240 EVOLUTION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 



to light. In single animals the tints are varied from black 

 to dark and ruddy brown or brilliant orange, and so, by fine 

 gradations, to paler nuances, obtained by scraping and wash 

 ing. Outlines and details are brought out by white incised 

 lines, and the artists avail themselves with great skill of the 

 reliefs afforded by the convexities of the rock surface. 



But the greatest marvel of all this is that such polychrome 

 masterpieces as the bisons, standing and couchant, or with 

 limbs huddled together, of the Altamira Cave, were executed 

 on the ceilings of inner vaults and galleries where the light 

 of day has never penetrated. Nowhere is there any trace of 

 smoke, and it is clear that great progress in the art of artificial 

 illumination had already been made. We know that stone 

 lamps, decorated in one case with the engraved head of an 

 ibex, were already in existence. 4 



Here therefore we stand at the beginning of 

 human history, with the men once classed as 

 savages, because evolution demanded such a sup 

 position. Nor are these isolated instances. &quot;One 

 by one, characteristics, both spiritual and material, 

 that had been formerly thought to be the special 

 marks of later ages of mankind have been shown 

 to go back to that earlier world.&quot; Never, adds, 

 the writer of these lines, can he forget his im 

 pression as he stood at the first uncovering of a 

 pre-historic interment in one of the Balzi Rossi 

 Caves : 



Tall skeletons of the highly developed Cro-Magnon type 

 lay beside or above their hearths, and protected by great stones 

 from the roving beasts. Flint knives and bone javelins had 

 been placed within .reach of their hands, chaplets and neck 

 laces of sea shells, fish vertebrae, and studs of carved bone 



Ibid., pp. 429, 43. 



