BRITAIN 4,000 YEARS AGO

Evening Star, Issue 20032, 24 November 1928, Page 11

BRITAIN 4,000 YEARS AGO

TWO STREAMS OF COLOHISfITHJK SIR A. KEITH’S VIEW Sir Arthur Keith delivered his presidential address to the Students’ Scientific Society at University College, . Aberystwyth, recently,- on 4 The Racial Frontiers of Britain.’ . He said that the orthodox historical view of tho separation of England and Wales—which explained racial frontiers by supposing that the islands had been inundated by successive racial waves, these waves originating on the Continent and sweeping across the country from east to west —had the great merit of simplicity, but bis own theory was not so simple; it was still unorthodox, bub was steadily gaining adherents, it began to come into existence in tho latter part of the nineteenth centuryand was not tho preconception of a single mind. It had' been a gradual grt-v. th, but to no mind did it owo more than to that of Professor J. H.-Fleure. The theory was that Britain had two doorways of access—not on.ly_ an eastern, but also a western, and that in ancient times the western gateway was the more important. If one race settled along tho western coasts and spread inland and another race invaded tho eastern shores and expanded, a tune . would come when contact would 00 made and a racial frontier established | at the line of contact —a line running along the length of tho country from south to north. The new historian interpreted tho racial frontiers of Britain not as the troughs between successive waves of humanity flowing towards tho west, but as the lino of impact between eastern and western invaders. At first sight the case which tho one- I portal historian had to put up against 1 tho new theory seemed a very strong one. “ Did not Julius Caesar, he asked, “ find the Straits of Dover in , 55 b.o. busy with traffic between opposite shores, and did ho not obtain j thon tho clearest evidence that there was, and had been for centuries, a stream of colonists from Franco to Eng- 1 land? ” That was true. It was also a 1 fact that during tho four centuries of their occupation the Romans used only the Kentish portal. No less true was it | that the Saxons, at least in the earlier ' phase of their invasion, landed in Kent. ; All these contentions were undeniable; they are true of time and place. But he would ask the orthodox historian: What was happening during those long past times at the western portal, St George’s Channel Ho would probably reply that we cannot tell; there was no evidence. That was wher6. the new historian joined issue with him. KEY TO RACIAL HISTORY. During the past fifty years evidence bad been gathered on both sides of the, Irish Sea which left no doubt that ler at least 2,000 years before the time of Christ ships sailed through tho western portal carrying colonists to what is now Celtic Britain. The same process had been going on at the eastern gateway. . This double-portalcd conception was not one they could take or leave with impunity; it was tho key to the lacial | history. Through these two portals on- i tored opposing streams of men and ci cultures. , „ , ~. , ... Towards tho end of tho third millennium n.o. a belief, probably acquired from tho East, seized the western Mediterranean's mind —one which caused men to build permanent abodes for their dead. It was most fortunate lor us that they chose such enduring material as stone for thoir tombs, for it was from them wo read the history of thoso distant times. By means of tombs wo traced the spread of beliefs and or peoples. Wo found tho megahthic tombs of tho western Mediterranean on tho coasts of Spain; we knew of a great belt of them which crossed Franco from the Mediterranean to Brittany. Those tombs wero not all of ono kind or of one date; there was a succession or them. That succession wo could trace onwards to south and west England, to Wales, to all tho coastal lands of Ireland, and along the Atlantic seaboard of Scotland, right to the Orkneys. By the i study of ancient tombs wo were , able to establish the fact that during , tho second millennium n.c. ships were j entering tho western portal, carrying | now m.Gn ? new beliefs, new customs, and new arts. We also realised that tho lane which ended at the western portal began in tho distant East —the cradle of modern civilisation. Thus did those ancient Mediterranean sea dogs, by an early exercise of sea power, obtain dominion in western Britain. Professor Fleuro had found the descendants of those early mariners among the people who lived on tho uplands and coastlands of western Wales. Men of tho Mediterranean or Iberian typo still abounded in may parts of Ireland, as in other parts of Celitc Britain. . 1 . Sea power became a potent factor in | tho basin of tho Mediterranean some 1 5,000 or 6,000 years ago. When we | turned to tho North wo found evidence , that there, too, sea power had boon a ; factor in tbo distribution of races. The North Sea became a highway for in- 1 vaders at a much earlier date than was 1 usually suspected. Near tho beginning of tho Bronze Ago, certainly 1500 n.c., ! Danish warriors, fully armed, were buried in curious coffins cut out of tree trunks; on tho coasts of Yorkshire, direefcly opposite Denmark, identical coffins, containing similar warriors, had ' been found. THE BEAKER PEOPLE. Tho main case for the new theory, however, did not rest on such isolated items or evidence,but on the mass ot 1 information which had been gathered concerning the earliest colonisation of eastern Britain by a foreign people, Archseologists were agreed that this colonisation began about 2000 n.c. It affected tho whole length of tho eastern coastlands from Caithness in the north to the Islo of Wight in tho south. These invaders were now known as the “ beaker people,” because of the peculiar earthen drinking cups they brought with them from ■ Germany. They wore people with strangely-shaped heads, rough-featured, tall, and powerful. The more wo got to know of tho ; facts of this invasion of eastern Britain 1 and colonisation, tho less possible was it j to accept tho opinion that tho move--1 ment was based solely on tho Straits of Dover. We could explain what we now knew only by presuming that about 2000 8.0. the beaker people had become masters of the North Sea and made I direct landings on tho eastern coasts. I ! The beaker invasion was not a single ! descent, but a succession of landings continued over a long period of time., ; Wo could trace tho spread westwards of ! tho new colonists; in Derbyshire and Shropshire wo found these North ■ Sea folk coming in contact with the people and the civilisation of the west—derived , from the Mediterranean. The beaker i people spreading westwards apparently Became arrested at much the same lino as that which limited the Saxon invasion more than two thousand years later. It was true that at certain points the beaker people penetrated the west. Yet the fact remained that this Noi;th Sea invasion was mainly confined to lands which afterwards became settled by Saxons. The dividing line between Wales and England was much older _ than the orthodox historian was inclined' to believe. THE CELTIC INVASION. The first coming of the beaker people took place about 2,000 b.o. ; what happened at the gateway between 2000 b.c. and 500 8.0. when the first ; invasion of the Welsh-speaking jor P Celts began to find 1 their way to England we do not know, j Tho Celtic invasion was in reality a , long process of colonisation; it was still going on when Ciesar arrived at ' the Straits of Dover. They were Celticspeaking people who then colonised eastern Britain, but in the strictest sonso of the term they were a Nortn Sea race, being closely akin to the Nordic stock of Europe, the same stock which at a later date gave Britain her Saxons. Tho Celtic-speaking Britons polonised all tho eastern lands, spread