SOME EARLY FORMS OF ART, 90 
Sleeve na Cailliagh in Meath, the necropolis or burying place of 
early Irish kings 1000 years B.C. 
The stones are ornamented with hollow dots, circles, spirals, 
lozenges, chevrons, and wheels, punched apparently with a flint 
punch. Are these symbols or decorative touches? I have no copies 
of them. The Bushmen in Australia have some ornamented stones 
with rough figures which bear some resemblance. 
The men who carved these oxen must have been agricultural. 
We know from the evidence of language that Latin, Greek, Teuton, 
Hindoo, Sanscrit, sprang from a common Aryan stock. The very 
name Italy means “‘a land of oxen.” Italus or Vitulus is the same 
word as the French veau and the Norman veal. The words for 
agriculture, the vine, the plough, grain, ‘‘ the beef,” the quern the 
Scotch still grind their corn in, gander, hound, sow, pork, point to a 
common origin in a primitive Indo-Germanic race. 
But before these agricultural people came, there was a race in 
Italy and France that lived by hunting and fishing, with tools of 
stone and bone, who adorned themselves or their womenkind with 
teeth of animals, shells, amber, and bones, and were unacquainted 
with the use of metals or agriculture. 
At Mentone, a few yards from the present frontier of France 
and Italy, facing the Mediterranean, in the Red Cliff, is a cave which 
has contained an epitome of the life of prehistoric man. The 
entrance stands 30 yards from the shore, just above the sea level. 
The aspect was southern; the sun shone in; the climate was 
genial and pleasant even in winter, as modern invalids have found ; 
fish was plentiful, and the forests behind were full of game. The 
original height was some 70 feet, but gradually, as centuries passed, 
debris, fragments of roof and side-walls, bones of slaughtered 
animals, ashes and charcoal from fires, stones and refuse accumulated 
and caused the floor to keep on gradually rising, until 35 feet of 
deposit was formed. 
