dex, identify them with the
short Alpine race (Broca's Celts). This is negatived by Mr. Keane.[22]
Might not both, however, have originally sprung from a common stock and
reached Europe at different times?[23]

But do a few hundred skulls justify these far-reaching conclusions
regarding races enduring for thousands of years? At some very remote
period there may have been a Celtic type, as at some further period
there may have been an Aryan type. But the Celts, as we know them, must
have mingled with the aborigines of Europe and become a mixed race,
though preserving and endowing others with their racial and mental
characteristics. Some Gauls or Belgae were dolichocephalic, to judge by
their skulls, others were brachycephalic, while their fairness was a
relative term. Classical observers probably generalised from the higher
classes, of a purer type; they tell us nothing of the people. But the
higher classes may have had varying skulls, as well as stature and
colour of hair,[24] and Irish texts tell of a tall, fair, blue-eyed
stock, and a short, dark, dark-eyed stock, in Ireland. Even in those
distant ages we must consider the people on whom the Celts impressed
their characteristics, as well as the Celts themselves. What happened on
the Eurasian steppe, the hypothetical cradle of the "Aryans," whence the
Celts came "stepping westwards," seems clear to some, but in truth is a
book sealed with seven seals. The men whose Aryan speech was to dominate
far and wide may already have possessed different types of skull, and
that age was far from "the very beginning."

Thus the Celts before setting out on their _Wanderjahre_ may already
have been a mixed race, even if their leaders were of purer stock. But
they had the bond of common speech, institutions, and religion, and they
formed a common Celtic type in Central and Western Europe. Intermarriage
with the already mixed Neolithic folk of Central Europe produced further
removal from the unmixed Celtic racial type; but though both reacted on
each other as far as language, custom, and belief were concerned, on the
whole the Celtic elements predominated in these respects. The Celtic
migration into Gaul produced further racial mingling with descendants of
the old palaeolithic stock, dolichocephalic Iberians and Ligurians, and
brachycephalic swarthy folk (Broca's Celts). Thus even the first Celtic
arrivals in Britain, the Goidels, were a people of mixed race, though
probably relativel