In our efforts to reconstruct the life of vanished peoples and cultures we often find ourselves making comparisons with the implements and customs of modern primitive peoples. This practice seems, with due safeguards, reasonably sound, for similar cultural conditions may produce similar cultural phenomena. Our comparative material is usually sought among the backward races of the tropics, less frequently in parts of Europe that are off the beaten track; but it is not generally realized that we have in Britain itself a populous region which, owing to its remoteness, did not emerge from the Iron Age until the end of last century. By ‘the Iron Age’ we mean that simple state of culture that is found in peasant communities in southern Britain between, say, 500 B.C. and A.D. 1000, extending in a variable degree into the Middle Ages. This stage of cultural development is distinguished from more advanced stages by the prevalence of selfsupporting communities which are necessitated by difficulty of communications, and in this respect the culture of the Hebrides as late as the middle of the nineteenth century was more like that of the pre-Roman Iron Age in southern England than any succeeding phase.

The Thracians were a deeply religious people; this is attested not merely by ancient writers but also by the many votive monuments found in the former Thracian provinces, dating chiefly from the second to the fourth centuries. Rostovtzeff was justified in remarking some years ago that ‘in the Roman period, Thrace experienced a religious renaissance; in cities and villages there sprang up hundreds of shrines of Greek type, which were filled with votive offerings after the Greek pattern; yet the Thracians worshipped their divinities in native fashion, and kept their festivals with mystic-orgiastic ritual’.

During the 19th century conclusions of great value concerning the origin and diffusion of the megalithic tombs of Europe were arrived at by the study of a few tombs in various regions : Montelius’s Orienten och Europa marks the culmination of research on these lines. In the last twenty-five years it has been gradually realized that before we can speak with assurance of the many problems which the megalithic tombs involve, before we can disperse what has aptly been called ‘the murky fog surrounding the megalith question’, we must have accurate and detailed regional surveys of the prehistoric burial-chambers of south-western, western and northern Europe. As is well known, such surveys have already been produced in many regions; for example those in Iberia by Obermaier, Vergileio Correia and Pericot y Garcia, and in Brittany by le Rouzic and Forde. In the British Isles we have been exceptionally fortunate in this respect: the work of Crawford and Hencken in England, of Hemp and Grimes in Wales, of Childe in Scotland, and of Estyn Evans in northern Ireland, has made the megalithic tombs of the British Isles better known than those of any comparable region in Europe.

The village of Biskupin is situated in the northern part of Great Poland, six miles from Znin, 65 miles to the northeast of Poznan and to the southwest of Torufi, the capital of Polish Pomerania. Nowadays it is famous, not only in Poland but throughout the world, for the remarkable discoveries made in its vicinity by the Poznari University Archaeological Expedition. Excavations have been carried on for four years, and have revealed the ground plan of a prehistoric stronghold which was built on a peninsula jutting into the lake of Biskupin, on the surface of a former peat-bog, in the Early Iron Age, between 700 and 400 B.C. but abandoned in consequence of its inundation by the waters of the lake. The site was covered with a thick deposit of sand and mud, which protected the remains against atmospheric influences, while the dampness of the ground caused the preservation in excellent condition of the lower portions of the huts and the wooden defensive works, as well as the roads and breakwaters.

In these islands we have been tardy in recognizing Folk Culture as an independent science. As the editor of Folkliv, Professor Sigurd Erixon, states in his Foreword: ‘It has long been leading a more or less dependent existence as an ambulating guest of certain related branches of science, which, thanks to the force of circumstances, were consolidated earlier. Generally it has been awarded a certain amount of space in archaeological, historical, artistic, geographical or philological publications. … The ethnologists of present times certainly recall that sponsorship and hospitableness with great gratitude. It is to be regretted however that there are far too many instances of ethnology not having attained such a development nor having become such a factor of education as it would appear entitled to’. This is regrettably true of the British Isles. As far as I am aware, there is no learned journal published here dealing exclusively with the problems of Folk Culture: with one exception, there is no department of Folk Culturein any of our national museums, nor is there a Chair of Folk Culture in any British university.

The simple, good-hearted strong man is a character perennially popular, and at times has become almost a national ideal. We sophisticates of today do not so obviously deify our expression of the desirable qualities as did our forefathers; but we can at least appreciate the mixture of endearment and reverence with which the heroic demigod who appears as the Herakles or Hercules of classical myth was regarded. The combination of the rather likable human failings of an enormous appetite and a naif boastfulness with the godlike gifts of superhuman strength and fortitude in adversity produced an eminently credible deity, someone to whom alike the timorous maiden might pray for protection, the bluff soldier for understanding support in a punitive raid—in fact a combined apotheosis of Tarzan and of Bulldog Drummond. Such is the Hercules we see in the classical pantheon, Hercules at the height of his glory. But, as Mr De la Mare has said, it is the edges of things that are the most interesting. What of the edges of the Hercules myth? Where and when did it first crystallize out from the cloudy mixture of primitive man’s thoughts, and what forms did it take after Christianity had driven away the old gods to a holeand-comer existence in folklore and old wives’ tales ?

The racial prehistory of Great Britain, while incomplete, has been brought to a provocative stage in its reconstruction. What follows is an attempt to set forth the framework of present knowledge, with its major lacunae, for the particular scrutiny of the archaeologists, on whom the anthropologists must largely rely for the testing of its stresses and strains.