remains the recognized classification of the " Celtic" dialects, of which the Gaelic is considered to be the more primitive and older. CELTIC GROUP OF LANGUAGES. I. Gallic or Cymric. 1. Cymric or Welsh II. Gaelic or Erse. 1. Fenic or Erse or Irish Still further had the Celtic theory grown apace. This so-called "Celtic Race" was also called "Aryan" in race, when it was observed that their language was akin to the languages which had latterly been classed as "Aryan." This essentially racial title of " Aryan " had been introduced into English and other European languages by the discovery, in 1794, by the erudite Sir William Jones, the Chief Justice of Calcutta, that the Sanskrit language of the ancient Hindoos, who called themselves " Arya," was radically and stucturally of the same type as the Old Persian, Greek, Latin, Celtic, English, and German (or "Teutonic ") languages of Europe,1 and that the culture and mythology of the ancient Hindoos were essentially analogous to that of Ancient Greece and Rome and of the Goths. The physical appearance also of the purer Hindoos, claiming to be the descendants of the highly civilized ancient Aryas, resembled generally that of the North European peoples of Britain and Scandinavia. It was then assumed that the ancient " Aryas" who civilized India and Persia or Iran, and gave them their "Aryan" speech were presumably of the same common racial stock as the ancestors of the civilizers of Greece and Rome and Northern Europe, who had in prehistoric time civilized Europe and imposed on it their "Aryan" speech. This Indo-European stock of people was thus called "The Aryan Race"; and the name Aryan" was extended also to their several languages and dialects, which were classed as" Aryan" or " Indo-European,' or by usurping German writers "Indo-Germanic." Thus This fact was fully established by F. Bopp, of Berlin, in 1820, in his Analytical Comparison of Sanskrit, Greek, Latin and Germanic Languages, and by subsequent writers. NO TRUE "CELTS" IN BRITISH ISLES 133 the so-called "Celtic" languages were called a branch of Aryan Speech and the "Celts" themselves called "Aryans' in race; and to these "Celts" the philologists and ethnologists arbitrarily assigned the credit for first introducing the Aryan language and Aryan culture into Alban or Britain and Ireland. Disillusionment, however, came in the year 1864, when scientific anthropologists, following Anders Retzius, the Swede, had begun to apply exact measurement to the skulls and physical types of the various so-called branches of the Aryan race, as it had been found that the shape of the skull or head-form afforded the best of all criterions of race. In that year M.Paul Broca, who had begun four years earlier a systematic measurement of the head-forms of the people of France,1 published his famous monograph on the head-forms of the Celts of Brittany-the descendants of the original "Celts" of Cæsar and the classic writers. He found that so far from these "Celts" being of the Aryan physical type, namely tall, fair, and long-headed, they were, on the contrary, a short, darkish-complexioned, and round-headed race. The next year, 1865, appeared the celebrated collection of measurements of the ethnic types in the British Isles by Davis and Thurnam in their "Crania Britannica," on which they had been engaged since 1860, and Dr. Beddoe's papers. This disclosed conclusively that the "Celtic"-speaking people of the British Isles, and more particularly the Welsh, were also short and dark-complexioned, but with long-heads or medium long-heads and thus were of a markedly different racial type to the "Celts" of Gaul; whilst their skull-form and complexion excluded the greater portion of them from the Aryan racial type and affiliated them to the Iberians. 'P. Broca, "Sur l'ethnologie de la France" in Mémoir. Soc. d'anthropol. Paris. 1860. I, 1-56. Broca, "Sur les Celtes" in Bullet. Soc. d'Anthropol. 1864, 457 f.; and "La Race Celtique Ancienne et Moderne Auvergnes et Amoricains, etc.," Revue d'Anthrop., 1864, 11, 577 f. J. B. Davis and J. Thurnam, 1865. " • J. Beddoe, On the head-forms of the West of England," in Mem. Anthrop. Soc., London, 1864, ii, 37 f., and 348 f. L Those startling discoveries by scientific methods excited great commotion amongst the ethnologists and philologists, as it disproved their accepted theory that the "Celts" of Gaul were of the same kindred as the "Celts" of the British Isles, and that both were Aryans; whereas it was now disclosed on the contrary that they were of different races and that neither were of the Aryan Race, although both spoke an Aryan language in different dialects. These scientific results were fully confirmed by further measurements, which were also extended over the greater part of Europe. As these measurements disentagle the British "Celts" from the continental, and also sharply differentiate the Aryan type from both, it is necessary to glance at their leading results which are here displayed in the accompanying Table; and illustrated in Fig. 22. This RACIAL TYPES IN EUROPE. "" " This Table is based generally on that of Dr. Ripley (R.R.E., 121); but I have used Dr. Deniker's "Nordic " for No. I, with " Aryan as its synonym, as Aryans are admittedly Nordic," and I have rejected the ambiguous and misleading "Teutonic" which is ordinarily synonymous with "Germanic," which is a totally different type, namely No. II. " "Cephalic Index" is the ratio of the extreme length of the head to its extreme breadth expressed in percentage. Under 80 the head is "Long," and 80 and upwards it is " Round ог Broad" ("Germanic."). It is the surest criterion of race along with colour. The writer, of fair complexion, has a cephalic index of 76.1. See note 1. On general prevalence of " Alpine" type of head in Germany see Ripley, (R.R.E. map opp. p. 53); also Prof. Parsons, cited later. RACIAL HEAD-TYPES IN EUROPE 135 shows three main racial types in the population of modern Europe, all three of which we shall find represented in Britain, namely: (I) The Aryan1 or Nordic (or Northern), tall, fair, broad-browed, long or longish heads, (II) Alpine or " Celtic" (continental) or Germanic, short-statured, fair or darkish, broad-browed, round or broad heads; and (III) Iberian or "Mediterranean," shortish-statured, dark, narrow-browed, long-faced, long-heads, and including the prehistoric "river-bed" type of the Picts. The best of the distinguishing criterions of race is the Head Index in second column of table, in conjunction with colour. FIG. 22. Three main Racial Head-Types in Europe. (The head is viewed from above.) A. Aryan or Nordic. C. Alpine, or "Celtic," or Germanic (Teutonic) B. Iberian or Mediterranean and " River-bed" type. The first of these racial types of Europe, the Nordic or "Northern," which is the Aryan type, is now mostly restricted to north-western Europe. It included most of the classic Greeks and Romans, as evidenced by their sculptures and paintings and skeletal remains. It comprises a considerable element in the present-day population in the British Isles, the Scandinavians or Norsemen (including Swedes and many Danes), and a small proportion of the people of France and of the Rhine Valley, where, however, the skulls of the older burials show that the civilizers of Germany, like the Jutes and Anglo-Saxons, were of this type. And I shall See note I on p. 134. show that the Early Britons and "Scots," properly so-called, as well as the Goths, belonged to this Aryan type, which was also the type of the eastern or Indo-Persian branch of the Aryans the Barat-Khattiya,-and the Khatti or Hittites and Phoenicians. The second, the "Celtic" or so-called "Alpine" [Swiss], extending from Brittany to Switzerland, also comprises the major type in the Rhine Valley, the Slav or Serb people of Mid-Europe, including the Prussians, Poles and a large proportion of the Russians, and an appreciable element amongst the people on the East Coast of Britain derived from the "Bronze Age" Hun invaders of prehistoric Alban in the later Stone Age who were essentially of this round-headed type.1 " The third type is of especial interest in regard to the "British Celtic" question, and the dark racial element by which the "Celtic" language is chiefly spoken in the British Isles. This type is generally known as " Iberian," from one of its old seats, Iberia or Spain, and it was given the wider synonym of " Pelasgic"; but it is now generally called 'Mediterranean," after Sergi's nomenclature, as it is found in modern Europe, mainly along that sea-basin from Spain to Greece and its Archipelago to Asia Minor. It is essentially of the same type as the prehistoric Stone Age inhabitants of the British Isles, the "river-bed" type of Huxley, and is also substantially the same type which is found in many of the long "barrows" or long grave mounds alongside the Aryan type there. And it still forms the substratum of the modern This important fact of the persistence of round-heads in the modern population of Great Britain, which is not referred to by Ripley, has been noted by many anthropologists, especially by Sir Arthur Keith in regard to both England and Scotland. Regarding the latter, Sir A. Keith has recently stated that, while the West Coast of Scotland, as in the Glasgow district, contains only about 2 per cent. of round-heads in its population which is mainly long-headed like the rest of the British Isles, Edinburgh, on the East Coast, contains about 25 per cent. of round-heads in its population. 'Dr. Thurnam's well-known axiom still holds good : long barrow, long skull; round barrow, round head." From the South Coast and the Severn Valley-Glastonbury, Gloucester and Wilts—and northward over Britain, in the long barrows associated with the Aryan type (implying intermarriage) are found the remains of small-statured people with often long-headed and often narrow-browed skulls along with their polished stone-weapons and no bronze. See D.E.M., 318 f. On broad-browed, long-heads in long barrows, see later. |