not represented on the other side of the river). Many of the treasures obtained at
this site are in the Cantonal Museum of Archaeology at Neuchtel, others in museums in various parts of
Switzerland, France, and Germany. In the Cantonal Museum one may see axes and adzes, scythes and sickles,
large iron cooking-pots hung on chains, an excellent saw resembling a modern bread- knife, gouges and chisels of
various sizes, knives, spring-scissors, bits closely resembling modern snaffles, metal parts of harness, a waggonor chariot-wheel (iron-shod, with wooden spokes and a hollow wooden centre for the axle), lances of various
kinds, swords and scabbards (some of the latter with very beautifully worked geometrical and other designs), and
articles of personal adornment such as brooches and bracelets. The special skill of the artists was in the use of gold
and bronze. The designs used in their decorations were mostly abstract and geometrical rather than naturalistic,
though with occasional allusions to natural forms; curved lines usually predominated, and strict symmetry was
avoided as a general rule. Their art can be recognized wherever it is found. It is legitimate, from a purely
archaeological point of view, to give the name of Celts to those who produced it, and perhaps to those who
brought it to the neighbourhood of the Lake of Neuchtel from elsewhere.
The La Tne culture spread very widely. From a large area of northern Switzerland and part of Germany a massive
migration of Celts swept westward into France, where they occupied the territory extending from the River
Garonne to the Seine.
The taxonomic position of the people in what is now France whom Julius Caesar called Celtae has given rise to
endless discussion. A large part of the country was occupied in Caesars time by people who spoke a language
that is called Celtic. The more northerly group of these people, the Germanokelten of Hfler,[502] were
essentially Nordids, differing little from the Germani in physical characters, but speaking a very different
language. Their neighbours to the south, called by Hfler the Gallokelten, were Alpinids, who Spoke the same
language as the Germanokelten, though perhaps a different dialect of it. The territory of the Germanokelten
overlapped to some extent that of the Gallokelten, and some hybridization probably occurred. In the regions of
overlap, the former were the dominant group. The most northerly of the Germanokelten were a separate people.
called by Caesar the Belgae, whose territory extended to the lower Rhine. They may possibly have mixed and
hybridized with Gallokelten, but if so, to a much less extent than their southern neighbours.[505] The language of
the Belgae was said by Caesar to have been different from that of the Ceitae, but probably this difference also was
only one of dialect.[141, 857]
Much of the misunderstanding arose from Caesars casual remark that the people who called themselves Celtae
were called Galli by the Romans (Qui ipsorum lingua Celtae, nostra Galli appellantur).[626] This suggests
that members of only one ethnic taxon were present in the territory in question, whereas in fact there were two
taxa, whose territories overlapped. Caesar and his officers would have been in touch with the dominant
Germanokelten.
It has been argued that only the dominant people would have called themselves Celts, and that the Romans made a
mistake in ascribing to the Celtae the name (Galli) of those whom they had subjugated.[462] This, however, was
strongly denied by certain French anthropologists of the nineteenth century,[626, 243] and especially by the
celebrated Paul Broca.[141] These authorities insisted that the true Celtes were the short, brown-haired,
brachycephalic people (Alpinids, in fact) who occupied a huge area from the Danube across southern Germany
and central France to Basse-Bretagne, and some of whose descendants form a considerable part of the modern
French population. Contemporary Greek statues show clearly that the Gallokelten of ancient times were Alpinids,
and indeed their resemblance to modern Auvergnats has been remarked by several authors.[502]
French anthropologists adopted the name race kymrique for the physically very different Germanic invaders
from the north-east (that is to say, the Germanokelten). This name (spelled race kimrique ) had been used by the
French historian Amde Thierry [1040] for the martial people who inhabited both banks of the lower Rhine and
the neighbouring littoral region he included the Belges (Caesars Belgae) as part of this race . Thierry
himself did not give ans description of the physique of these people. It is evident that the French anthropologists
applied the name race kymrique to those Nordids who spoke a Celtic language.
The question next arises, What were the physical characters of the invaders who brought the Iron Age culture to
Great Britain, and whom Caesar called Celtae and Belgae? This can best be answered by a study of the skeletons
that their descendants left in the graveyards of the Romano-British period. The skulls have been subjected to very
careful study, with full statistical analysis, by Morant.[762] It is clear that those Celtae and Belgae who
established themselves in Britain were essentially Nordid. Indeed, it is shown in the table on p. 82 of Morant s
paper that their skulls scarcely differ from those of the Anglo-Saxons who subsequently dominated them, except
in one particular character, namely, that the skull is slightly (but significantly) lower in the Iron Age man than in
the Anglo-Saxon. Beyond this there are some minor differences that might be noticed if it were possible to put a
typical Iron Age man of Romano-British times beside an Anglo-Saxon.[226] The skull might be meso- rather than
dolichocranial, and not only lower, but rounded on top instead of slightly keeled; the cranial capacity would be a
little less. The distance between the level of the lower teeth and the chin would probably be less than in the deepjawed Anglo-Saxon. The build would tend to be slighter, with less massive long-bones moved by less powerful
muscles. One thing is certain. The Celts who came to Britain were not the Celts of Broca, Lagneau, and Daily.
They were Germanokelten, not Gallokelten; essentially Nordid, not Alpinid. it follows that in all probability they
were mainly fair-haired, though some of the Celtae who had Alpinids among their ancestors may have had pale
brown hair, and exact uniformity in this respect woula anyhow not be expected.
Diodorus, writing in the last half-century B.C., stated that the natural hair-colour of the was .[274]
The meaning of is yellow, though it was sometimes applied to auburn or chestnut hair.[665]
Oldfather[274] translates in this passage as Gauls, but Diodorus used in the immediately
preceding paragraph without any obvious difference of meaning, and it seems almost certain that he was referring
to people whom Caesar would have called Celtae or Belgae (though it must be admitted that the Greeks were very
loose in their use of the word , as Anderson[20] has pointed out). Hrnes uses the German word blond
for the hair-colour of the Kelten, [498] and Hfler refers to the blondgelben Germanokelten. [502]
A special Celtic ancestry is sometimes postulated for British populations in which red-heads are unusually
numerous, on the supposition that an ancient people called 'Celts' had been red-haired. Some casual remarks made
by Tacitus (A.D. c. 55c. 120) seem to have originated this idea. Hoernes, in his work Die Urgeschichte des
Menschen,[498] in commenting on the physical resemblance between the ancient Gauls (Gallier) and modern
Auvergnats, says that their kindred to the north were already at the time of Tacitus of such lanky, red-haired
(rothhaarige) aspect, that the historian ascnbed to them a Germanic origin . It is important to notice the word used
by Tacitus for blond hair. In describing the Germani, he refers to their rutilae comae . [1033] Gerber and Greef,
who made an exact study of the meaning of every word used by Tacitus, translated his rutilus as rtlich,
goldgelb.[403] Lewis and Short, in their Latin dictionary, give red (inclining to golden yellow) as the meaning,
and remark that the word was used to describe the Golden Fleece, and that gold was called the rutilus metal.[663]
The Gallokelten liked to consider themselves closely related to the Germanokelten, and for this reason sometimes
dyed or bleached their brown hair in an attempt to make it blond.[502] Gauls taken prisoner by the Romans were
required to do this in order to represent Germani at the triumphal procession of Caligula.[498] According to Pliny
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It will be remembered that Julius Caesar made his landings in Britain in 55 and 54 B.C., not in A.D. 52 (by which
time he had been dead for 95 or 96 years). On the first occasion he landed with about 10,000 men somewhere
between the sites where Walmer and Deal Castles now stand, on the coast of Kent. The Belgae put up an effective
opposition. Caesars men were unnervedas he himself tells usby the novel tactics of the defenders, who sent
their cavalry and chariots in advance. Caesar was obviously much impressed by the charioteers. He remarks that
they exhibited the mobility of cavalry combined with the steadiness of infantry. His first invasion was really a
reconnaissance in force and he soon withdrew.[504]
On the second expedition, in 54 B.C., Caesar evidently intended to establish Roman authority in Britain. His army
consisted of five legions and 2,000 cavalry, probably about 25,000 men in all. Eight hundred vessels set them
ashore a few miles north of where he had previously landed. As he moved inland he found himself opposed by the
formidable Belgic chief, Caswallon (Caesars Cassivellaunus), and noted his adversarys tactics with respect.
He tells us that the Britons did not fight in massed formation, but in groups separated by wide intervals; reserves
were arranged, who relieved the combatants when necessary. The British soldiers stained themselves with a dye,
presumably to incite fear in close fighting, rather as modern soldiers sometimes use horrific cries. Caesar s own
words on the subject, in what is supposed to be the most accurate text, are as follows:[501] Omnes vero se
Britanni vitro inficiunt, quod caeruleam efficit colorem, atque hoc horridiores sunt in pugna aspectu. (All the
Britons actually dye themselves with woad, which produces a blue colour, and from so appearing they are more
terrifying in battle.) It is supposed by some authorities that the use of woad was general among the Britons,
[1012] but in fact it seems probable that in this passage Caesar was referring only to the soldiers.
Caesar indicates that most of the people of the interior did not cultivate grain, but this means no more than that
they were primarily pastoralists, and as a result naturally used skins for clothing.
On this expedition Caesar was able to penetrate beyond the lower Thames, but once again his stay was short.
Some of the tribes opposed to Caswallon made submission, but the latter adopted guerilla tactics, and the invaders
were insecure. Caesar was disturbed by serious news from France. He decided to relinquish his attempt at
establishing himself in the island, and before the end of the summer his army had retreated to the ships and left its
shores. Caesar never returned. His invasions had no effect on the culture of Britain. There had been Mediterranean
influences on Iron Age culture centuries before Caesar was born, and they continued in Britain, on a limited scale,
after he had gone; indeed, they were encouraged by the later Belgic kings;[1064] but Caesar himself achieved
nothing in Britain for Rome apart from the imposition of a tribute that soon lapsed, and nothing at all for the
inhabitants. Rome was without direct influence in the island until the Emperor Claudius came as conqueror in
A.D. 43.
One effect of the submission to Rome was a severe setback to British art. Hawkes sums it up pithily: With the
Roman conquest (from A.D. 43) the art became altered and diminished.... never quite extinguished even in Roman
Britain. it was revived in new forms in post-Roman times. The art of Roman Britain is described and lavishly
illustrated in Toynbees book;[1064] a convenient source for the post-Roman period is Chadwick s.[196]
The Iron Age invaders of Great Britain transmitted the dialects of their Celtic language to the more ancient Britons
whom they found in possession of the land. They pushed back these less advanced peoples towards the west and
north as they themselves spread across the country. To this day there is evidence of ethnic peculiarities in those
who occupy the districts to which the dispossessed people were confined by the advance of the invaders. One of
the most obvious distinctive features of these people is the colour of the hair. The geographical distribution of hair
colour in the British. Isles was studied in some detail towards the end of the nineteenth century by John Beddoe,
who had devised a useful (if somewhat arbitrary) index of nigrescence.[69] The index expresses in rather a
roundabout way the proportion of dark-haired to light haired people of the country, in his time. He prepared a
detailed map, illustrating the distribution of hair-colour. It shows clearly that the tendency towards the possession
of dark hair was much more marked in Wales than in England, and still more marked in the western districts of
Ireland.
The general accuracy of Beddoes map is confirmed by an investigation carried out some seventy years later,
[1029] by methods involving the use of a recording spectrophotometer to establish the colours of a thousand
specimens of hair, and substitution of modern statistical techniques for Beddoe s somewhat arbitrary method for
translating his visual impressions into numbers. The latters map of 1885 and Sunderland s of 1956 agree
remarkably well. and both show clearly the high incidence of dark hair in Wales. The only sharp difference
between the two maps reflects the ever-shifting population of London. Beddoe was mistaken in supposing that the
peoples of Great Britain would become inextricably confused in a single generation.
It is worth remarking that there is rather a high proportion of people with red hair in Wales, and that no fully
satisfactory explanation of this fact has been provided.
Hair colour is only one indication among many that a Mediterranid element has persisted in Great Britain since
Neolithic times. That this persistence has been particularly obvious in Wales was emphasized more than half a
century ago by Fleure and James in a very long and detailed paper on the physical characters of the people of that
country.[344] One need not suppose that any Weishman is descended from Mediterranid ancestors exclusively. It
is evident, however, that genes of that subrace are more frequent in Wales than in most parts of Great Britain, and
random (or more or less random) assortment of those genes will more often bring them together in a single
individual, to produce a close approximation to a Mediterranid, in Wales than elsewhere. Plate I (Figs. 2A and B)
in Fleure and Jamess paper provides a striking example of a Welsh Mediterranid head.
Recent work on blood-groups confirms the evidence about special elements in the ancestry of the Welsh people. In
studies of this kind it is best to count the number of people belonging to each group in a random sample of the
population and to calculate the gene-frequencies from the figures obtained (see pp. 1867). For some purposes it
is convenient to divide the frequency (r) of the gene making for the blood-group O by that (p) of the gene for
the group A. For instance, in a particular population one might find these frequencies: p, 0.270; q, 0.082; r,
0.648. The quotient just mentioned, r/p, would then be 2.4. If the gene for O is high and that for A low, a high
figure would necessarily result.
In most parts of England the quotient is about 2.4, but in north-western Wales the gene for O shows a high
frequency,[773] while that for A is low.[774] The quotient thus rises to between 3 and 3-5. In the extreme
southwest of Ireland it rises even higher, to more than 5-5. These figures give an indication of the extent to which
a Neolithic population has transmitted its genes to the present-day population of these parts of the British Isles.
The facts are well exhibited in a map of these islands showing the geographical distribution of the quotient. As the
Swedish anthropologist Lundman remarks, ...it is obvious from this map that the old population-groups (those
with high quotients) have been forced away into remote marginal zones.[680] There is a remarkable (though not
exact) correspondence between Lundmans and Beddoes maps.
The gene for A has a low frequency in many Mediterranean lands, especially North Africa, Corsica, Sardinia,
the southern half of Italy, and Sicily. In some of these countries, especially Corsica and Sardinia, the gene for O
shows a very high frequency.[774, 72] The quotient in these parts of the world is therefore similar to that in northwestern Wales. The results obtained in modern studies thus support the opinion that has long been entertained on
other grounds, that the Neolithic population of Great Britain was of the Mediterranid subrace, and that people still
living in north-western Wales and certain other parts of the British Isles have inherited a particularly high
proportion of their genes from this ancestral stock.
At or near the beginning of the Bronze Age a very distinct new type appeared. These Beaker Folk were taller,
markedly brachycranial, and broadfaced, with rather wide noses. It seems impossible to place them with
confidence in any of the existing subraces, though they were certainly Europids, and they have been regarded by
some authorities as Dinarids.[512] The evidence from the round barrows of the Bronze Age suggests that they
intermarried to some extent with their Neolithic forerunners, to produce at last a hybrid type having a skull
strangely similar to that of the Iron Age invaders (Celtae and Belgae), though differing from it in the greater
height of the cranium and wider face.[516]
It is often supposed that the Celtae and Belgae almost exterminated and replaced the population over a
considerable part of Great Britain.[762, 510] It seems more probable, however, that Mediterranids and
Mediterranid/Beaker Folk hybrids survived to form part of the modern British population, though the
unhybridized descendants of the Celtae and Belgae continued to predominate greatly in certain places, especially
the south-eastern part of England.[516]
At one time it was widely believed that the Iron Age people of Great Britain (the descendants of the Celtae and
Belgae, intermixed and hybridized with Mediterranids and Mediterranid/Beaker Folk hybrids) were in their turn
driven out to remote districts or slaughtered by the Anglo-Saxon invaders; but opinion has changed. It is
considered that too much stress was laid by the historians of the past on the partial dying out of the Celtic placenames and language. Modern historians allow that while some withdrew to more remote districts and some were
indeed killed by the Anglo-Saxons, others merged with the latter.[496] Physical anthropologists, relying on
evidence provided by the skulls of ancient and modern times, consider that the descendants of Iron Age people of
Romano-British times continued to occupy the country during the period of Anglo-Saxon domination, and were so
far from being driven away or exterminated that it might almost be said that it was they who eventually absorbed
the Anglo-Saxons, while adopting the language of their conquerors. On this view the present-day population of
England and much of Scotland is to a very considerable extent derived from the Celtae and Belgae of the Iron
Age.[640, 762, 510, 175, 516]
That the Anglo-Saxons were not simply exterminators of the people they found in this country is indicated by the
strange evidence of a graveyard at East Shefford in Berkshire, which dates from the latter half of the fifth century
A.D. This contained the skeletons of elderly Anglo-Saxon males, elderly females of a distinctly different ethnic
taxon, and youthful intermediates. It seems almost certain that the elderly people were the parents of the
intermediates. The skulls of the elderly females suggest that they were of the ancient Mediterranid/Beaker Folk
stock.[829]
It has been claimed that the British people are one of the most mongrel of all the strains of the human race .
[1147] It is appropriate to examine this statement here.
Apart from some of the recent immigrants, who do not appear to have hybridized to any important extent with the
native population of the country, the ancestors of the British people of the present day are Europids who have
come in successive waves. Some of the minor incursions have been of little importance, for they cannot have left
enough descendants to have had any significant effect on the genetic make-up of the British population as a
whole. This applies, for instance, to the brachycranial people who arrived in advance of the main Bronze Age
invaders. The Jewish immigrants of recent centuries, again, have not had very much genetic effect on the rest of
the population, partly because they have not been very numerous, partly because they have tended to practise
endogamy.
It has been stated that the English were a truly multiracial society because there were Angles, Saxons, Jutes,
Normans, Belgics, and flamboyant Celts among their ancestors.[1179] The reader should note that all these
peoples were not only of one race (Europid) but of one subrace (Nordid). Incidentally it is doubtful whether the
Angles and Saxons were different peoples in any sense.[101]
It follows from what has been said that the English are far from being one of the most mongrel strains of the
human race. The facts can perhaps be best represented by use of a rough analogy. Let us suppose that a dogbreeder has been specializing in harriers (hounds for hare-hunting, an ancient breed). Let us suppose further that it
occurs to him to mate some of his harriers with bloodhounds. He keeps his stock of harriers and makes a new
hybrid breed of bloodhound-harriers. He gives some of each stock to a master of foxhounds. The master
incorporates them in the breeding stock of his pack, and later introduces some otterhounds as well. Interbreeding
for several generations eventually produces a varied but roughly homogeneous pack, all the ancestors of which
were hounds of the long-eared group that hunts by scent.
No one, on seeing the pack, would say that these hounds were one of the most mongrel of all the strains of dogs.
The man-in-the-street would simply say that they looked rather like foxhounds, while a huntsman would remark
on the differences from typical members of the breed. The inexpert and the expert would agree, rightly, in
describing a cross between a bull-dog and a greyhound, or between a Pekinese and a beagle, as a genuine
specimen of one of the most mongrel of all the strains. Comparable examples could be quoted from mankind, but
since the word mongrel is disparaging when applied to man, it is far better to avoid it.
In the analogy just related, the Neolithic (Mediterranid) people are represented by the harriers; the Beaker Folk by
the bloodhounds; the Iron Age invaders (Celtae and Belgae) by the foxhounds; and the Anglo-Saxons and Other
northerners by the otterhounds. Only the Beaker Folk were markedly different from the rest (though of the same
race), just as the bloodhounds were among the dogs (though of the same group of breeds).
The people of a large part of Wales would be represented, in an analogy of (...)