But the people who afterwards were called Iberian are probably nothing else than a mixture of this ancient population with the long-headed, blond race of Cro-Magnon, which came from the north and appears in France and northern Africa. For that reason alone they might be supposed to have been in Spain, situated as it is between the two, even if certain remains of their culture did not make this supposition almost a certainty. The large number of blonds which, contrary to general opinion, are found in Spain and Portugal may in the main go back to this earliest invasion of northern hordes, which was followed by two more in the course of history. Possibly the new race forced its language upon the original inhabitants and perhaps the traditions of the Iberians, which tell of the immigration of their forefathers from Gaul, refer to the invasion of this blond population. The Sicanians and Siculians in southern Italy, likewise inhabitants of territories neighbouring northern Africa, are also supposed to be related to the Iberians.[c] Whence the Iberians came has always been, and must remain, a matter of dispute. That they, like the Celts, were a branch of the great Indo-European family, and had spread along the south of Europe from the slopes of the Caucasus, was long held as an article of faith by scholars whose opinions were worthy of respect; but more recent investigations tend somewhat to shake belief in this theory. That they were a dolichocephalic (long-headed) race of short stature and very dark complexion, with plentiful curly black hair, is certain, and they probably inhabited the whole of Spain in the neolithic age, either as successors of a still earlier race--of which it is possible that the Basques, who still form a separate people in the north of Spain and southwest of France, may be the survivors--or as the primitive inhabitants dating from the prehistoric times when Africa and Europe, and possibly also America, were joined by land. In any case, what is known of their physique seems to negative the supposition that they were of Indo-European or Aryan origin; and to find their counterpart at the present time, it is only necessary to seek the Kabyle (Kabail) tribes of the Atlas, the original inhabitants of the African coast opposite Spain, who were driven back into the mountains by successive waves of invasion. Not alone in physique do these tribes resemble what the early Iberian must have been, but in the more unchanging peculiarities of character and institutions the likeness is easily traceable to the Spaniard of to-day. The organisation of the Iberians, like that of the Atlas peoples, was clannish and tribal, and their chief characteristic was their indomitable local independence.