the Bronze Age. In Northern Africa they are closely related to the Berbers, and in ancient Egypt they will probably be brought, by the researches of Professor Elliott Smith, into racial affinity with the small swarthy Egyptians.

It matters very little whether we call them Iberian, as I proposed in 1880, or Mediterranean, as Professor Sergi termed them in 1895. They are a race clearly defined by their physical characters from all others. They form the earliest element that has yet been traced in the Welsh people, and to them are probably due many, if not all, of the non-Aryan words in the Welsh tongue. Unfortunately Basque, the sole survivor in Europe of the Iberic family of tongues, is, as Sayce points out, too modern to tell us much of the language even a thousand years ago, and still less in the remote time with which we are dealing.

When the Celtic vocabularies have been thoroughly examined, and the non-Aryan residuum ascertained, it is probable that a flood of light will be thrown on this question, by a comparison with the Basque roots extracted from the various Basque dialects. I have made the attempt and failed-I leave it in the more competent hands of the scholars who are at work on Celtic philology, Rhys, Phillimore, Morris Jones, and

the rest.

We have, therefore, in this Iberian race a welldefined starting point for the ethnology of the Welsh people, and we have ample grounds for the belief that the small, dark Welshmen of to-day are descended from the pre-Aryan tribes who were masters of Britain in the Neolithic Age. On the Continent also the Iberian is the earliest of the living races that have been clearly defined.1 It is of vast antiquity, and there is no

1 I am unable to accept the evidence brought forward by various anthropologists, and more especially by Dr. Verneau (Les Grottes de Gremaldi, 4to, Monaco, T. II, Part 1); Anthropologie, p. 161, 1906, that the Palæolithic tribes of France or Belgium are represented in the Neolithic population of Europe.

evidence as to the date of its arrival in Europe. We find it, however, in possession of the Continent and the British Isles in the Neolithic Age.

These conclusions1 have stood the test of criticism during the last thirty years, and at present hold the

field.

There is nothing to differentiate the Neolithic civilisation in Wales from that of Britain or of the Continent. It was pastoral rather than agricultural. The domestic animals were the same, and the implements show that the daily life was singularly uniform throughout Europe.

IV. THE CIVILISATION OF WALES IN THE BRONZE AGE.

We must now consider the development of culture in Wales, during the time that the second pre-historic element in the Welsh population was master of the land. The knowledge of bronze was introduced into Europe, as I pointed out in 1880, by way of Asia Minor and the Dardanelles, from the South-East, and the civilisation that it connotes, spread among the tribes inhabiting Middle and Northern Europe, from the south. Of the general nature of this civilisation I need say nothing in this place, because it is well known, and especially through the work on the bronze implements of Britain, by Sir John Evans, whom we may count not only in name but in blood among the illustrious Welshmen. It passed into Britain from the adjacent parts of Gaul and spread over the whole of the British Isles. In Wales it was in no degree inferior to that in other parts of the country. The researches, for example, of Owen Stanley,3 on Holyhead Island, 1 For details see Dawkins, Cave-Hunting, 1874, and Early Man in Britain, 1880.

2 Dawkins, Early Man in Britain, p. 412.

3 For a detailed account of these discoveries see Arch. Camb., 1868, p. 385; Archæol. Journ., xxiv; and Memoirs on Cyttiau'r Gwyddelod," explored in 1862 and 1868 by the Hon. William Owen Stanley, 8vo, 1871, with Supplementary Notes by Albert Way.

give us the best example of the habitations of the period that have been discovered in Britain.

Fig. 7.-Hut-circle of Bronze Age, Ty Mawr (Arch. Camb., 1868)

The hut-circles, known throughout Wales as Cyttiau'r Gwyddelod, or huts of the Gwyddel,' occupy, as

1 These circular huts were in use throughout the Ages of Bronze and Pre-historic Iron, and in Ireland to the present day. Their age can only be ascertained by their structure and contents.

a rule, dry sites sheltered from the wind, and protected by lines of wall, or by ridges and precipices capable of defence. Those on Ty Mawr, on Holyhead Mountain, are no exception to the rule, and they form a straggling village of not less than fifty huts, with precipices to the north, and with the southern slopes, protected by sharp

Fig. 8.-Plan of Hut-circle, Ty Mawr (Arch. Camb., 1868)

ridges of rock and rude walls. Each hut (Fig. 7) is represented by a circle, some 15 ft. to 20 ft. in diameter, formed of earth, faced with slabs and blocks of stone, both on the outside and inside, and with or without a clearly-defined vestibule. The walls are between 2 ft. and 3 ft. thick, and stand now about 2 ft.1 above the

1 According to the information of one of the old tenants, some of the walls of the huts stood formerly as high as a man's shoulders.

surface, and the entrance is, as a rule, flanked by slabs of stone, placed on edge, and in some cases 4 ft. or 5 ft. high. The roof was probably of thatch or turf, with a hole at the top to let out the smoke of the hearths, marked by the charcoal, and traces of burning, on the hearths. In the ground-plan (Fig. 8) the entrance is 3 ft. wide, and the vestibule widens to 8 ft., giving access to a circular space, 15 ft. in diameter, subdivided into two chambers, by vertical flags some 2 ft. in height, the outer with one fireplace and the inner with two.

Some of the huts had no partitions and no fireplaces: all had been burnt, and the contents undisturbed, until they were scientifically examined.

The remains found in and around the huts prove that the village was inhabited by a tribe of shepherds and herdsmen, possessed of the same flocks and herds and hogs, as in the Neolithic Age, but also tillers of the earth, and leading very much the same life as the farmers of to-day. They ground their corn in saddlequerns (Fig. 9), so called from the saddle-like hollow, ground in the lower slab of sandstone by the action of the rounded muller. They used stone mortars for pounding their food, pebbles heated in the fire for