OEIGINS OF CIVILIZATION IN EUROPE — EVAMS. 429 



But are we, even then, appreciably nearer to the fountain head ? 



A neAY and far more remote vista has opened out in recent years, 

 and it is not too much to say that a wholly new standpoint has been 

 gained from which to survey the early history of the human race. 

 The investigations of a brilliant band of prehistoric archeologists, 

 with the aid of representatives of the sister sciences of geology and 

 paleontology, have brought together such a mass of striking materials 

 as to place the evolution of human art and appliances in the last 

 Quaternary period on a far higher level than had even been sus- 

 pected previously. Following in the footsteps of Lartet and after 

 him Riviere and Piette, Profs. Cartailhac, Capitau, and Boule, the 

 Abbe Breuil, Dr. Obermeier and their fellow investigators have revo- 

 lutionized our knowledge of a phase of human culture which goes 

 so far back beyond the limits of any continuous story that it may 

 well be said to belong to an older world. 



To the engraved and sculptured works of man in the "Eeindeer 

 period" we have now to add not only such new specialties as are 

 exemplified by the molded clay figures of life-size bisons in the Tuc 

 d'Audoubert Cave, or the similar high reliefs of a procession of six 

 horses cut on the overhanging limestone brow of Cap Blanc, but 

 whole galleries of painted designs on the walls of caverns and rock 

 shelters. 



So astonishing was this last discovery, made first by the Spanish 

 investigator Seiior de Sautuola — or rather his little daughter — as 

 long ago as 1878, that it was not till after it had been corroborated by 

 repeated finds on the French side of the Pyrenees — not, indeed, till 

 the beginning of the present century — that the Paleolithic age of 

 these rock paintings was generally recognized. In their most devel- 

 oped stage, as illustrated by the bulk of the figures in the Cave of 

 Altamira itself, and in those of Marsoulas in the Haute Garonne, and 

 of Font de Gaume in the Dordogne, these primeval frescoes display 

 not only a consummate mastery of natural design, but an extraordi- 

 nary technical resource. Apart from the charcoal used in certain 

 outlines, the chief coloring matter was red and yellow ochre, mor- 

 tars and palettes for the preparation of which have come to light. 

 In single animals the tints are varied from black to dark and ruddy 

 brown or brilliant orange, and so, by fine gradations, to paler nuances, 

 obtained by scraping and washing. Outlines and details are brought 

 out by white incised lines, and the artists availed themselves with 

 great skill of the reliefs afforded by convexities of the rock surface. 

 But the greatest marvel of all is that such polychrome masterpieces 

 as the bisons, standing and couchant, or with limbs huddled together, 

 of the Altamira Cave, were executed on the ceilings of inner vaults 

 and galleries where the light of day has never penetrated. Nowhere 



