GRAPHIC ART OF THE ESKIMOS. 763 



these were in black, on the white basis of the bone or ivory. * * * The mark- 

 ings can seldom be accurately described as marks of ownership. I have never seen 

 any definite mark or ornament of this nature among the Aleuts or Western lunuits. 

 They readily recognize their own utensils or weapons without any such aid, and I 

 believe the theory of "marks of ownership," "batons of command," and such like, 

 has been stretched far beyond the point of endurance or accuracy, at least among 

 writers on the Innuit. Drawings, engravings on bone or wood, and pictures of any 

 kind, so far as I have observed, are all subsequent to the period covered by the 

 shell heap deposit. They are invariably quite modern, though the taste for them 

 is now widely sjiread among the Innuit, especially those of the regions where ivory 

 is readily procured. The coloration of wooden articles with native pigments is of 

 ancient origin, but all the more elaborate instances that have come to my knowledge 

 have marks of comparatively recent origin. 



ESKIMO AND CAVE MEN OF FRANCE. 



In his "Alaska and its Eesources," Mr, Dall presents several illus- 

 trations of drawings on bone, very ordinary specimens and limited 

 to poorly executed figures of men hunting. These are given merely 

 to indicate to the reader the general appearance of the etching of the 

 Eskimo. It is related in this connection, however, that these drawings 

 are analogous to those discovered in France in the caves of Dordogne. 

 The numerous specimens of prehistoric art, both incised ai\d carved, 

 which have been given by Messrs. Lartet and Christy in their work 

 entitled Eeliquite Aquitanicie,^ are familiar to most archaeologists, so 

 that no reproduction of plates or illnstrations is deemed necessary in 

 the present instance. 



Mr. W. Boyd Dawkins,- an acknowledged authority on the antiquity 

 of man in Europe, remarks at length upon the possible and in fact 

 probable identification between the cave men and the Eskimo. In his 

 conclusions upon comparisons between the respective arts, forms of 

 weapons, apparently similar modes of living, etc., he says : 



On passing in review the manners and customs of all the savage tribes known to 

 modern ethnology, there is only one people with whom the cave men are intimately 

 connected in their manners and customs, in their art, and in their ^nplements and 

 weapons. The Eskimo range at the present time from Greenland on the east along 

 the shores of tlie Arctic Sea as far to the west as the Straits of Bering, inhabiting a 

 narrow littoral strip of country, and living by hunting, fishing, and fowling. The 

 most astonishing bond of uijion between the cave men and the Eskimo is the art of 

 representing animals. .Just as the former engraved bisons, horses, mammoths, and 

 other creatures familiar to them, so do the latter represent the animals upon which 

 they depend for food. On the implements of the one you see the hunting of the urns 

 and the liorse dejjicted in the same way as the killing of the reindeer and walrus on 

 the implements of the other. » * * All these points of connection between the 

 cave men and the Eskimo can, in my opinion, be explained only on the hypothesis 

 that they belong to the same race. To the objection that savage tribes living under 

 the same conditions might independeutlj* invent the same implements, and that 

 therefore the correspondence in the question does not necessarily imply a unity of 

 race, the answer may be made that there are no savage tribes known which use the 

 same set of implements without being connected by blood. The ruder and more 



' London, 1875, pp. 204. PI. 87. Three maps and 132 woodcuts. Quarto. 

 2 "Early Man in Britain," 1880, p. 233. 



