410 REPORT OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1896. 



from one-fourtli to oue-lialf or five-eightlis inch iu diameter, placed iu 

 rows on the flat sides of the pebbles, from one to eight on each pebble; 

 of bars or parallel bauds of the same character ; of zigzags, crosses, 

 some circles with central dot, and others of similar designs in great 

 number. The painting can best be described by supposing much of 

 the work to have been done by light touches of the finger. It was 

 Judge Piette's tlieory that these marks and signs had some meaning. 

 They might have formed a numerical system. Still others may have 

 been alphabetic or ideographic signs, still others symbolic. These 

 pebbles were found in a particular stratum of the grotto. They were 

 not placed in any order, but were scattered throughout the stratum. 

 The meaning of the painted designs on these pebbles has never been 

 decided and probably never can be; but in our present state of knowl- 

 edge they represent man's earliest use of color for purposes of decora- 

 tion; and, consequently, were the very beginning of the art of paint- 

 ing.^ They may be more than this, but of this much we may feel certaiin, 

 that whatever was intended by their makers, whether they were for 

 ornamentation only, " art for art's sake," or had some special significa- 

 tion as numbers, signs, symbols, etc., they were surely an appeal to 

 the color-sense through the eye, and so represent the very beginning of 

 the painter's art. They were an advance upon the glyptic art which 

 had theretofore prevailed, and had thus far been the only artistic mani- 

 festation by man. 



For description of the excavation of Mas d'Azil see "Etudes d'Eth- 

 nographie Prehistorique," by Judge E. Piette,^ and for illustration of 

 the colored pebbles see su])plement to same pai)er.-' 



The employment of colors in the exe(uition of savage art can be 

 traced to a considerable antiquity; and their use, though continued 

 into modern times, does not at all depend upon the intervention of' 

 civilized man. 



The original mineral colors were probably the red and yellow ochers, 

 red and yellow iron oxides, black from charcoal, and white from chalk 

 and lime; but vegetable colors were not difiicult to obtain from leaves, 

 fruits, roots, stems, and seeds; for the extraction and use of these pig- 

 ments and colors in the various savage decorations and adornment was 

 not above the most primitive conceptions. While there is no trace of 

 the use of colors in Paleolithic times in Europe until the late discovery 

 of Judge Piette, and but little in Neolithic times of that country, yet 

 the employment of colors by prehistoric peoples of other countries was 

 extensive and effective. Beyond this, it displayed considerable power 

 and was withal difficult of execution. 



The use of an extensive scale or palette of colors by our North 



' The coloring of human bones preparatory for secondary burial is not forgotten; 

 but it was ceremonial or religious and not decorative; besides it was later. 

 2L'Authropologie, VI, 1896, pp. 274-292. 

 ^ In quarto, 25 plates, chromolithograph. 



