Imatges de pàgina
PDF
EPUB

Anthropologists are agreed that the type of man which now inhabits Europe was not evolved in Europe, but was an incomer. We find remains of these pioneers of the European type in cave or lake deposits of Italy, France, Belgium, and England; these forerunners of our modern type are full-blown Europeans. At least 15,000 years have elapsed, probably more, since these islands received the first contingent of the kind of people which still inhabits them. These pioneer people arrived while this country was still bound to the Continent by land, the English Channel and North Sea being but bays of the sea. We have evidence which leads us to infer that round both of these bays the primitive European drifted into Britain.

Thus it will be seen that anthropologists are agreed that our evolutionary cradle lies neither in Britain nor on the Continent, but in some other part of the world. Where, then, is the cradle-land where our bodies and brains took their present-day shapes? In our modern map of the world we see a great continent of desert sweeping across the northern part of Africa, passing over Arabia and Mesopotamia, to reach the heart of Asia and the frontiers of Mongolia. During the earlier parts of the Ice Age we know that large areas of this desert blossomed and could well have served as a garden of Eden, continental in dimensions. It is in this great desert belt that we find the earliest traces of human communities and civilisation. We can best explain the distribution of the races of mankind, as we now see them, if we suppose that men of the European type were evolved on the northern frontiers of this ancient fertile belt, now a desert. It is probable that the darker European stock was evolved on or towards the African part of this pleistocene Atlantis and passed into Europe from the South, while the fairer people of the same stock appeared in the Asiatic zone and passed into North Europe from the East. We do not despair of yet discovering the ancestry of our own type, and it is in these desert lands that we expect to find them.

Having thus outlined the chief changes which have come over expert opinion regarding the origin of the British people since Huxley's time, I turn to what may be called the darkest chapter of our history. We know what kind of people lived in Britain and buried their dead in the characteristic graves of the second millennium B.C., but of the remains of the people who lived in England during the 1000 years which preceded the arrival of the Romans we know almost nothing. Recently graves which are late Celtic in date, and certainly pre-Roman, have been discovered in the south of England, and I have had an opportunity of studying the people found in them. I have also examined the human remains found in an ancient cemetery at Harlyn Bay, in Cornwall, which certainly contains bones of people living in that county in pre

Roman times. We have the skulls discovered at Glastonbury and other Celtic settlements of the west of England, which have been described by Sir William Boyd Dawkins. Then there are the skulls of people found in Dorset by the late General Pitt-Rivers in sites which had been British villages during the period of Roman occupation. Lately Mrs. Brook Clifford has given me the opportunity of examining the skeletons from a Romano-British cemetery of the third century A.D. situated at Barnwood, near Gloucester. In the Museum of the College of Surgeons there is a large representation of the British of the Roman period. In the Museum of the Guildhall, London, are preserved a number of skulls of Londoners of the Roman period. I have had isolated opportunities of studying remains from the sites of Roman villas extending from Colchester to Cardiff. The result of my studies has been to convince me that there must have been extensive invasions of the southern and eastern parts of England during the millennium preceding the arrival of the Romans. Huxley, as we have seen, regarded these invaders as a fair people, who used a Celtic speech and had come to Britain from Northern France, Switzerland, and South-eastern Germany. In Mr. Rice Holmes's opinion, these fair-haired invaders of England were the true Celts of history.

In these Romano-British graves of South and Middle England we find that there is a prevailing type of skull. Somehow Huxley's lineage is linked to these South Britons of the pre-Roman period, for in his head we can recognise their cranial characteristics. In them, as in him, we see the same flat-vaulted cranial roof, the same panelled forehead, and the same proportion of width to length. In this Romano-British type we find the width of the skull varying from 74 to 78 per cent. of its length. When we examine large groups of these skulls we always find one or two with the exceptional dimensions which were given to Huxley. Unlike Huxley, the Romano-British were usually short people, varying from 5 feet 3 inches to 5 feet 6 inches in stature, but tall individuals also occurred. Nor can we suppose that these Celtic-speaking invaders were all fair; they drifted through dark-haired territories before they reached England. The Romano-British type of skull is still prevalent in England; it can be recognised in Northern France, Holland, Belgium, and Switzerland. We may safely hold that during the 1000 years which preceded the arrival of the Romans the Midland population of England received a large addition of new blood drawn from the fairer stock of Western and Central Europe.

We have dismissed 1000 years of English history in a paragraph. As to what was taking place along our western shores in this period I have said nothing; almost certainly dark settlers were coming from the South. Nor have we included North England

in our survey. The pre-Roman people of Yorkshire were certainly of a different type from those of the south, as revealed in the socalled Danes' graves. Professor William Wright regarded these pre-Roman Yorkshire people as closely akin to Scandinavians, and I agree with him. Huxley was right in 1866 when he said there had been Nordic invasions long before the days of the Saxons and Vikings.

My researches among the Romano-British skulls have brought to light another type of invader-people with wide, short, strong faces and rounded, bullet-like heads. These invaders were Gauls, the people who have inhabited France south of the Seine for many thousands of years, the people to whom Broca wished to confine the name of Celt. Skulls of this type are to be found in the greatest abundance in Kent, particularly in the crypt of the church at Hythe; one finds them in London of the Roman period, and stray samples have turned up in the village settlements examined by Pitt-Rivers. As we have seen, this type is also represented among the prehistoric settlers of the Welsh coast.

From what I have written the reader will realise that our knowledge of the origin of the British people is still in its infancy; we have not been able to assign Huxley to a definite racial category, for of what race were these pre-Roman British? We are driven to accept Huxley's own verdict that the various peoples who settled in Britain at succeeding periods of time were all litters from the same original European or Caucasian stock. Each brought its own tongue and its own traditions, and claimed to be a separate racial entity.

The historian is tempted to think that the whole story of the settlement of Britain is one of repeated invasions, that all of us are but mongrels of foreign origin, and that England has nothing of her own. A study of the laws of invasion and colonisation shows us that when a highly equipped people of one race settles in the country of a lowly equipped people of another race the result is complete extirpation of the invaded people. But when a more highly organised people effects settlement amongst a less highly organised people of the same type and race, the result is never extermination, always amalgamation; almost invariably the invaded and conquered swallow up the invaders and conquerors. There cannot be any doubt that the physical and mental differences which separate the people of England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland are slight. For in England we see Welsh, Scotch and Irish families come and settle. The descendants of these people become indistinguishable from the true English; the descendants of Scotch, Welsh and English settlers in Ireland become indistinguishable from the true Irish. We are certain that those men and women who made their homes in England as the glacial

period came to a close were of the true West European type; all the settlers since that remote date, whether they came from the fair North or dark South, were of this same type. We infer then that throughout the ages this law of invasions has held true of England, and that in every part of these islands the native population has ultimately absorbed the invading host. A true British type has been and is being evolved. Huxley was a product of this type in so far as his bodily characteristics are concerned. But to explain the source of his mental gifts, of those qualities which make a genius of a man, brings us to an unsolved problem. He was born on the fairer side of our pigmentary racial border, yet he himself was dark rather than fair. The eastern parts of Britain from earliest times have drawn their recruiting waves from different sections of the fairer stock of Northern Europe, while the western parts have drawn their recruits chiefly from the darker South.

Huxley was right: there is no recognisable structural distinction between Saxon and Celt, but unfortunately in the issue of national ideals structural resemblances are of but little account, Nature has grafted deeply in mankind an instinct which makes locality, speech, custom and tradition a stronger force in the welding of peoples into a common nationality than the possession of the same structural characteristics.

ARTHUR KEITH.

THE LANSDOWN CRICKET CLUB:1

A CENTENARY

THE beginnings of serious cricket in the west of England may be said to date from 1825, with the foundation of the celebrated Lansdown Club at Bath. Prominent among the little band of enthusiasts responsible for its organisation was the Rev. James Pycroft, author of that classic of the summer pastime, The Cricket Field. The Lansdown Cricket Club, who'engaged the famous Sparks and Ashby to coach them,' enjoyed the advantage of a charmingly picturesque milieu ('Sydenham Fields'), shaded by trees and overlooked by the abbey and other public buildings and memorials.

After a few seasons, so proficient with bat and ball did the Lansdown Eleven become that they had the temerity to challenge Oxford University on level terms. Not only so, but they succeeded in defeating the Dark Blues in two out of seven completed matches -by three runs in 1842 and by 81 runs in 1843. In the 'fifties and 'sixties, moreover, the formidable All England Eleven were several times encountered by twenty-twos of the Club. After being bowled out for the paltry total of 28 by the great Jackson and Hayward in the match of 1860, the Lansdown men retaliated on their foes in the ensuing year by the substantial majority of thirteen wickets, Mr. E. J. Morres securing exactly that number of victims for 65 runs!

It is now that the commanding figure of W. G. Grace flits across the scene. He came, of course, from Thornbury, in Gloucestershire, but in 1863, when he was a lad of fourteen, he was invited to play for Lansdown against the England Eleven. Now, it is well known that in first-class matches W. G.' was never dismissed twice without scoring. But twice during 1863 did he achieve this unenviable distinction on the Bath ground. Against the England combination he scored 'c Clarke, b Tinley o, c Anderson, b Tinley o'; while for Clifton versus Lansdown his equally depressing record was ' b E. M. Grace o, b E. M. Grace o.' Of a further act of prowess by that famed brother of his, also for Lansdown, W. G. Grace has told the following story:

1 The author desires to thank Mr. F. E. Lacey, Secretary of the M.C.C., Mr. F. S. Ashley-Cooper, and the Secretary of the Somerset C.C.C.

« AnteriorContinua »