The American Museum Journal 



Vol. XII DECEMBER, 1912 No. 8 



MEN OF THE OLD STONE AGE 



WITH AN ACCOUNT OF A MOTOR TOUR THROUGH THE PRINCIPAL CAVERN 

 REGIONS OF SOUTHWESTERN EUROPE 



By Ilrnry Fairfield O.shoru 



THE Museum is slowly preparing a special exhibition of the early evo- 

 lution of man in Europe. P' ranee is now leading the world in this 

 branch of anthropology, and the discoveries which have been made 

 during the last ten years bring the Old Stone Age almost within reach of the 

 historian. The types of men who inhabited Italy, France and Spain have 

 become known not only through their ancient burials but also through their 

 paintings and sculptures ; they were of superior intelligence and gifted with a 

 strong artistic sense. Their history extends from the close of the last 

 Glacial Age, 25,000 to 20,000 years ago, to the arrival of neolithic men, 

 perhaps 10,000 years ago. There was a crude form of religion, the dead 

 were reverently buried; society was broken up into groups according to 

 special talents; there were undoubtedly chiefs or rulers, hunters, flint- 

 makers, and especially sculptors and painters, whose art exceeds that of 

 any other primitive men ancient or modern. 



The sculpture of the Old Stone Age had long been known through the 

 labors of Piette, a French magistrate. He gave his hours off the bench 

 and all his spare income to the sculptures on bone, ivory and stone by the 

 men of the upper part of the Old Stone Age, his great collection being pre- 

 served in the Museum Saint-Germain near Paris. To-day his brilliant pupil, 

 Abbe Henri Breuil, is devoting his life to a study of the draftsmen and 

 painters whose work has only recently been rediscovered — although origi- 

 nally discovered as long ago as 1879 — in the grotto at Altamira on the 

 northern coast of Spain. 



As can be traced on the accompanying map, the tour that I made of these 

 grottoes and caverns during August last, together with Professor George 

 Grant MacCurdy of Yale University, followed the beds of limestone from 

 the caverns of Grimaldi on the east near Mentone to the famous caverns 

 south of Toulouse scattered about the headwaters of the Garonne in the 

 foothills of the Pyrenees, northward to the still more famous and historic 

 caverns grouped around Les Eyzies in Dordogne near the junction of the 

 Vezere and Dordogne rivers. Finally we passed into Spain beyond Bilbao 



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