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THE AMERICAN MUSEUM JOURNAL 



Professor Emlle Cartailhac of the University of Toulouse and Professor George Grant 

 MacCurdy of Yale University at the entrance to Niaux cavern 



that the first clay models of the palaeolithic artists have quite recently been 

 found, two statuettes of the bison, modeled in clay with the fingers. 



Each of the caves of this region, Marsoulas, Gourdan and the great 

 cavern of Gargas, exhibits stages in the development of palaeolithic art — 

 that is, each cave belongs to a distinct period of development. 



In the Dordogne group around Les Eyzies we found the birthplace of 

 palaeolithic history. Here human history is recorded in a continuous cur- 

 rent for a period of 60,000 years, passing from the lower palaeolithic of Le 

 Moustier through all the barbaric and mediaeval stages to the hamlets of 

 the peasant and the chateaux of the French nobility. In the centre of 

 this Dordogne group is the little hamlet of Cro-Magnon where was first 

 discovered many years ago the grave of a member of this great hunting and 

 artistic race. Here the earliest explorers, Lartet and Christy, laid the foun- 

 dations of the successive chapters of palaeolithic development; but it is 

 only in recent years that the successive culture or industry stages have been 

 sharply distinguished, so that now the flint implements furnish the key to all 

 the successive periods and subperiods of human development. We were 

 guided by Abbe Breuil and M. Peyrony along the picturesque valleys and 

 cliffs of the Yezhre and Beune, tracing the whole series of inventions in flint 

 implements and all the stages of cavern mural art from the crudest drawings 



