The bronze age and the Celtic world - Universal History Library

30
THE BRONZE AGE AND THE CELTIC WORLD
which is called the race of Ofnet, from the skulls found in the caves of Ofnet, in
Bavaria, had a broad head, the outline of which as viewed from above consisted of
two segments of circles, the one forming the back of the head, the other the front.
The brow-ridges are slight, the nose short and straight, the eye-sockets low and almost
rectangular, the cheek-bones not very prominent and the chin weak and undeveloped.^'
This race seems to have met and mated with the remnants of the Combe Capelle race
in the Upper Danube basin, and the progeny of this union seems to have been a type
with a pear-shaped head as seen from above, with a rounded back, indistinguishable
from the type found later in the Swiss lake-dwellings and in the mountains of Central
Europe at the present day, and which is known as the Alpine race.**
The Ofnet race seems to have spread westward into the Celtic lands, either at
this time or perhaps later, though probably in small numbers, for a skull found at
Crenelle, near Paris, under what are beheved to be neolithic surroundings, belongs to
this type.*^ Other broad-headed skulls of this or the Alpine type, dating from about
5000 B.C., or a Uttle earlier, have been found at Mugem on the banks of the Tagus,**
while others of this type of about the same date have been found in the caves of
Furfooz in Belgium.*'
Whether any of this /broad-headed Asiatic strain reached the British Isles at
so early a date is uncertain. No skulls of this type and date have been discovered,
but broad-headed types occur sporadically in Wales, Ireland and the western islands
of Scotland, which may conceivably represent descendants of early Ofnet or Alpine
immigrants.
Somewhat later, before 4000 B.C., fresh waves of broad-headed immigrants
seem to have arrived in Central Europe from the Armenian highlands or the Anatolian
plateau, bringing with them the knowledge of grain, cultivated fruits and domestic
animals, and the custom of erecting pile-dwellings in marshes or lakes, and of grinding
and poUshing axes of flint or other hard stone.** Such knowledge seems to have
reached even the west of Switzerland by 4000 B.C. and to have spread later throughout
the massif central of France, which was akeady peopled by men of the Alpine type.
61 Macalister (1921) 1. 541, 542. 64 Corr6a (1919) 123.
«» Macalister (1921) 1. 542. 65 Osbom (1918) 481-485.
«3 Macalister (1921) 1. 542. 66 Peake (1922) 1. 64, 65.