Page:Prehistoric Britain.djvu/253

Rh The cavern of Baumes-Chaudes contained a vast collection of human bones, representing some 300 individuals. It was regarded by the investigators as a family burying-place, which had not been altogether abandoned till the beginning of the Bronze Age, as one of the skeletons in the upper deposits had beside it a bronze dagger. The crania measured and classified from this ossuary amounted to thirty-five, and all of them were dolichocephalic. The average height of this race was calculated to be about 5 feet 3½ inches. On the other hand, in the cavern of Tertre-Guerin (Seine-et-Marne) only two skulls were found and they were highly brachycephalic, with cephalic indices of 86⋅8 and 91. The archaeological remains in this cavern comprised polished stone celts, with and without horn-casings, together with various other relics indicating an advanced Neolithic civilization.

We thus see that in post-Palæolithic times there sprang up over Western Europe, as the result of the social contact of two different populations—one dolichocephalic and the other brachycephalic—a mixed people who between them founded the Neolithic civilization. At first there was a preponderance of the long-headed races among them, but as the flow of new-comers from the East continued, this cephalic feature was in some localities reversed, especially in Central and Eastern Europe. It was a colony of this mixed population in Europe, but mostly long-headed