In addition to these relics the county has a great number of stone circles, circles of large upright boulders set up not at hap-hazard but evidently with some definite object in view. These will be dealt with in a later chapter. The probability is that the so-called Pictish houses, the earth or Eirde houses found on Donside and the lake dwellings at Kinnord already referred to, were the homes of these people. But the whole subject is by no means clear. The general opinion is that the north-east was first inhabited by Picts, who may or may not have been Iberians, and that after the Picts came the Celts; but some critics hold that the Picts were only earlier Celts. In any case the Stone Age was succeeded by the Bronze Age, when Bronze took the place of Stone in the formation of weapons. The Celts made their way through Central France to Britain and ultimately to Scotland. Unlike the people they found in possession of Scotland, they were tall (5 ft. 9 in.) These are the ancestors of the Gaelic speaking people of Scotland. They are supposed to have amalgamated to some extent with the Neolithic men whom they found on the spot, and it is certain that they were christianised at an early period. Later on Teutonic tribes, tall, longheaded and fairhaired men crossed from the Baltic to Britain and in due course they too reached Aberdeenshire. But up to the time of David I (1124-1153) the population and institutions of the north-east were entirely Celtic. The Saxon or Teutonic element was introduced by way of the coast and the trading towns. From the towns it spread to the country districts. When Henry II expelled the Flemish traders from England many migrated to the north and formed settlements in many parts of the country, establishing trade and handicraft, particularly weaving, and reclaiming waste land. The defeat of Comyn, the Earl of Buchan, by Bruce in 1308, when Bruce harried Buchan from end to end and spared none, opened the way for lowland immigrants and not only gave an impetus to Teutonic settlements, but helped to kill out the Celtic language and the Celtic ways. These immigrants are really the ancestors of the present Aberdeenshire people, but they have been greatly modified by absorbing the Celtic population and mixing with it, for though reduced by slaughter, and by an exodus to the hills, it had not entirely disappeared. Scandinavians from Norway and Denmark also found a footing at various periods in this north-eastern region and these elements are all blended in the modern Aberdonian. Celt, Saxon, Fleming and Scandinavian came in one after the other and possessed the land, forming a new people in which all these elements were fused.