The bronze age and the Celtic world - Universal History Library

THE CELTIC CRADLE 69
of these were markedly long headed, and the remainder, belonging to three women and a
child, only a trifle less so. It is possible that a considerable variation of head-form
existed among these people, especially on the outskirts of their region, where they
seem to have come into contact with more broad-headed neighbours. But Bogdanov
is probably right in concluding that the pure type was a long-headed one, though the
skulls seem not to have been so narrow as was frequently the case among the
Mediterranean peoples of the west. Normally the length-breadth index seems to have
varied from 73 to 76 though both higher and lower indices have sometimes been found.
The most striking feature about this people is the custom of covering the
skeleton, or the body, with red ochre.^^ It has been suggested that this arose from
the body being buried in clothes and cap of skin, deeply impregnated with this pigment.
This custom is widespread, and, as we have seen, was not uncommon in the upper
palaeolithic age, being found at the beginning of the Aurignacian period in the case of
the Grimaldi skeletons found buried in the Grotte des enfants. We seem here to be in
the presence of the survival of a custom which dates from the times of Aurignac.
It will be remembered that during the closing phases of the Aurignacian period
the Combe Capelle type makes its appearance in western Europe, and about the same
time arrived the horse, which was hunted for food. A little later, when steppe
conditions had become better established in the west, we have the great Solutrean invasion
which drove the artistes of the Dordogne to the Pyrenees. The Combe Capelle type
seems to have been predominant during this period, and the Briinn skeletons, one of which
was of this tjqje, were covered with red ochre." As the climate deteriorated, and
tundra conditions prevailed, the Solutrean invaders departed, apparently to the east.
Until a large number of the skulls of our steppe-folk, found in the kurgans, can
be compared with the relatively few crania of the Combe Capelle type which have
survived from the upper palaeoUthic age, it would be dangerous to come to any conclusion,
but the evidence cited above makes it reasonable to suggest that perhaps the
long-headed hunters of the horse, with their fine laurel-leaf spears, may have retreated
to the steppe lands of South Russia and Turkestan, and there converted the animal
3» Minns (1913) 142, 143; Zaborowski (1895) 126; Rostovtzeff (1920) 60, no.
33 Osborn (1918) 337.
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