PALEOLITHIC RACES 679 



development of these features, the greater the approach to a 

 Hottentot's ideal standard of beauty. 



If now we return to Solutrian man we shall find that 

 although for some inscrutable reason he refrained from depicting 

 the human form, he had no scruple against sculpturing it in the 

 round ; indeed, he took a special pleasure in carving figurines, 

 which almost invariably represent woman in the nude. A 

 considerable number of these have been discovered in various 

 caves, as at Laugerie-Haute and Brassempouy, Barma grande 

 (Mentoni), Pont-a-Lesse (Belgium), and in the loss at Predmost 

 (Moravia) ; at least a dozen are preserved in the Museum at 

 St. Germains near Paris. They are of unequal merit ; some are 

 extremely crude, others, however, are true works of art, and well 

 deserve the praise bestowed upon them by M. Salomon Reinach, 

 who remarks that there are at least two examples among them 

 which by their realism and intelligent rendering of the female 

 form are superior to all the artistic productions of the y£gean 

 and Babylonia. 1 They have been closely studied by M. E. Piette, 

 who divides them into two groups, one modelled from a race 

 which it is difficult to identify, and the other presenting just 

 those characters which we have enumerated as peculiar to 

 the Bushmen, Hottentots, and Accas. Thus as early as 1895, 

 before the mural paintings of the caves had been recognised as 

 genuine, M. Piette was able to assert that if we seek for the 

 nearest representatives of the people represented by these 

 models, we shall find them among the Bushmen. 2 



Certainly the artists who carved the figurines have shown in 

 the clearest manner that they were intimately acquainted with 

 women who presented a close anatomical resemblance to the 

 existing Bushwomen, and the presumption is that these were 

 women of their own race. 



The supposed connection between Solutrian man and the 

 Bushmen begins to acquire an appearance of probability and 

 the case is still further strengthened by the discovery of the 

 actual remains of Solutrian man himself. The Grotte des 



1 S. Reinach, " Statuette de femme nue decouvert dans une des grottes de 

 Menton," LAnthr. 1898, ix. p. 26. 



2 E. Piette, UAnthr. 1895, vi. p. 137. See also Moriz Hoernes, Der Diluviale 

 Mensch in Eurofta, 1903, Brunswick. For the latest discovery of a steatopygous 

 figurine, found near Vienna, see G. G. Maccurdy, Am. Anthrop, vol. x. p. 643, 

 1909. 



