AHer Cartailhac and Breuil 

 Outlines of a painting from the cavern at Cogul, Spain. 

 We have here the unmistakable characteristics of domestic 

 cattle with a hunting scene in the background. Tliis cavern 

 furnishes about the only known attempt to portray human 

 beings. Probably Aurignacian stage 



rhinoceros. Their rela- 

 tive frequency of occur- 

 rence is almost in the 

 order just stated. Occa- 

 sionally we find deer, ibex 

 (?) and rarely birds. Of 

 carnivorous animals there 

 are a few examples, sur- 

 prisingly few. What we 

 should most like to see 

 would be a portrait of 

 Aurignacian man him- 

 self, but this seems to 

 have been a subject re- 

 ligiously avoided, per- 

 haps tabooed for some 

 reason. This is quite in 

 contrast to our own art 

 where the human form is 



usually present and often the main feature in the composition. Yet^in 

 the Spanish cavern of Cogul there are a few crude sketches of women in 

 costume and one or two nude men. Perhaps stranger still, two women are 

 drawn as if herding oxen not unlike the domestic cattle of to-day. While 

 the cattle are shown with all the precision and fidelity of Aurignacian art, 

 the human figure- are very crude and indefinite: thus even in the exception 

 we prove the rule. 



We may now give a passing thought as to what became of this art. Did 

 it \anish or iV 1 it survive in a li\'ing sense with varying fortunes down to 

 the days of Greece and Rome? 



Following the Aurignacian culture is another called the Magdalenian, 

 but the change seems to have been far from abrupt. Even the experts 

 have some difficulty in agreeing as to what is Aurignacian and what is 

 ]\Iagdalenian, and there is great probability that some of the cave paint- 

 ings are truly Magdalenian. Yet what we have here is after all but a 

 marginal distribution, for polychrome art is certainly not a characteristic 

 of ]\Iagdalenian culture, the presumption being that it exists in Magdalenian 



time only as a fringe of Aurignacian cul- 

 ture. Magdalenian man on the other 

 hand developed work in bone and deco- 

 rated many of his implements with 

 engravings equal if not superior in 

 technique to his Aurignacian predeces- 

 sor. As noted in the table, a culture 

 called Solutrean falls between Aurigna- 

 cian and Magdalenian, a stage during 



Unfinished sketch of 

 Font-dc-G aume 



Hon (?), 



293 



