Donald A. Mackenzie

“ It would seem to be a reasonable conclusion that all the so-called ornaments found in ancient graves were supposed to have had an intimate connection with the supernatural beings who gave origin to and sustained life. These ornaments, or 45 charms, or amulets, imparted vitality to human beings, because they were regarded as the substance of life itself. The red jasper worn in the waist girdles of the ancient Egyptians was reputed, as has been stated, to be a coagulated drop of the blood of the mother goddess Isis. Blood was the essence of life. ”

“ No less important than the study of their physical structure is the cultural history of peoples. The real spirit of a population is revealed by its social and industrial achievements, and by its vi customs and beliefs, rather than by the shape of the heads and members of its units. The revival of the belief in the widespread diffusion of culture in early times has, as one of its many important effects, directed attention to the physical peculiarities of the mixed populations of important foci of civilization throughout the world. ”

“ One cannot help concluding that the early people, who populated the wastes of ancient Britain and erected megalithic monuments, were attracted by something more tangible than the charms of solitude and wild scenery. ”

“ The importance of agriculture in the history of civilization cannot be overestimated. In so far as our native land is concerned, a new epoch was inaugurated when the first agriculturist tilled the soil, sowed imported barley seeds, using imported implements, and practising strange ceremonies at sowing, and ultimately at harvest time, that had origin in a far-distant "cradle" of civilization, and still linger in our midst as folk-lore evidence, testifies to the full. ”

“ In almost every old mythology we meet with theories that were formulated to account for the existence of the different races living in the world, and for the races that were supposed to have existed for a time and became extinct. An outstanding feature of each racial myth is that the people among whom it grew up are invariably represented to be the finest type of humanity.
A widespread habit, and one of great antiquity, was to divide the races, as the world was divided, into four sections, and to distinguish them by their colours. ”

“ The history of man really begins when and where we find the first clear traces of his activities, and as it is possible to write not only regarding the movements of the Crô-Magnon races, but of their beliefs as revealed by burial customs, their use of body paint, the importance attached to shell and other talismans, and their wonderful and high attainments in the arts and crafts, the European historical period can be said to begin in the post-Glacial epoch when tundra conditions prevailed in Central and Western Europe and Italy was connected with the North African coast. ”

“ The belief that certain races have become extinct as the result of conquest by invaders is still traceable in those histories that refer, for instance, to the disappearance of "Stone Age man" or "Bronze Age man", or of the British Celts, or of the Picts of Scotland.
That some races have completely disappeared there can be no shadow of a doubt. As we have seen, Neanderthal man entirely vanished from the face of the globe, and has not left a single descendant among the races of mankind. In our own day the Tasmanians have become extinct. ”

“ That all the fair peoples of Britain and Ireland are, as has been indicated, not necessarily descendants of the fair Celts and Anglo-Saxons is evident from the traces that have been found of the early settlement in these islands of the proto-Scandinavians, who introduced the Maglemosian culture long before the introduction of the Neolithic industry. Modern ethnologists lean to the view that the masses of the present-day population of Europe betray Palæolithic racial affinities. In no country in Europe, other than our own, have there been fewer ethnic changes. ”

“ At the very dawn of British history, which begins when the earliest representatives of Modern Man reached our native land, the influences of cultures which had origin in distant areas of human activity came drifting northward to leave an impress which does not appear to be yet wholly obliterated. We are the heirs of the Ages in a profounder sense than has hitherto been supposed. ”

“ When death took place, it seemed to be a deeper and more prolonged slumber, and the whole body was smeared over with the vitalizing blood substitute so that, when the spell of weakness had passed away, the sleeper might awaken, and come forth again with renewed strength from the cave-house in which he had been laid. ”

“ The accomplished primitive surgeons had used flint instruments, which were less liable than those of metal to carry infection into a wound. One cannot help expressing astonishment that such an operation should have been possible—that an ancient man who had sustained a skull injury in a battle, or by accident, should have been again restored to sanity and health. Sprains and ordinary fractures were doubtless treated with like skill and success. In some of the incantations and charms collected by folk-lorists are lines which suggest that the early medicine-men were more than mere magicians. ”

“ They seem to ride upon the wave like sea-fowl. Should a surge throw the canoe upon its side, and endanger its over turn, those to the windward lean over the upper gunwale, thrust their paddles deep into the wave, and by this action not merely regain an equilibrium, but give their bark a vigorous impulse forward."
78 The ancient mariners whose rude vessels have been excavated around our coasts were the forerunners of the Celtic sea-traders, who, as the Gaelic evidence shows, had names not only for the North Sea and the English Channel but also for the Mediterranean Sea. ”

“ Copper, tin, and silver were even more difficult to find and work in Britain. The ancient people who reached Britain and first worked metals or collected ores were not the people who were accustomed to use implements of bone, horn, and flint, and had been attracted to its shores merely because fish, fowl, deer, and cows, were numerous. The searchers for metals must have come from centres of Eastern civilization, or from colonies of highly skilled peoples that had been established in Western Europe. ”

“ When early man reached Scotland in search of suitable districts in which to settle, he was not likely to be attracted by the barren or semi-barren areas in which nature grudged soil for cultivation, where pasture lands were poor and the coasts were lashed by great billows for the greater part of the year, and the tempests of winter and spring were particularly severe. Yet in such places as Carloway, fronting the Atlantic on the west coast of Lewis, and at Stennis in Orkney, across the dangerous Pentland Firth, are found the most imposing stone circles north of Stonehenge and Avebury. ”

“ The evidence collected of late years by ethnologists shows that the masses of the English population are descended from the early peoples of the Pre-Agricultural and Early Agricultural Ages. The theory of the wholesale extermination by the Anglo-Saxons of the early Britons has been founded manifestly on very scant and doubtful evidence.
What the Teutonic invasions accomplished in reality was the destruction not of a people but of a civilization. The native arts and crafts declined, and learning was stamped out, when the social organization of post-Roman Britain was shattered. ”

“ Before the fair Celts had intruded themselves in Britain and Ireland, the seeds of pre-Celtic culture, derived by trade and colonization from centres of ancient civilization through their colonies, had been sown and 229 had borne fruit. The history of British civilization begins with neither Celt nor Roman, but with those early prospectors and traders who entered and settled in the British Isles when mighty Pharaohs were still reigning in Egypt, and these and the enterprising monarchs in Mesopotamia were promoting trade and extending their spheres of influence. ”

“ The idea that each intrusion involved the extermination of earlier peoples is a theory which does not accord with the evidence of the ancient Gaelic manuscripts, 108 of classical writers, of folk tradition, and of existing race types in different areas in Britain and Ireland.
A people who exterminated those they conquered would have robbed themselves of the chief fruits of conquest. In ancient as in later times the aim of conquest was to obtain the services of a subject people and the control of trade. ”

“ In south-western Scotland the inhabitants are darker than those on the east, except in Aberdeenshire, where there are distinctive megalithic remains and two famous pearling rivers, the Ythan and Ugie, as well as deposits of flint and traces of gold.
The people of Scotland are, on the whole, the tallest and heaviest people in Europe. It has been suggested that their great average stature is due to the settlement in their country of the hardy Norsemen of the Viking period, but this is improbable, because the average stature of Norway, Sweden, and Denmark is lower than that of Scotland. ”

“ In Scotland the pig-taboo, with its history rooted in ancient Egypt, has had tardy survival until our own times. It has no connection with Celtic culture, for the Continental Celts were a pig-rearing and pork-eating people, like the Ægæan invaders of Greece. The pig-taboo is still as prevalent in Northern Arcadia as in the Scottish Highlands, where the descendants not only of the ancient Iberians but of intruders from pork-loving Ireland and Scandinavia have acquired the ancient prejudice and are now perpetuating it. ”

“ Two particular individuals may be typical representatives of a distinct race and yet not only speak different languages, but have a different outlook on life, and different ideas as to what is right and what is wrong. Different types of people are in different parts of the world united by their sense of nationality. They are united by language, traditions, and beliefs, and by their love of a particular locality in which they reside or in which their ancestors were wont to reside. A sense of nationality, such as unites the British Empire, may extend to far-distant parts of the world. ”

“ The ancient whistles were made of hare—and reindeer-foot bone. The clay whistle dates from the introduction of the Neolithic industry in Hungary.
The remarkable tendency on the part of mankind to cling to and perpetuate ancient beliefs and customs, and especially those connected with sickness and death, is forcibly illustrated by the custom of smearing the bodies of the living and dead with red ochre. In every part of the world red is regarded as a particularly "lucky colour", which protects houses and human beings, and imparts vitality to those who use it. ”

“ A history of ancient man cannot ignore one set of scientists to pleasure another.
xii Several chapters are devoted to the religious beliefs and customs of our ancestors, and it is shown that there is available for study in this connection a mass of evidence which the archæological agnostics are too prone to ignore. The problem of the megalithic monuments must evidently be reconsidered in the light of the fuller anthropological data now available. Indeed, it would appear that a firmer basis than that afforded by "crude evolutionary ideas" must be found for British archæology as a whole. ”

“ The bronze-using peoples who established overland trade routes in Europe, displacing in some localities the colonies of Easterners and isolating others, must have instructed the natives of Western Europe how to mine and use metals. Bronze appears to have been introduced into Britain by traders. That the ancient Britons did not begin quite spontaneously to work copper and tin and manufacture bronze is quite evident, because the earliest specimens of British bronze which have been found are made of ninety per cent of copper and ten per cent of tin as on the Continent. ”

“ Gold is a useless metal for all practical purposes. It is too soft for implements. Besides, it cannot be found or worked except by those who have acquired a great deal of knowledge and skill. The men who first "washed" it from the soil in Britain must have obtained the necessary knowledge and skill in a country where it was more plentiful and much easier to work, and where—and this point is a most important one—the magical and religious beliefs connected with gold have a very definite history. ”

“ The cremating people erected megalithic monuments, some of which cover their graves in Britain and elsewhere.
In some districts the intruders of the Bronze Age were the earliest settlers. The evidence of the graves in Buchan, Aberdeenshire, for instance, shows that the broad-heads colonized that area. It may be that, like the later Norsemen, bands of people sought for new homes in countries where the struggle for existence would be less arduous than in their own, which suffered from over population, and did not land at points where resistance was offered to them. ”

“ The culture of the tribes who spoke Celtic dialects was veined with Ægean and Asiatic influences. In time Continental Druidism imbibed ideas regarding the Transmigration of Souls and the custom of cremation from an area in the East which had influenced the Aryan invaders of India.
The origin of the Celts is obscure. Greek writers refer to them as a tall, fair people. They were evidently a branch of the fair Northern race, but whether they came from Northern Europe or Northern Asia is uncertain. In Western Europe they intruded themselves as conquerors and formed military aristocracies. ”

“ The mother goddess, for instance, is prayed to so that she may suckle the soul of the dead Pharaoh as a mother suckles her child and never wean him. [33] Milk was thus the elixir of life, and as the mother goddess of Egypt is found to have been identified with the cowrie—indeed to have been the spirit or personification of the shell—the connection between shells and milk may have obtained even in Aurignacian times in south-western Europe. That the mother goddess of Crô-Magnons had a human form is suggested by the representations of mothers which have been brought to light. ”

“ The evidence accumulated by archæologists is sufficient to prove that Britain had inherited from seats of ancient civilization a high degree of culture and technical skill in metal-working, &c., many centuries before Rome was built. The finest enamel work on bronze in the world was produced in England and Ireland, and probably, although definite proof has not yet been forthcoming, in Scotland, the enamels of which 226 may have been imported and may not. Artisans could not have manufactured enamel without furnaces capable of generating a high degree of heat. ”

“ There are fishing villages along the east coast of Scotland the inhabitants of which rarely intermarry with those who draw their means of sustenance from the land.
During the Bronze Age Celtic peoples were filtering into Britain from Gaul. They appear to have come originally from the Danube area as conquerors who imposed their rule on the people they subjected. Like the Achæans who overran Greece they seem to have originally been a vigorous pastoral people who had herds of pigs, were "horse-tamers", used chariots, and 112 were fierce and impetuous in battle. ”

“ It must not be imagined that the "sea sense" was cultivated because man took pleasure in risking the perils of the deep. It was stern necessity that at the beginning compelled him to venture on long voyages. After England was cut off from France the peoples who had adopted the Neolithic industry must have either found it absolutely necessary to seek refuge in Britain, or were attracted towards it by reports of prospectors who found it to be suitable for residence and trade. ”

“ The Hebridean "maiden-queen" goddess, who dwells in a tree and provides milk from a sea-shell, has a history rooted in a distant area of origin, where the goddess who personified the life-giving shell was connected with the cow and the sky (the Milky Way) , as was the goddess Hathor, the Egyptian Aphrodite. The tendency to locate imported religious beliefs no doubt provides the reason why the original palm tree of the goddess was replaced in Britain by the hazel, the elm, the rowan, the apple tree, the oak, &c. ”

“ The many persistent legends about famous "sleepers" that survive till our own day appear to have originally been connected with a belief in the return of the dead, the antiquity of which we are not justified in limiting, especially when it is found that the beliefs connected with body paint and shell ornaments and amulets were introduced into Europe in early post-glacial times. Ancient folk heroes might be forgotten, but from Age to Age there arose new heroes to take their places ”

“ It is necessary for us to rid our minds of extreme pro-Teutonic prejudices. Nor is it less necessary to avoid the equally dangerous pitfall of the Celtic hypothesis. Christianity and the associated humanistic culture entered these islands during the Roman period. In Ireland and Scotland the new religion was perpetuated by communities that had preserved pre-Roman habits of life and thought which were not necessarily of Celtic origin or embraced by a people who can be accurately referred to as the "Celtic race". The Celts did not exterminate the earlier settlers. ”

“ Not unfrequently the geological ages and the early stages of human culture are hopelessly mixed up, and monsters that had been extinct for several million years are shown crawling across circles that were erected by men possessed of considerable engineering skill.
It is extremely doubtful if our remote ancestors of the Stone Age were as savage or as backward as is generally supposed. They were, to begin with, the colonists who made Britain a land fit for a strenuous people to live in. ”

“ In writing the history of Ancient Man in Britain, it has been found necessary to investigate the Continental evidence. When our early ancestors came from somewhere, they brought something with them, including habits of life and habits of thought. The story unfolded by British finds is but a part of a larger story; and if this larger story is to be reconstructed, our investigations must extend even beyond the continent of Europe. ”