192 Notes on the Evidence bearing
mounds to be found in Britain. They have never been known
to contain any metal but, very rarely, gold ; but little pottery
and no broad-headed (brachycephalic) skulls have ever been
found in them. The long barrows of Britain appear, as
regards the absence of metal in each, to be represented in
Scandinavia and Western France by chambered mounds, both
long and round in form, in which the dead are interred in
chambers, not in cists. But while the British long-barrows
contain only long-headed (dolicho-cephalic) skulls, the skulls
of the Scandinavian mounds are mainly broad-headed
(brachycephalic), and those of the barrows of Western France
are of both forms, in almost equal numbers.
Neolithic Britain appears to have been invaded by a people
who buried their dead in round barrows, and who, though
broad-headed, like the Scandinavians of the chambered
mounds, were unlike them in being acquainted with the use
of bronze. In these round barrows pottery is much more
abundant than in the long barrows. On the whole the new-
comers seem to have mingled peacefully with the Neolithic
people, skulls of both races being found in the round barrows.
These bronze-using people were very unlike the Neolithic
race, being taller, stronger, and much rougher in appearance,
with large frontal sinuses and supra-orbital ridges, prominent
cheek-bones, and heavy jaws. So far as the evidence goes it
seems to point towards the identity of this Bronze people
with the Finnish or Ugrian stock. The late Prof. Rolleston
remarks6 that the "Briton of the round-barrow period all
but certainly presented much the same combination of physical
peculiarities as the modern Finn and Dane"; and he adds:
—"The bronze-period Briton very closely resembles in his
osteological remains the brachycephalous Dane of the Neolithic
Period, and the likeness between these and some of the modern
Danes has been noticed by Virchow," &c. Mr. Elton" states
that a Finnish idiom has been traced in several of the British
(Celtic) languages ; and we learn from Prof. A. H. Keane''
5 'British Barrows,' p. 680.
6 'Origins of English History,' chap. vii.
7 'Europe.' By F. W. Rudler and G. G. Chisholm. Edited by Sir A.
C. Ramsay. Ethnological Appendix by A. H. Keane, p. 577.