majority of the people are small brunettes of slender build. This dark type is also to be met with in Ireland, especially in the west, the part of that island in which the Erse language has best survived.

It is because the Celtic tongues, whether qu or p, are spoken chiefly by people of this small brunette type, that it is frequently called the Celtic race, and yet all the evidence of ancient authorities goes to show that 2,000 or 2,500 years ago the Celts were looked upon as a tall, fair people.[1] Here is another difficulty which must be taken into consideration as we make our inquiries, for no solution can be considered sound which cannot, without straining the evidence, answer all these questions.

As we have seen the main areas which were Celtic-speaking in the time of Cæsar were the British Isles and Gaul, west of the Rhine; these I shall term Celtic lands, leaving out Spain and Cis-alpine Gaul as areas into which the Celtic invasion arrived at a relatively late date. Now, besides these Celtic lands Celtic tongues were spoken in the Alpine zone, and perhaps at one time still further east. It is from this area that the Celtic languages have been thought by some to have entered the lands of the west. They cannot have been introduced from Spain or Italy, into which they were late entrants, but it has been suggested by some writers that they arrived from the north-east, from the Baltic region. It is true that there is some slight evidence that Celtic place-names have existed in this area, but the balance of evidence, as I shall hope to show, seems to prove that Celtic people arrived there relatively late and not in large numbers, and that they were never the dominant people of that region. There remains only the Alpine zone and the lands to the east of it. This area, from the Jura to the Iron Gates, from the northern slopes of the Carpathians to the southern foot-hills of the Alps, I shall term the Celtic cradle, and I trust that the evidence which I shall produce will convince my readers that I am correct in so doing.

CHAPTER II
THE FIRST INHABITANTS OF CELTIC LANDS

OF the earliest inhabitants of Celtic lands we know little or nothing. We have, it is true, a number of tools made of flaked flint, but they tell us little of the men who fashioned them. In spite of the recent admissions by the eminent French archæologists who have examined the new discoveries at Foxhall,[2] there is still no little difference of opinion as to the human workmanship[3] of rostro-carinates, eoliths and such like early attempts, and no human remains have come to light which can be attributed with any probability to this horizon.

When we come to what is usually termed the lower palæolithic period we are on surer ground, for no one now denies the origin of implements of the Chelles and St. Acheul types. But the only skeletal remains which can with certainty be attributed to this period are the human jaw from the Mauer sand-pit near Heidelberg,[4] and the famous Piltdown skull.[5] Few people now believe that the Galley Hill skeleton dates from so remote a time,[6] while the discoverer himself has disclaimed so early an origin for the Ipswich man.[7]

To attempt to reconstruct a human type from a mandible alone would be indeed to carry far the principle of ex pede Herculem, and as yet there is little agreement among anthropologists as to the exact date, or for that matter the exact reconstruction, of the Piltdown skull,[8] though the ingenious hypothesis that a unique human cranium without a jaw, was found in close association with a unique troglodyte mandible has now, I understand, definitely been abandoned.[9]

Thus little or nothing is known of the first inhabitants of Celtic lands, beyond their tools, but when we come to the middle palæolithic period the case is different. While some difference of opinion still exists, the view advanced by Obermaier[10] and others seems to be gaining ground, that in Celtic lands the industry of Le Moustier first appeared as the climate was becoming colder on the approach of the last or Würm glaciation, though it is thought by some that it had flourished in an earlier and warmer time in the regions lying to the east.[11] This industry is believed by most authorities to have survived the first Würm maximum and to have lasted through the temporary amelioration of the Laufen retreat. Whether it survived, too, the second maximum, and lasted until the climate definitely improved is more doubtful, but many archæologists of great repute believe that it did so,[12] and unless this was the case it will be difficult to explain certain features of the Audi flints.[13]

Though there is as yet no general agreement as to the duration of the Mousterian industry, it is different when we come to consider the type of man who was responsible for this work. Everyone is agreed that the authors of this culture were of the type known as Neanderthal man, for several skeletons of this type, or parts of them, have been found associated with flint implements of Le Moustier design, and none have as yet turned up under conditions which make this correlation impossible.