20 



SCIENCE PROGRESS 



is sculptured to represent two heads adossee, a motive not 

 infrequently met with in primitive art. In one instance, on 

 the other hand, the two heads, in this case of mammoth, are 

 opposed face to face. 



De Mortillet's explanation of the baton de commandement is 

 implied in its name, translated " sceptre " by some English 

 writers. One of the commonest forms bears some 

 resemblance to a symbol of office carried by 

 some North American chiefs, and known among 

 them as a poga magan, but this always lacks 

 the characteristic perforations. By some authors 

 it has been regarded as a tent-peg, by others 

 as a drum-stick ; but perhaps the strangest sug- 

 gestion of all is due to Dr. Shoetensack, 1 who 

 imagines that it was used as a rude kind of fibula. 

 This view has been hailed by Dr. Klaatsch 2 as 

 a " glucklicher gedanke," and it seems to be 

 widely accepted in Germany. That a people 

 who had achieved such a mastery over the 

 carving of bone and ivory as the Magdalenians, 

 and who showed such a keen sense of the appro- 

 priate in art, should have fastened their garments 

 by such a clumsy device seems at least unlikely, 

 and expert hunters would scarcely choose to 

 start on the chase with a piece of bone about a 

 foot and a half long dangling from their necks. 

 The Magdalenians were quite capable of making 

 respectable buckles or fibulae, but they probably 

 fastened their dress in quite another fashion. A 

 more plausible explanation, as it seems to me, 

 is that proposed by Prof. Boyd Dawkins, who 

 has compared the baton with the Eskimo's arrow- 

 straightener. For some reason this view has 

 not been very favourably received by anthropologists either at 

 home or abroad, 3 possibly because most of the Eskimo arrow- 

 straighteners exhibited in our museums have been brought 



V 



Fig. 3. — Throw- 

 ing-stick from 

 Mas d'Azil. 



1 O. Schoetensack, "A quoi servaient les 'batons de commandement,'" 

 L'Anthr. vol. xii. p. 140, pi. iii. 1901. 



2 H. Klaatsch, Weltall und Menschheit, edited by H. Kraemer, vol. ii. Berlin, 

 no date, p. 276. 



3 See M. Hoernes, Der Diluvial Mensch in Eurofia, Brunswick, 1903, p. 72. 



