%
%    Holmes' commentary on Caesar's De Bello Gallico.
%    The Ethnology of Gaul (preface 4).
%
%    Contributor: Konrad Schroder  <[email protected]>
%
%    Original publication data:
%         Holmes, T. Rice.  _C._Iuli_Caesaris_Comantarii_Rerum_in_
%                   _Gallia_Gestarum_VII_A._Hirti_Commentarius_VIII._
%                             Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1914.
%
%    Version: 0.01 (Alpha), 7 April 1993
%
%    This file is in the Public Domain.
%
\input ks_macros.tex
\centerline{THE ETHNOLOGY OF GAUL}
\bigskip

E{\sc VERYBODY} knows the three sentences with which Caesar's narrative of
the Gallic war begins: `Gaul, taken as a whole, is divided into three
parts, one of which is inhabited by the Belgae, another by the Aquitani,
and the third by a people who call themselves Celts and whom we call Gauls.
These peoples differ from one another in language, institutions, and laws.
The Gauls are separated from the Aquitani by the Garonne, from the Belgae
by the Marne and the Seine.' This information was enough for Caesar's
Italian readers: he did not trouble himself or them about the races which
had inhabited Gaul long before Gauls and Belgae arrived, and whose
descendants lived there still; and if we had to depend upon him alone, we
should know no more about the ethnology of Gaul than the man in the street
knows about the ethnology of Britain, where the descendants of Huguenots,
Flemings, Jews, Normans, Danes, Saxons, Celts, and aborigines are living
now under the common name of Englishmen. A century ago the most learned men
knew very little more than what Caesar told them. But within the last
generation or two a great deal more has been ascertained,---mostly from
evidence which was not to be found in books. Here I need only give a short
explanation of the way in which the information has been acquired and a
short statement of the results.

The information has been derived from four different sources,---the
evidence of Caesar and other ancient writers and the three sciences, which
are steadily growing, called physical anthropology, archaeology, and
philology. The anthropologists have worked in two different ways: they have
carefully measured skeletons or skulls found in caverns, in ancient graves,
and elsewhere, and belonging to men who were living in Gaul not only after
the Celtic invasion (see p. xlvii) but many hundreds or thousands of years
before Caesar set foot in the country, and have classified them in various
groups, not forgetting to note the surroundings in which they ~ ere found;
they have also taken very numerous observation.s of the height, hair, eyes
and complexion, and skull-form of living Frenchmen, Belgians, and others,
in the hope that the results would help them to give a true account of the
population of ancient Gaul. The archaeologists have collected, arranged,
and described the tools, weapons, and ornaments which were found with or
apart from the skeletons, and have thereby been able to fix the period of
Gallic history or the prehistoric period to which this or that skeleton or
group of skeletons belonged. Thus some skeletons have been found interred
with stone knives, others with bronze daggers, others with iron swords,
bronze brooches, chariot-wheels, and horse-trappings of various kinds. The
philologists have endeavoured to learn from names of tribes and places and
from the scanty remains of the Iberian and Ligurian languages whether the
Iberians and Ligurians, whom Caesar ignored, inhabited other parts of Gaul
besides those which ancient writers assigned to them, and have also used
the remains of the old Celtic languages in order to find out whether the
Celtae all spoke the same language or formed two groups which spoke two
dialects, how they were related to the Belgae, and how both were related to
the Germans.

Before I proceed let me ask the reader to bear in mind two things. First,
Caesar uses the words `Celts' (Celtae) and `Gauls' (Galli) in a restricted
sense. As we shall see presently, the Belgae were Gauls and Celts as well
as the Celtae: there had been Celts in Germany before he came to Gaul;
there were Celts in Britain and in Spain; the Gauls who beat the Romans in
the battle of the Allia\footnote{$^1$}
    {See p. xxxix.}
were Celts. Secondly, Belgae, Celtae, and Aquitani were all, more or less,
mixed. No pure race exists.

Let us begin at the beginning. The oldest human fossils that have been
found in Gaul belong to the Palaeolithic Age. Not only Gaul, but also
Belgium and Central Europe as far east as Croatia were then inhabited by
hunters belonging to what is generally called the Neanderthal race, after a
skull which was found about fifty years ago in the valley of the Neander in
Rhenish Prussia As far as we can tell from the bones that have been
discovered, they were short, sturdy men, with very low receding foreheads,
huge projecting brow ridges, and certain ape-like features,---for instance,
extremely defective chins These people, although they manufactured flint
tools with considerable skill, were certainly much inferior in mental power
to others of a different type who were their contemporaries; and towards
the end of the Palaeolithic Age there dwelt in South-Western Gaul a people
who, as we may infer not only from their beautifully formed heads, but from
the wonderful works of art which I have mentioned in the Introduction, were
as intelligent as modern Europeans Skulls of this type were discovered at
Laugerie-Basse and Chancelade in the valley of the Loz\`ere; and nearly
related to the race which they represent were people remarkable for great
stature, some of whose skeletons have been unearthed from caves near
Mentone, and who are generally called after a specimen that was found
beneath the rock-shelter of Cro-Magnon in P\'erigord.

Thus even in the Old Stone Age the inhabitants of Gaul belonged to several
different types Some ethnologists believe that the Neanderthal race became
extinct; but descendants of the other groups were living in Caesar's time;
and their descendants are living now.

So much for the Palaeolithic Age. Of the Neolithic Age, which followed it,
we of course know much more The skeletons that have been found belong for
the most part to two groups Both were short or of middle height, and both,
as we may infer from the complexion of their modern descendants, were dark;
but the shorter, who are called after Grenelle, near Paris, where six
typical specimens were discovered, were sturdily built and had short round
heads; while the others, the most famous representatives of whom belonged
to the caverns of l'Homme Mort and Baumes-Chaudes in the department of the
Loz\`ere, were generally slender and had well-formed oval heads. Probably
the latter were descended from the palaeolithic race which is represented
by the skeletons of Chancelade and Laugerie-Basse; but the round-headed
people, as would appear from the places in which their remains were most
numerous, migrated into Gaul by two routes,---through Belgium and Savoy.
People who resembled the long-heads of the Loz\`ere dwelt in the Neolithic
Age in our own island and in various parts of Central and Southern Europe:
the round-heads were rare in Britain, but numerous on the Continent, as
they are still.

It must not, however, be supposed that all the neolithic inhabitants of
Gaul belonged to one or the other of these two main types. Here and there
long-headed individuals were tall; and in some places skeletons of divers
kinds have been found jumbled together. But although the two principal
groups gradually intermingled, they were certainly at first distinct; for
of 140 interments 55 contained only long skulls, and 20 only short ones;
while every one of the skulls---64 in all---that were taken from the
caverns of l'Homme Mort and Baumes-Chaudes were long.

Invaders different from the people who have just been described may have
settled in Gaul in the Bronze Age; but we cannot be sure, for in that
period the dead were more often cremated than interred. At a later time,
when iron weapons were beginning to be used instead of bronze, a tall race,
which, as far as we can judge from skeletons, resembled the Celts, occupied
the eastern departments of the Jura and the Doubs; and they were most
probably new-comers.

In Switzerland---the original home of the Helvetii---the long-headed and
the round-headed group were both represented.

I must now say a few words about the Ligurians and the Iberians, who
inhabited Gaul before the Celts arrived. Before 500 B.C. the Ligurians
possessed South-Eastern Gaul, east of the Rh\^one and at least as far north
as Bellegarde in the department of the Ain; and at that time or not long
afterwards they were mingled, west of the Rh\^one, with Iberians. So much w
e learn from historians and geographers: but there is some reason to
believe that Ligurians occupied the whole eastern region of Gaul as far
north as the Marne; for certain suffixes, or endings of place-names, namely
-asca, -asco, -osca, -osco, -usca and -usco, which are found very
frequently in Piedmont, where Ligurians were the primitive inhabitants,
also occur in twenty-five of the eastern departments\footnote{$^2$}
    {Alpes-Maritimes, Var, Bouches-du-Rh\^one, Gard, Herault,
    Basses-Alpes, Vaucluse, Hautes-Alpes, Dr\^ome, Ard\`eche, Savoie,
    Is\`ere, Ain, Rh\^one, Jura, Sa\^one-et-Loire, C\^ote-d'Or,
    Doubs, Haute-Sa\^one, Yonne, Aube, Marne, Haute-Loire, Aveyron,
    and Ari\`ege.}
of France, and these departments form one unbroken tract. Indeed it is not
improbable that Ligurians, even in Caesar's time, inhabited Aquitania; for
there were five tribes in Liguria proper\footnote{$^3$}
    {The Deciates, Desuviates, Ednates, Nantuates, and Quariates.}
and sixteen or seventeen in Aquitania\footnote{$^4$}
    {The Cocosates, Elusates, Glatcs, Sibusates, Sotiates, Tarusates,
    and ten or eleven others mentioned by Pliny ({\it N.H.,} iv, 19,
    \S 108).}
whose names ended in -ates; and such names are to be found nowhere else in
Gaul.\footnote{$^5$}
    {The Belgic Atrebates are perhaps only an apparent exception. It
    must, however, be admitted that no Aquitanian names in -asca,
    \&c., have been cited.}
The Iberians probably migrated into Southern Gaul from Spain; for Iberians
occupied the whole eastern region of the Spanish peninsula, though the name
`Iberian' was perhaps applied originally only to a people who dwelt between
the river Ebro and the Pyrenees. It is generally believed, though some
scholars are of a different opinion, that Basque, which is still spoken in
the south-western corner of France and the adjacent part of Spain, is
closely related to the language, of which there were doubtless several
dialects, that was spoken by the Iberians. Several place-names are quoted
to prove this, especially Iliberris, which occurs, in various forms, both
in Spain and in Southern Gaul. There was an Illiberris in Roussillon, an
Elimberri in Auch, and an Illiberri in Granada. The word iri in Basque
means `town' and berri means `new'; so that Iliberris, like the Celtic
Noviodunum,\footnote{$^6$}
    {{\it B. G.,} ii, 12, \S 1; vii, 12, \S 2; 55, \S 1}
would have meant `New Town'. This word, however, has given rise to a great
deal of discussion, about which I can say nothing here, but of which I have
given a short account in {\it Caesar's Conquest of Gall} (pages 290-8)
There is another fact which makes the Iberian question complicated and
difficult. Certain inscriptions, called Iberian, have been found in Spain.
Some of them are written in Roman letters; other in letters adapted from
the Phoenician alphabet, from right to left; others again in the same
letters from left to right. Nobody has yet been able to translate them; but
a French scholar who has devoted his life to the study of Basque denies
that any trace of Basque is to be found in them. Moreover, the great
majority of the place-names in the Spanish peninsula and in Southern Gaul
which we find in the ancient roadbooks\footnote{$^7$}
    {See p.~403.}
and in the writings of the ancient geographers cannot be explained from
Basque. Perhaps the problem may be solved by supposing that Basques
inhabited Spain before the Iberians invaded it; that they were the founders
of Iliberris, of Elimberri, and of Illiberri; and that before the time of
Caesar they had been driven by the Iberians, who probably spoke the
languages of the inscriptions, into the region where Basque is still
spoken.

The Greek geographer, Strabo, says that the Aquitanians resembled the
Iberians (by whom he means the mass of the inhabitants of the entire
Spanish peninsula, not merely of the part which belonged to Iberians
properly so called) rather than the Gauls, and spoke a language akin to
that of the former. What is certain is that, except Aquitania, the region
inhabited by Iberians and Ligurians was subdued, long before the time of
Caesar, by Celts.

It is now time to speak of the Galli, or, as they called themselves,
Celtae, and of the Belgae. I have said enough to show that each of these
two groups was a mixture of various races,---that the Celtic and Belgic
invaders had given their names to a population which comprised descendants
of palaeolithic and neolithic races, and of later invaders. Several
questions have to be answered.  When did the invaders who gave their name
to the mixed population called Celtae first enter Gaul? Did they introduce
the language which we call Celtic, or was it spoken in Gaul before they
arrived? Did they all speak the same language? Were they kinsmen of the
Belgae, and did the Celtae and the Belgae speak the same language? Were any
of the Belgic tribes German? Were the Celtae and the Belgae, when they
invaded Gaul, nearly related to the Germans? Before I attempt to answer
these questions I will ask the reader to bear in mind that Caesar uses the
word Galli in two senses: sometimes he means the people between the Seine
or the Marne and the Garonne, sometimes he means both them and the Belgae.

According to the historical evidence, the first Celtic invasion of Gaul
cannot be dated earlier than the seventh century before Christ; but, as we
have already seen, the tall men whose skeletons have been found in Eastern
France in graves of a somewhat older period may have belonged to the first
group of Celtic invaders. If we may trust Caesar, the Gauls in general,
including the Belgae, were conspicuously tall: `the Gauls,' he says, `as a
rule, despise our short stature, contrasting it with their own great
height';\footnote{$^8$}
    {B. G., ii, 30, \S 4.}
and all the ancient writers who describe the Gauls say much the same, most
of them adding that the Gauls were fair. Now any observant person who has
travelled much in France must have noticed that tall blonde people are
rare, and that, with comparatively few exceptions, they are only to be seen
in the north eastern departments, where many of the inhabitants are
descended from German invaders. How are we to account for the contrast
between modern Frenchmen and the Gauls whom Caesar and other ancient
writers described? To begin with, we may be sure that even in Caesar's day
tall fair men formed only a minority of the population; for, as we have
seen, the people who were in possession when the Celts arrived were for the
most part short and dark, and we may be sure that even the Celtic invaders
were not all of the same type when untrained observers enter a strange
country they notice the individuals whose physical features are unfamiliar
and ignore the rest. Thus a modern English traveller hastily remarks that
Scotsmen have red hair and red beards; while a trained obselver, having
entered in his note-book all the observations that he has been able to
make, reports that in certain districts most Scotsmen are dark, while in
that part of Scotland in which fairness is most conspicuous, not more than
eleven per cent of the people have red hair. Still, the proportion of
blonde people in Gaul was certainly much greater than in modern France; and
we have to account for the difference. First, it must be remembered that a
great many Gauls perished in Caesar's wars or were sold into slavery; and
of those who were thus lost to the country a number disproportionately
large probably belonged to the dominant race, by whose great stature he was
so impressed. Secondly, except in comparatively cold climates, the tall
fair type is less successful in the struggle for existence than the dark.
Thirdly, there is reason to believe that the fair type is less able than
the dark to resist the unhealthy conditions of the slums in crowded cities.
Fourthly, in families of which one parent is fair and the other dark, the
proportion of dark children is generally greater than the proportion of
fair. Lastly, a mixed population tends to revert to the type which was at
the beginning that of the majority. There is little doubt, then, that since
the time of Caesar, although France has been invaded by Franks, Visigoths,
Alani, Saxons, Burgundians, and Normans, among all of whom fairness and
tall stature were conspicuous, the dark type has been gaining ground upon
the fair. No observant person who knows the outlines of English history
will be surprised at this. The Saxons, Angles, and Jutes who conquered
Britain were at least as fair as the Celts; they settled among a people of
whom the dominant element in Caesar's time had been, as it was in Gaul,
Celtic; and they killed a good many of them. Afterwards they were
themselves conquered by Danes and Normans, among whom fairness was also
common. But the dark element, which had existed in prehistoric Britain as
in prehistoric Gaul, reasserted itself. Except in certain parts of
Scotland, where the descendants of Scandinavians are numerous, and in
certain rural districts where the population has remained comparatively
pure, fair people are more or less rare; and darkness is gradually
increasing.

It is generally taken for granted that the Celts hrought the language which
is called Celtic into Gaul, and that it gradually became universal except
in Aquitania. One or two well-known writers, however, believe that the
Celtic invaders, when they entered Gaul, spoke German, and learned Celtic
from the people among whom they settled. Thus Professor Ridgeway, speaking
of the British Isles, but perhaps thinking also of Gaul, argues that even
when `conquerors bring with them some women of their own race', they are
generally `liable to drop their own language and practically adopt that of
the natives'; and, remarking that both Gaelic and Welsh are still spoken in
the British Isles, he says that it is absurd to suppose that the earlier
inhabitants of Britain became `completely Celticized' in speech in the few
centuries that elapsed between the Celtic invasions and the time of Caesar.
Now it is quite true that in many instances conquerors have adopted the
language of the people whom they conquered; but in these cases the
conquerors, besides being far inferior in number, were also either less
civilized or not much more civilized than the conquered. The Celtic
conquerors of Gaul and Britain did bring with them not only `some women'
but all their women; for this was the regular practice both of the Celts
and of the Germans.\footnote{$^9$}
    {See {\it B.~G.,} i, 29, \S 1; 51, \S 3; iv, 14, \S 5.}
The time in which, according to Professor Ridgeway, it is incredible that
the Celtic language became dominant in Britain and in Gaul was considerably
longer than that in which, as he admits, the language of a small minority
of English settlers became dominant in Ireland. Remember how quickly the
language of Rome took root in Britain,\footnote{$^{10}$}
    {See Prof. F. J Haverfield's {\it The Romanization of Roman
    Britain,} 2nd ed., 1912, pp. 24--9.}
Gaul, and Spain. If we were to suppose that the Celtic conquerers of Gaul
learned Celtic from the natives whom they conquered, we should have to
admit first, that the language which the Celts found spoken not only in
Gaul and Britain, but also in Switzerland and Spain, was Celtic; secondly,
that Celtic was spoken by the aborigines of the Stone Age in Gaul and
Britain, Switzerland and Spain, for if it was not, some invaders must have
imposed it; and, lastly, that if the aborigines of the British Isles and of
Gaul spoke Celtic, Celtic must have branched off from the primitive
`Indo-European' language, from which the languages of Persia, Afghanistan,
and Northern Hindostan, as well as most of the languages of Europe, are
descended, in the Palaeolithic Age! Besides, if the aborigines of the
British Isles spoke Gaelic, why did not the Brythons, who conquered them,
and whose language was the ancestor of Welsh, learn Gaelic from them?  If
the Celts did not speak Celtic when they invaded Gaul and Britain, how are
the numerous Celtic place-names in Germany to be accounted for? Do they not
prove that the Celts spoke Celtic before they crossed the Rhine ? Every one
admits that the language of the Belgae was Celtic: they certainly did not
learn it from the Gauls whom they found in possession, for Caesar says that
they expelled them;\footnote{$^{11}$}
    {{\it B.~G.,} ii, 4, \S 1. No doubt Caesar's words are not to be
    taken literally; but, admitting this, all analogy is opposed to
    the assumption that the Belgae did not speak Celtic before they
    crossed the Rhine.}
therefore they must have spoken it when they invaded Gaul. Surely we may
infer that the Celts who had already conquered the rest of Gaul did the
same.

Celtic was spoken in two of the three divisions of Gaul,---those which were
inhabited by the Celtae and the Belgae respectively. But was the language
everywhere the same, or were there two dialects, as there are in the Celtic
regions of Great Britain,---Wales and the Scottish Highlands? It is certain
that in Caesar's time the Belgae and most of the Celtae, as well as the
bulk of the Britons who dwelt south of the Cheviot Hills, spoke the
language which is called Brythonic, and from which are descended the
languages which are now spoken in Wales and part of Brittany. The people
who spoke this language are called `P~Celts', because they had changed the
original souns {\it qu} into {\it p.} Thus the original form of {\it
Parisii} would have been {\it Qarisii.} The same change took place in other
languages; for instance, the Greek equivalent of equus is {\greek <'ippos}.
But there is some reason to believe that in certain parts of Gaul a Celtic
dialect was spoken in which the sound {\it qu} was retained. This dialect
is called Goidelic, and it was the ancestor of Gaelic, which is still
spoken in the western parts of Ireland and in the highlands of Scotland.
Those who believe that it was spoken in Gaul in Caesar's time point to the
words {\it Sequana} and {\it Sequani,} the ancient name of the river Seine
and the name of the tribe whose chief town was Vesontio (Besan\c{c}on). But
some Celtic scholars believe that these names were not Celtic, but
Ligurian,---a language of which we know hardly anything. All that we can be
sure of is that if a Goidelic dialect had been spoken by the earlier Celtic
invaders, it had been superseded, except perhaps in certain districts, by
Gallo-Brythonic. The Belgae, then, and the Celtae spoke the same language;
their physical features are described by ancient writers in terms which are
virtually identical; and they were closely related in blood and had a
common civilization.

But we must not forget that Caesar says that, according to the ambassadors
who came to him from the Remi, `most of the Belgae were of German origin'
({\it plerosque Belgas esse ortos a Germanis).\footnote{$^{12}$}
    {\it B.~G.,} ii, 4, \S\S 1--2.
He does not, however, endorse the statement of the ambassadors; and the
fact that he himself, rightly or wrongly, specifies five Belgic
tribes---the Eburones, Caerosi, Paemani, Segni, and Condrusi---as
German,\footnote{$^{13}$}
    {\it Ib.,} \S 10;  vi, 32, \S 1.
perhaps implies that he had reason to believe that the rest of the Belgae
were not. Tacitus\footnote{$^{14}$}
    {\it Germania,} 28.
regards only the Triboci, the Nemetes, and the Vangiones as `undoubtedly
German tribes' ({\it haud dubie Germanorum populi}); and none of the three
were Belgae at all. The Treveri (who were Celtae, not Belgae) and the
Nervii, according to Tacitus, wished to be considered Germans; but, if he
was rightly informed, this very fact would appear to show that they were
not what they professed to be. Strabo says that the Nelvii were Germans;
but the nannes of Nervian and Treveran individuals, as well as the
geographical names of both tribes, were Celtic. So also were the names of
the Ebulones and their two kings,---Ambiorix and Catuvolcus. Hirtius, the
author of the {\it Eighth Commentary,} while he notes the resemblance of
the Treveri to the Germans in manners and customs, says that it was due to
the fact that the Treveri were neighbours of the Germans.\footnote{$^{15}$}
    {\it B.~G.,} viii, 25, \S 2.
Perhaps there were Ceiticized Germans among the Nervii and the Treveri; but
unless we know what the Roman ambassadors meant by the word Germani, their
statement that the Belgae `were of German origin' proves nothing; and it
would be very rash to assume that they meant a Teutonic people who spoke a
Teutonic language. My own belief is that they only meant that the Belgae
were descendants of a people who had once dwelt on the east of the Rhine.

But what of the five tribes---the Eburones, Caerosi, Paemani, Segni, and
Condrusi---whom Caesar himself calls Germans? A famous scholar, Karl
M\"ullenhoff, argues that they too were Celts; for, he observes, their
tribal names, the names of individuals among them---Ambiorix and
Catuvolcus---and the ancient names of rivers and places within their
territory are Celtic. This is true; but it does not settle the question.
The prevalence of Celtic names might be accounted for by supposing that
German invaders had mingled with an older Celtic population Celtic
place-names existed in Germany long after the time of Caesar, and this
proves that people who spoke Celtic once lived in Germany; but at the time
of the conquest of Gaul, if any Celts remained in Germany; they had been
absorbed in the German population. {\it Kent} is a Celtic name; but that
does not prove that the present inhabitants of Kent are Celts. Still, I
believe that in the main M\"ullenhoff was right. Probably the Roman
ambassadors or Caesar's informants, whoever they were, only meant that
these five tribes, like the other Belgae, were descended from people who
had dwelt east of the Rhine; and if Caesar called them {\it Germani} in a
special sense, as distinct from the rest of the Belgle, the explanation may
be that they were the latest immigrants. It seems unlikely that they, alone
among the Belgic tribes, learned Celtic in Gaul. If they did, they must
have learned it from Celts whom they conquered or among whom they settled;
and if so, they must have been unaccompanied by women (see p.~xxviii) and
inferior in numbers to the Celtic peoples whom they subdued, and who, with
them, formed the `Cisrhenane Germans'.\footnote{$^{16}$}
    {\it B.~G.,} vi, 2, \S 3.
The Atuatuci, indeed, were really of German origin if, as is generally
believed, the Cimbri and Teutoni, from whom they were
descended,\footnote{$^{17}$}}
    {\it Ib.,} ii, 29, \S 4.
were Germans; but their ancestors were apparently left in Gaul without
women.

And now we have come to our final question,---the relationship between the
Celts and the Germans. The reader will understand that by `the Celts' I
mean not only the invaders who had conquered the country between the Seine
and the Garonne but also the Belgae. We have seen that when the Celts
invaded Gaul they already spoke Celtic; but there is good reason to believe
that their predominant physical type differed little, if at all, from that
of the Germans. The ancient writers unanimously describe the two peoples in
terms which are virtually the same. The Germans, like the Gauls, were tall
and fair: that is the sum and substance of their evidence. The Germans whom
they described were, moreover, like the Celts, a long-headed race. I am,
indeed, inclined to believe that in the time of Caesar the purest Celts and
the purest Germans, although both were tall and fair and long-headed,
differed from one another; and my reasons are these. Among our
Celtic-speaking fellow citizens are to be found numerous specimens of a
type which also exists in those parts of Brittany that were colonized by
invaders from Britain and in those parts of Gaul in which the Celtic
invaders appear to have settled most thickly, as well as in Northern Italy,
which was once occupied by Gauls; and this type, even among the most blonde
representatives of it, is strikingly different from that of the purest
representatives of the ancient Germans. Put a Perthshire Highlander side by
side with a Sussex farmer. Both will be fair: but the red hair and beard of
the Scotsman will be in marked contrast with the fair hair of the
Englishman; and their features will differ still more. I remember seeing
two gamekeepers in a railway carriage running from Inverness to Lairg. They
were tall, athletic, fair men, evidently belonging to the Scandinavian type
which is so common in the extreme north of Scotland; but they were utterly
different from the tall fair Highlanders whom I had seen in Perthshire.
There was not a trace of red in their hair, their long beards being
absolutely yellow. The prevalence of red among the Celtic-speaking peoples
is most remarkable. Not only do we find in Perthshire 11 men in every 100
whose hair is absolutely red, but underlying the blacks and the dark browns
the same tint is everywhere to be discerned. In France, again, the
proportion of red-haired individuals is greatest not in Normandy or the
north-eastern departments, where the proportion of German immigrants was
greatest, but in Finist\`ere, where many of the Celtic invaders from
Britain landed. I think that what I have said is enough to establish at
least a probability that the Celts and the Germans, notwithstanding their
general resemblance, differed from one another; and some years ago the late
Dr.~Beddoe, a renowned anthropologist, told me that he was strongly
inclined to adhere to my view. But after all the most that I have succeeded
in proving is that the Celts had become different from the Germans some
centuries after they had parted from them; and what we want to learn is
whether any difference had arisen when they first entered Gaul. The tall
Gaul and the tall German were undoubtedly descended from a common
fair-haired stock; and it is very likely that in so far as the Celts of
Gaul differed in Caesar's time from the Germans, the difference was due to
intermarriage with Ligurians and dark descendants of the prehistoric races.
I must not forget the Britons; for Caesar invaded Britain as well as Gaul.
As we have seen, the latest pre-Roman invaders were Celts. Towards the
close of the Palaeolithic Age the earlier inhabitants were perhaps joined
by immigrants akin to the people of Chancelade and Laugerie-Basse; at all
events in Derbyshire there has been found a bone engraved with the figure
of a horse's head, which reminds one of the spirited designs of the artists
of the Dordogne. The neolithic inhabitants of Britain, so far as we know,
belonged for the most part to the same stock as the long-headed neolithic
people of Gaul; but towards the end of the Neolithic Age immigrants, of
whom I have already spoken, like the roundheads of the Grenelle type, began
to appear, some probably coming from Gaul, others, as we may infer from the
pottery which they brought with them, from the Netherlands and the valley
of the Rhine. During the earlier part of the Bronze Age invaders of a very
different kind came in successive hordes. They too were broad-headed, but
in a less degree; they had rugged features and overhanging brows; and they
were taller and more powerfully built than the older population. Probably
they came from Denmark or Danish islands, where skeletons like theirs have
been unearthed; and possibly also from the Scandinavian peninsula. The
first Brythonic settlers apparently inaugurated the Iron Age in this
country, and they were succeeded by the Belgae, who began to appear in the
third century before Christ.

Enough has been said to enable the general reader to understand Caesar's
narrative; but any one who may wish to study the subject more closely will
find abundant information in {\it Caesar's Conquest of Gaul,} pages
257--340, and {\it Ancient Britain,} pages 375--461. See also in regard to
the people of the Neolithic Age in France {\it L'Anthropologie,} 1912,
pages 53--91.
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