Transactions (Volume 18)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1901 edition. Excerpt: ...to a bronze axe. This remarkable burial-place falls, therefore, into line with the large series of burial-mounds of the Bronze Age which lie scattered not only over the area of the British Isles, but over by far the greater portion of Europe. In other places the material employed for circles and fences is stone. Here, in place of stone, wood was employed. In this respect the Bleasdale burial-place is unique. (6) The Makers Of The Burial-place. Nor can there be very much doubt as to the race of men who made this burial-place, as well as those which abound on the moors of Lancashire, Cheshire, Derbyshire, and' Yorkshire. In some of these;' more particularly in Derbyshire and Yorkshire, inhumation was practised and the skeleton was preserved. The examination of these, and more particularly that of Gristhorpe, proves that their makers were a tall, round-headed people with large heads, broad faces, aquiline noses, and a very massive build. They are now represented in the population of Britain by the tall fair Highlander, the tall fair Manxman, and the tall fair Irishman, who constitute the well-defined ethnological group known as the Goidels. They conquered, as I pointed out in my work on Early Man, the greater part of France and of Spain in the Neolithic Age. They invaded this country at the beginning of the Bronze Age, introducing into it the arts and civilisation of that phase of human culture. They were masters of the British Isles in the Bronze Age, and there is scarcely an island off the west coast of Ireland or Scotland where they are unrepresented either by the prehistoric remains or in the existing population. We may then ascribe the Bleasdale burial-place to this ancient race, who continued to be masters of the British Isles until the...