566 
Fic. 15.—Front view of 
the deer’s head, re- 
peated four times on 
the shaft of a wand. 
Middle Magdalenian, 
rock-shelter of Mége 
(Dordogne). After 
Breuil, Rev. de l’Ecole 
d’anthr. de Paris, vol. 
16, p. 209, 1906. 
ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1909. 
of the stone is divided into two panels—an 
upper and a lower. Each panel is filled by a 
herd of galloping horses—seventeen in one 
group and eighteen in the other. In both 
panels the horse at each end is completely 
traced. Those in between are represented by 
contour lines of the heads, necks and forefeet 
only, giving the effect of an orderly compact 
squadron of cavalry in action. The original is 
said to have disappeared but Cartailhac® has 
reproduced it in negative from an estampage. 
From the beginning of the Magdalenian 
epoch, symbolism began to play an important 
role in paleolithic art. According to Piette, 
symbols are figures or images employed as signs 
of objects; therefore they represent words. In 
the process of time the words were divided into 
syllables, the syllables into letters; the same 
signs have designated successively words, syl- 
lables, and letters. Among the earliest paleo- 
hthic symbols are the dotted circle, the lozenge 
and the spiral or sigmoid scroll. The first is 
supposed to be a sun symbol. It reappears as 
an Egyptian hieroglyph, also on dolmens and 
menhirs, on bronze age funerary urns and 
ornaments of the first iron age. The circle 
without the dot passed into the ancient alpha- 
bets and from them into modern alphabets. 
The lozenge was employed as an artist’s signa- 
ture. The spiral has flourished in all succeed- 
ing ages and like some other symbols may have 
developed independently in various ages and 
lands. 
Piette distinguishes two successive systems of 
writing in the Magdalenian—the first hiero- 
glyphic and the second cursive. He believes the 
latter was derived from the former, but admits 
that since symbols are creatures of convention 
they may have been from the beginning figures 
formed by geometric lines instead of being stm- 
plified images. An example of cursive writing 
dating from the Magdalenian epoch is given in 
figure 17. It is from the classic station of La 
“J,/anthropologie, vol. 14, 177, 1908. 
