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

122 PHG:NICIAN ORIGIN OF BRITONS & SCOTS

ancient Neolithic village of pit-dwellers as “‘ Hamlet of the Pictsiat

At Pitchley also,in Northamptonshire, an ancient village witha church building of the twelfth century, which is called in Domesday Book ‘‘ Pihtes-lea and “ Picts-lei ’’—names clearly designating it as “‘ The Lea of the Picts ’’—the skulls unearthed from the numerous old stone-cists of a prehistoric cemetery under the church, and under the early Saxon graves, with no trace of metals and presumably of late Neolithic Age, appear to be of this river-bed type. One of the typical skulls is described as “ having the peculiar lengthy form, the prominent cheek-bones and the remarkable navrowness of the forehead which characterize the ‘ Celtic’ races "’? (see Fig. 22, p. 135).

In Ireland this river-bed type of Stone Age skull is also found as above noted. And we have seen that the Matriarch Cesair and her Ban or Van or Fen horde of the Fomor clan entered Ireland in the Neolithic Age presumably from Britain and were of the same Van or Vind race to which the Picts belonged. We have also seen that these primitive aborigines of Ireland were called “‘ The tribe of Fidga,”’ that is a dialectic form of “ Pict,” in series with the Welsh ‘‘ Ffichti.”” This suggests that the river-bed aborigines of Ireland also were presumably the Picts. It seems, too, a dialectic form of the same name which is given as “ Gewictis ’’ for the aborigines of Ireland in the account of the invasion of Ireland by the Iber-Scots* or Scots from Iberia, especially as it was usual to spell the analogous Wight, or Vectis, with an initial G.

The Mother-Right, or Matri-linear form of succession through the mother and not through the father, which was prevalent amongst the later historical Picts down to the ninth century, when they suddenly disappear from history, is now explicable

1 Another skeleton, found in a “ circumscribed ”’ cist of Neolithic age at Maidstone, is described by B. Poste as having the skull “ very narrow in the front part and also in the forehead,”’ but stature about five feet seven. —Jour. Arch@ol. Assoc., iv, 65, cited W.P.A., 182.

2? A.W. Brown in Arche@ol. Jour. ii, 113, cited W.P.A., 180-1.

* This chronicle states that a Scot from Spain (Iberna), named Iber-Scot, on landing “‘ in yat cuntre, yat now is callit Irland, and fund it vakande, bot of a certanne of Gewictis, ye quhilk he distroyt, and inhabyt yat land, and callit it eftir his modir Scota, Scotia.” S.C.P., 380.