ORIGINS OF CIVILIZATION IN EUROPE EVANS, 435 



the abundance of the little wood snail {Helix nemoralis) and the 

 increasing tendency of the reindeer to die out in the southern parts 

 of the area, so that in the fabric of the characteristic harpoons deer- 

 horns are used as substitutes. Artistic designs now fail us, but 

 the polychrome technique of the preceding age still survives in cer- 

 tain schematic and geometric figures, and in curious colored signs 

 on pebbles. These last first came to light in the cave of Mas d'Azil, 

 but they have now been found to recur much further afield in a 

 similar association in grottoes from the neighborhood of Ba^el to 

 that of Salamanca. So like letters are some of these signs that the 

 lively imagination of Piette sajv in them the actual characters of 

 a primeval alphabet. 



The little flakes with a worked edge, often known as " pygmy 

 flints," which were, most of them, designed for insertion into bone 

 or horn harpoons, like some Neolithic examples, are very character- 

 istic of this stratum, which is widely diffused in France and else- 

 where under the misleading name of " Tardenoisian." At Ofnet, in 

 Bavaria, it is associated with a ceremonial skull burial showing the 

 coexistence at that spot of brachycephalic and dolichocephalic types, 

 both of a new character. In Britain, as we know, this Azilian, or a 

 closely allied phase, is traceable as far north as the Oban Caves. 



What, however, is of special interest is the existence of a northern 

 parallel to this cultural phase, first ascertained by the Danish investi- 

 gator, Dr. Sarauw, in the lake station of Maglemose, near the west 

 coast of Zealand. Here bone harpoons of the Azilian type occur, 

 with bone and horn implements showing geometrical and rude ani- 

 mal engravings of a character divergent from the Magdalenian tradi- 

 tion. The settlement took place when what is now the Baltic was 

 still the great "Ancylus Lake," and the waters of the North Sea had 

 not yet burst into it. It belongs to the period of the Danish pine and 

 birch woods and is shown to be anterior to the earliest shell mounds 

 of the Kitchenmidden people, when the pine and the birch had given 

 place to the oak. Similar deposits extend to Sweden and Norway 

 and to the Baltic Provinces as far as the Gulf of Finland. The paral- 

 lel relationship of this culture is clear, and its remains are often 

 accompanied with the characteristic " pygmy "' flints. Breuil, how- 

 ever,^ while admitting the late Paleolithic character of this northern 

 branch, would bring it into relation with a vast Siberian and Altaic 

 province, distinguished by the widespread existence of rock carvings 

 of animals. It is interesting to note that a rock engraving of a rein- 

 deer, very well stylized, from the Trondhjem Fjord, which has been 

 referred to the Maglemosian phase, preserves the simple profile ren- 

 dering — two legs only being visible — of early Aurignacian tradition. 



* " Les subdivisions du pal^ollthique superleur et leur signification." Congrfes intern. 

 d'Anthrop. et d'Arch6ol. pr^hist., XI V""' Sess., Genfeve, 1912, pp. 165, 238. 



