MAN FROM THE FARTHEST PAST 
medium as animal fat. They kept these paints in shells or 
in tubes made of the hollow leg bones of animals. What 
they used for brushes we have no means of knowing, but 
perhaps some sort of fibrous wood frayed out at the end. 
They painted mainly in red or black, or in both, but also 
occasionally used other colors. 
Sculpture, which began in the Aurignacian, developed 
continuously to the Middle Magdalenian. That of 
animals, which seems to have had its rise in the Solutrean,. 
reached its height in the Early Magdalenian. Nude 
human figurines were also executed, although these now 
tended to be naturalistic and comparatively free from the 
gross exaggeration of the Aurignacian sculptors. But 
representations of the human form during the Magda- 
lenian epoch are rather rare and never rival the excellence 
of contemporaneous portrayals of animal life. 
Of the different animals depicted, the mammoth, while 
it lasted, furnished a favorite subject, as did the reindeer, 
the horse, and the bison. Of the last-named creature it 
has been estimated that fifty representations occur for one 
of the wild bull. Birds are rarely shown, but fish are not 
infrequent (Fig. 59). 
Representations of masked or otherwise disguised hu- 
man figures point inevitably to the existence of some sort 
of ritual. They recall in particular the “hunting dances”’ 
of certain latter-day savages, in which the performers put 
on skins of animals of the kind about to be hunted and 
imitate their characteristic movements. Perhaps the 
most noteworthy design of this class so far found is one 
known as “The Sorcerer,” or, as our frontiersmen would 
have said, ‘““The Medicine Man.” This was discovered a 
few years ago, deep in the cavern of the Trois Fréres, in 
southwestern France (Fig. 60). It is placed high on the 
end wall in a most inaccessible position, from which it 
dominates the entire chamber, and is engraved, certain of 
its features being emphasized by the application of black 
paint. The figure, about two and a half feet long, is that 
[ 222] 
