74 DANIEL WILSON ON TIIK AETISTIC 



was possibly already subdued to the companionship and service of man. Such, at least, is 

 the idea suggested by a scene graA^en on the portion of a baton or staff, found by M. Lartet 

 and Mr. Chri.sty in La Madelaiue cave, which represents aman between two horses' heads, 

 apparently walking past, with a staff or spear over his shoulder. Nor were those man's sole 

 contemporaries. The ferocious cave-lion and cave-bear disputed with the men of that 

 period the occupation of the rock-shelters, where the latter employed their leisure as 

 draftsmen and carvers, and so have transmitted to us graphic delineations of contempo- 

 rary life, and no less significant indications of their own intellectual cajiacity. 



The drawings of the ancient cave-men are of varying- degrees of merit, showing the 

 efforts of the unskilled tyro, as well as of the practiced artist. Some of the examples found 

 at Langerie Basse — as for instance, the assumed representation of an ibex, with its legs 

 folded as if sitting, — are the crude efforts of unpractised draftsmen ; and would compare 

 imfavorably with many examples of graphic art, the work of modern Eskimo and Indian 

 gravers and draftsmen. But other specimens — such as the mammoth from La Madelaine 

 cave, and the Alpine ibex and reindeers from Laugerie Basse, in Southern France, and, still 

 more, the remarkably spirited drawing of the reindeer grazing, from the Kesserloch, near 

 Thayingen, sketched on a piece of reindeer horn, — evince powers of observation, and a 

 freedom of hand in sketching from nature, ^uch as would be found exceptional among 

 pupils of our best training schools of art. On this point my friend, Si rNoel Paton, writes 

 me : " I entirely concur in your view as to the immense superiority as works of art of the 

 engravings on horn and ivory found in the prehistoric caves, over any modern work of the 

 same kind which I have seen, executed by the Eskimos or other savage tribes of our own 

 day. As compared with the latter, the prehistoric productions are like the swift and direct 

 studies from nature of Landseer, compared with the laboured scrawliugs from memory of a 

 rather dull schoolboy." 



I have elsewhere drawn attention to the fact, that some of the drawings of the Perigord 

 cave-men and their palœolithic contemporaries, and especially, among the latter, the Kesser- 

 loch sketch of a reindeer grazing, are left-hand drawings. So far as observation thus far 

 extends, although the majority of those examples of primitive art suggest a preference 

 for the use of the right hand, the percentage of left-hand drawings is much larger than 

 could be looked for on any assumption that the use of the left hand is a mere exceptional 

 deviation from the normal condition and functions of man. Here, at least, a family, or 

 possibly a tribe, dwelt, among whom left-handedness prevailed to an unusual extent ; along 

 with a degree of skill and dexterity, such as is frequently found to accompany the 

 instinctive use of the left hand. 



In this, as in other respects, the recovery of evidences of a well-developed 

 œsthetic faculty among the men of Europe's Mammoth and Reindeer Period, furnishes 

 materials lor many suggestive inferences ; for we shall A'ery imperfectly estimate the sig- 

 nificance of the primitive drawings so unexpectedly discovered, if we regard them as no 

 more than the pastimes of those ancient cave-men whose artistic ability they so unmis- 

 takably reveal. They are rather to be classed with the picture-writing of the American 

 aborigines — including its most advanced Mexican stage abundantly illustrated in Lord 

 Kingsborough's folios, — as one of the primitive supplements of language among uncultured 

 races. As such it is a form of visible speech, and an important step in advance of the 

 rude stage of gesture-language. The historical value of the palœolithic drawings is indis- 



