THE ORIGIN OF ART. 827 



THE ORIGIN OF ART. 



By M. LAZAR POPOFF. 



WE are accustomed to say that Egypt is tlie cradle of the 

 arts ; yet archaeologists have demonstrated that the earliest 

 works of art are of epochs far anterior to the ancient Egyptian 

 civilizations. According to these authors, these works were con- 

 temporaneous with the presence of the reindeer in the south of 

 France, and of a time when the mammoth had not yet disappeared, 

 and when man, ignorant of the metals, made all his instruments 

 of stone, wood, and bone. In reality, the first works of art, par- 

 ticularly the first efforts at drawing, date from prehistoric times. 

 In France they are found in caverns by the side of the fossil re- 

 mains of animals now extinct, like the mammoth, or which have 

 abandoned those regions, like the reindeer, in the shape of draw- 

 ings engraved with flint points as decorations of articles of rein- 

 deer horn, such as dagger handles and clubs. Drawings have 

 also been observed on tablets of stone, horn, or ivory derived from 

 mammoth's teeth. 



We do not intend to dwell on the rudimentary, merely outline 

 drawings, of which these ornaments consist. We invite special 

 attention to more perfect and more characteristic works, in which, 

 as Carl Vogt remarks, the spirit of observation and imitation of 

 Nature, especially of living Nature, is remarkably manifest. The 

 figure of the mammoth attracts our notice at once. A drawing 

 found in the cavern of Lia Magdelaine, in the Dordogne, engraved 

 on a tablet of mammoth bone, is marked by the strikingly clumsy 

 attitude of the unwieldy body of the animal, by its long hair, the 

 form of its lofty skull with concave front, and its enormous re- 

 curved tusks. All these features, characteristic of this extinct type 

 of pachyderm, have been reproduced by the designer with a really 

 artistic accuracy. The mammoth was already rare in Europe 

 when this primitive artist lived ; and that, perhaps, is the reason 

 why only two among the numerous drawings found in the caverns 

 of France are of that animal.* The second of these drawings, which 

 was found in La Lozere, is a mammoth's head sculptured on a club. 



The figures of the chamois, the bear, and the ox occur more 

 frequently ; but those of the reindeer are most numerous. Some 

 are engraved on plates of bone, others as ornaments of various 

 articles. Sometimes groups of animals are represented ; or, on 

 the other hand, only parts of them are given, and we see simply 

 the head, or the head and bust. 



* Similar decorations in outline have been found in Belgian caverns, and are referred by 

 Dupont to the age of the mammoth. 



