dinary find of M. le Comte Begouen and his son, who in the cave of Tuc d'Audoubert, 

 in Ariege, some two kilometres from the entrance, came upon the bas-reliefs of bisons 

 modelled in clay, the sandy floor in the vicinity showing the marks of many human 

 footsteps (Times, Oct. 31, 1912). The human figures of Laussel, moreover, have more 

 than an aesthetic interest. Here the male figure is finely shaped, but the female has 

 the secondary sexual characters emphasised to the point of exaggeration, reminding us 

 of the statuettes of Brasempouy and Willendorf. The question may be raised whether 

 we have here the rendering of a racial trait, or are, rather, in the presence of some magico- 

 religious representation of fertility, it being perhaps significant that the female of Laussel 

 raises aloft in the hand what might well be some sort of cornucopia. There are, again, 

 human figures, both male and female, that in style remind us strongly of Bushman 

 paintings, from a group of five Spanish sites (Cogul, Calapata, Albarracin, Ayora, 

 Alpera) which have not yet been correlated with the classical French series, but are 

 probably late Pleistocene (Breuil, o.c. n). The men, who for instance, comprise the 

 greater part of the twenty-four figures of Alpera, are naked save for ornaments, and 

 wield their great bows with the most animated gestures. The women wear petticoats, 

 but leave the torso nude, and at Cogul seem to be engaged in a dance. 



Azilians, and Neolithic Age. We begin to cross the uncertain divide that separates 

 the Palaeolithic from the Neolithic when we come to the Azilians. Their culture, marked 

 especially by their horn harpoons (so different, even if, as M. Breuil thinks, derived by 

 imitation from the bone harpoons of the Magdalenians) and their painted pebbles, has 

 a somewhat wide distribution. For it seems undoubtedly to occur in Scotland (see R. 

 Munro, Palaeolithic Man, First Munro lectures, Edinburgh, 1912). Or, again, in 

 Switzerland, at Birseck near Basel, Dr. Fritz Sarasin has found the characteristic painted 

 pebbles, every one of them broken in two, as if, as he thinks, an enemy had tried to do 

 away with receptacles or embodiments of the tribal stock of souls such as are the very 

 similar churinga of the Central Australians (" Eine steinzeitliche Station bei Basel," 

 Globus, 1910). Lastly, in Spain at Castillo and elsewhere the numerous traces of them 

 have led M. Breuil to construct a theory to the effect that they represent a wave of 

 population driven through Spain northwards by the advance of the Neolithic peoples 

 from North Africa (Breuil, o.c. 34). A further problem is whether we may connect 

 with the Azilians, as M. Breuil is inclined to do, the numerous highly stylised and more 

 or less geometrical designs recently found in many caves and rock-shelters in the South 

 of Spain. On the one hand, they recall the designs on the Azilian pebbles. On the 

 other hand they are not without analogy in certain early Neolithic idols discovered by 

 M. Siret in the region of Almeria, which are made in the form of a sort of double triangle 

 with lateral expansions (Breuil, o.c. 32); as well as in the decorations of certain dolmens 

 of Portugal, and, it may be of other dolmens further north. Evidently we have here 

 the results of various interpenetrations of peoples and consequent contacts of cultures 

 which have still to be worked out fully. The study of the iconography of the dolmen 

 period has, meanwhile, received an impulse from M. J. Dechelette's interesting interpre- 

 tation of the figures of New Grange and Gavr'inis. He finds them to involve the sche- 

 matised representation of a tattooed female personage, who in Brittany is associated 

 with an axe; whilst solar symbols are also present (L' Anthropologie, 1912, 29). 



Further, it is obvious that the theatre of this cultural evolution is not merely Western 

 Europe, the North of Africa being likewise concerned and even primarily concerned 

 therewith. Indeed, the prehistoric archaeology of Africa is beginning to compete in 

 interest with that of Europe itself. Thus in the French Sudan painteo! grottoes in 

 which geometric schematisation prevails, though there are a few realistic figures as well, 

 suggest that, whilst a wave of Azilian or proto-neolithic culture went northwards 

 through Spain, another may under the same influences have been diverted south (F. de 

 Zeltner, L' Anthropologie, 1911, i; compare Breuil o.c.}. The common point of depar- 

 ture would on this assumption be north-west Africa, the seat of the prehistoric flint-in- 

 dustry known as the Capsian, which seems typologically akin to the Aurignacian of 

 Europe (Dr. E. Gobert in Bull, dc la Soc. prehist. de France, 1910). For the rest, atten- 



