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
CRO-MAGNON & KEISS MAN PROTO-ARYAN = 225
Keiss (Kassi ?) in Caithness. Both of these are interred with rude stone weapons, and are of the superior and artistic Cré-Magnon type of early men, which seems to have been the proto-Nordic or proto-Aryan. Indeed, the associate of the Keiss chief had a cranium described by Huxley! as “ remarkably well formed and spacious” and of the modern Nordic type. These early Nordic people, who were buried near the Circles, were generally found in their tombs laid on their right side, and their face usually facing eastwards to the vising Sun, thus evidencing their solar religion and belief in a resurrection.
The purpose of the great Stone Circles now appears, somewhat more clearly than before, from the new observations now recorded, to have been primarily for solar observatories; whilst the smaller Circles seem mainly sepulchral, and sometimes contain dolmens and interments of the Bronze Age.?
Popularly called “ Druid Circles,” the larger ones, on the contrary, are now generally believed by archeologists to be of solar purpose. This opinion was formed by observing that they are generally erected on open high ground commanding wide views of sunrise and sunset, and that the orientation of many of the Circles, as indicated by the outlying stones and avenues (which are preserved in several instances and which existed formerly in many others where now removed’) is often to the North-East (as at Stonehenge), 7.e., in the direction of sunrise about the midsummer solstice or longest day
1L.H.C., 88. This Keiss chief is described by Laing (ib. 15) as “a tall man of very massive proportions,” lying extended, with his face to the East. Huxley found his cranial index was 76, with projecting eyebrow ridges which gave the forehead a ‘‘ receding’ aspect and the forehead “ low and narrow,” but, as shown in his Fig. (No. 11), it is wider than the Iberian type. The other tall type of man at Keiss (cist 7) is described by Laing as “ nearly 6 feet in height, whilst those previously found did not exceed 5 feet or 5 feet 4 inches (ib. 14). Huxley found his cranial index to be 78, “‘ the forehead, well arched though not high, rises almost vertically from the brow.’”’ Nose is good, jaws massive and chin projecting (ib. 85, etc.)
2 These have been called by Mr. A. L. Lewis “ Burial Circles”’ and “ Barrow Circles’ (Man, 1914, 163 f.), and their stones are not usually pillars, but short stumpy boulders.
*Thus at Shap in Westmorland, visited by me, Camden describes “a double row of immense granites extending about a mile”’ (C. B. Gough, 3, 414) of which only a few blocks now remain.