index is high, while in a narrow head it is low. The former is called
brachycephalic (short-headed), and the latter dolichocephalic
(long-headed).

This index is now accepted by most anthropologists as a useful criterion
of race, though, of course, there are other characteristics which must
often be taken into account, such as the height and breadth of the face,
the cubic capacity of the skull and its general contour. At any rate, if
we can show that the skulls of the megalithic tombs conform to a single
type in respect of their index we shall have a presumption, though not a
certainty, that they belong to a single race.

For Africa the evidence consists in a group of twenty skulls from
dolmen-tombs giving cephalic indices which range from 70.5 to 84.4. The
average index is 75.27, and the majority of the indices lay within a few
units of that number. Ten skulls from Halsaflieni in Malta have cephalic
indices running from 66 to 75.1, the average being 71.84. Of a series of
44 skulls from the rock-tombs of the Petit Morin in France, 12 had an
index of over 80, 22 were between 75 and 80, and 10 were below 75. But
in the dolmens of Lozere distinctly broad skulls were frequent. A series
of British neolithic skulls, mostly from barrows, ran from 67 to 77.

The builders of the megalithic monuments thus belonged in the main to a
fairly dolichocephalic race or races, for the large majority of the
skulls measured are of a long-headed type. There are, however, in
various localities, especially in France, occasional anomalous types of
skull which are distinctly brachycephalic, and show that contamination
of some kind was taking or had taken place.

Of the state of civilization to which the builders of the megalithic
monuments had attained, and of the social condition in which they lived,
there is something to be gathered. It is clear in the first place from
the evidence of the Maltese buildings that they were a pastoral people
who domesticated the ox, the sheep, the pig, and the goat, upon whose
flesh they partly lived. Shellfish also formed a part of their diet, and
the shells when emptied of their contents were occasionally pierced to
be used as pendants or to form necklaces or bracelets.

Whether these people were agricultural is a question more difficult to
answer. It is true that flat stones have been found, on which some kind
of cereal was ground up with the aid of round pebbles, but the grain for
which these primitive