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ARRIVAL OF PREHISTORIC VANS IN BRITAIN 103

coast of the Baltic from Sarmatia westwards to Denmark was occupied by the Venedz and Vindili tribes (with a sound bearing the name Venedicus).! In Iberia also the Viana port on the Linia river and another Viana in the Eastern Pyrenees may possibly preserve this ethnic name. Similarly may the Vienne and Ventia on the Rhone, Vanesia in Aquitania, retain that name; and clearly so Vannes, the capital of the Veneti of Brittany in Gaul, who gave Cesar so much trouble and who were tributaries or allies of the Britons. Their capital is significantly the site of vast prehistoric dolmens and menhirs, a class of funereal monuments which was prevalent amongst the later Vans or Feins and their descendants in the British Isles under Briton rule.

Into Alban, latterly called “‘Britain,”’ these nomad hunting hordes of primitive Matriarchist “‘dwarfs’’ from Van probably began to penetrate before the end of the Old Stone Age, as the receding glaciers withdrew northwards from the south of what is now called England and uncovered new land. They appear to have been the small-statured prehistoric race whose long-headed skulls (see Fig. 22) are found in the ancient river-bed deposits and caves, associated with weapons and primitive “ culture” of the Old Stone Age, and also in some of the long funereal ‘‘ barrows’”’ of the New Stone or Neolithic Age, which latter is generally held to have commenced in North-western Europe about 10000 B.c.

The first hordes of these Wan “dwarfs” probably crossed from Gaul by the old land-bridge which still connected Alban with the continent. They appear to be presumably the oldest inhabitants of Alban (excluding the few stray earlier forms of taller and broader-browed man of whom traces have been found in the south of England in the older Stone Age period) and so may perhaps be practically regarded as the aborigines of Alban. Indeed, the name “ Alban”’ seems to me possibly coined from their ethnic name Van, Bian or Ban, with the prefix A/, as Ail in Celtic means “ Rock,’” cognate with Chaldee a/, 111, ala ‘‘ high mount ’’? and English “hill”; so that “ Al-Ban”’ might thus mean “ The Rock (Isle) of the Ban or Van.”* It is this rocky

1 See Ptolemy's map and 1D.A.A., pl. 5.

2A D) 41. * An eponymue traditional source for ‘‘ Albion’ is referred to later.