ORIGINS OP CIVILIZATION IN EUEOPE EVANS. 431 



that they resemble or actually reproduce letters of the alphabet. 

 Often they occur in groups like regular inscriptions, and it is not sur- 

 prising that in some quarters they should have been regarded as 

 evidence that the art of writing had already been evolved by the men 

 of the Reindeer age. A symbolic value certainly is to be attributed to 

 these signs, and it must at least be admitted that by the close of the 

 late Quaternary age considerable advance had been made in hiero- 

 glyphic expression. 



The evidences of more or less continuous civilized development 

 reaching its apogee about the close of the Magdalenian period have 

 been constantly emerging from recent discoveries. The recurring 

 " tectiform " sign had already clearly pointed to the existence of 

 huts or wigwams; the " scutiform " and other types record appliances 

 yet to be elucidated, and another sign well illustrated on a bone 

 pendant from the Cave of St. Marcel has an unmistakable re- 

 semblance to a sledge.^ But the most astonishing revelation of the 

 cultural level already reached by primeval man has been supplied by 

 the more recently discovered rock paintings of Spain. The area of 

 discovery has now been extended there from the Province of Santan- 

 der, where Altamira itself is situated, to the Valley of the Ebro, the 

 Central Sierras, and to the extreme southeastern region, including 

 the Provinces of Albacete, Murcia, and Almeria, and even to within 

 the borders of Granada. 



One after another, features that had been reckoned as the exclusive 

 property of Neolithic or later ages are thus seen to have been shared 

 by Paleolithic man in the final stage of his evolution. For the first 

 time, moreover, we find the productions of his art rich in human 

 subjects. At Cogul the sacral dance is performed by women clad 

 from the waist downward in well-cut gowns, while in a rock shelter 

 of Alpera,^ where we meet with the same skirted ladies, their dress 

 is supplemented by flymg sashes. On the rock painting of the Cueva 

 de la Vieja, near the same place, women are seen with still longer 

 gowns rising to their bosoms. We are already a long way from Eve. 



It is this great Alpera fresco which, among all those discovered, has 

 afforded most new elements. Here are depicted whole scenes of the 

 chase in which bowmen — up to the time of these last discoveries un- 

 known among Paleolithic representations — take a leading part, 

 though they had not as yet the use of quivers. Some are dancing in 

 the attitude of the Australian corroborees. Several wear plumed head- 

 dresses, and the attitudes at times are extraordinarily animated. 

 ^Miat is specially remarkable is that some of the groups of these 



1 This interpretation suggested by me after inspecting the object in 1902 has been ap- 

 proved by the Abb^ Breuil (Anthropologic, XIII, p. 152) and by Professor Sollas, "Ancient 

 Hunters," ^ 1915. p. 480. 



*That of Carasoles del Bosque: Breuil, Anthropologie, XXVI, 1915, p. 329, et seq. 



