THE OLD STONE AGE 
rock-shelters and the vestibules of caves for protection 
from the increased cold and dampness. Thus, during the 
winters at least, there must have been much crowding 
together, and this invariably leads to active exchange of 
ideas and consequent rapidity of progress. This has 
always been so. Cities are invariably progressive, some- 
i a 
Fic. 55. A hunters’ feast engraved on a bone pendant. The dead bison is 
shown partly dismembered, exposing the spinal column. From the cave of 
Raymonden, southwestern France. After Breuil 
times even radical; while rural regions, where people are 
more scattered, are conservative and slow to change. 
Thus the words “pagan” and “‘heathen” meant originally 
nothing more than “villager” (paganus in Latin) and 
“dweller on the heath,” for belief in the old gods still 
survived in the country districts long after the great 
centers of population had become Christian; hence, also, 
“rustic” or “countryman” became equivalent to “non- 
Christian.” 
Similarly in Magdalenian days, when people lived 
crowded together, and blizzards and deep, wet snow en- 
forced long periods of physical inactivity, minds as gifted 
as those of the Cro-Magnons must have been stimulated 
to an exceptional degree. This would lead, as indeed we 
know it did, to progress in many directions, one of which 
was in the field of art. 
This is not at all to imply that the Magdalenians were 
ever “‘artists” in the present-day sense. Like the Aurt- 
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