The Phœnician origin of Britons, Scots & Anglo-Saxons : discovered by Phœnician & Sumerian inscriptions in Britain, by preroman Briton coins & a mass of new history : with over one hundred illustrations and maps

gz PH@NICIAN ORIGIN OF BRITONS & SCOTS

period of the later Stone Age, in the nomadic Hunting Stage of the early world before the institution of agriculture, marriage, and the settled life.

Part-olon’s invasion of Ireland (which, we have seen, occurred about 400 B.c.) is referred to in the Irish-Scot books as “ the second” of the great traditional waves of immigration which flowed into that land.2 The first of these traditional waves of immigration into Old Erin, in so-called pre-diluvian times, is of especial interest and historical importance, as it seems to preserve a genuine memory of the first peopling of Ireland in the prehistoric Stone Age.

This first traditional migration of people into Erin is significantly stated in the Irish-Scot records, as cited in the heading, to have been led by a woman, Ceasair or Cesair. This tradition of a woman leader appears to me to afford the clue to the matrilinear custom (or parentage and succession through the mother and not through the father), which “ Mother-right,”’ according to the Irish and Pict Chronicles, prevailed in early Erin (see later). This custom is admittedly a vestige of the primitive Matriarchy, or rule by Mothers, which was, according to leading authorities, the earliest stage of the Family in primitive society, in the hunting stage of the Stone Age, when promiscuity prevailed in the primeval hordes before the institution of Fatherhood and Marriage (see Fig. 20 for archaic Hittite rock-sculpture of a matriarch).

This tradition, therefore, that the first immigrants to Ireland were led by a woman is in agreement with what leading scientific anthropologists have elicited in regard to primitive society, and is, therefore, probably a genuine tradition. It is also in keeping with the first occupation of Erin having occurred in the Neolithic or Late Stone Age period (a period usually stated to extend from about 10000 B.c. to about 1500 B.c, or later), as is established by the archeological evidence in Ireland. It is also in agreement with the physical type of the early aborigines of

1 This chapter was written before the appearance of Prof. Macalister’s work on Ancient Ireland, and is in no way modified by the latter.

? Book of Invasions by Friar Michael O’Clery, 1627, based on Book

of Ballymote fol. 12, and Book of Leinster, etc.; B.O.L., 14, etc.; and K.H.1.]. 63.