28 SECRETS OF EARTH AND SEA 



Spain, with her father, drew his attention to a number of 

 " pictures of animals," painted on the rocky vault or roof 

 of the cave. At first no one believed that these pictures 

 were more than a few hundred years old, whilst some held 

 them to be modern and made with fraudulent purpose. 

 In 1887 Piette, the distinguished French investigator of 

 the remains of human work in the caverns of the French 

 Pyre'ne'es (whose great . illustrated book of carved and 

 engraved portions of reindeer antler, ivory, and stones 

 discovered by his excavations, is a classic), declared that 

 in his opinion the pictures of the Altamira cave were of 

 the same age as the bone and ivory carvings of the 

 Madeleine cave that is to say, dated from what "pre- 

 historians " call the later Palaeolithic age, an age when the 

 mammoth, the bison, the cave lion, and the reindeer still 

 existed in Western Europe, and when the British Isles were 

 not yet separated by sea from the Continent. The age 

 indicated is probably from 25,000 to 50,000 years ago. 

 Still, the opinion prevailed that the " wall-drawings " and 

 " roof-drawing " of the Altamira cave were either mediaeval 

 or modern until the French explorers discovered wall- 

 paintings in some of the caves of the Dordogne. Then 

 they proceeded to a careful investigation of the Altamira 

 cave, and discovered conclusive evidence of the great age 

 of the paintings by the removal of some of the undisturbed 

 deposit in the cave, in which were found flint implements 

 and small engravings on bone, proving the deposit to be 

 of the late Palaeolithic age. When this deposit was 

 removed, pictures of animals, partly engraved and partly 

 completed in colour (black, red, yellow, and white), were 

 found on the wall of the cave previously covered up by 

 the deposit. M. Cartailhac, who had been a leading 

 opponent of the view that the Altamira wall-pictures 

 were very ancient, now renounced his former position and 

 became an enthusiastic investigator and exponent of these 



