WHAT PICK AND SHOVEL REVEAL 239 



90 far back beyond the limits of any continuous story that it 

 may be said to belong to an older world.' 



! 



In plain words, there is no substantiation for 

 the tale of primitive savagery, which is called for 

 only by the exigencies of materialistic evolution. 

 Oh, for the freedom of science! The greatest 

 obstacle in the way of modern progress, scientifi- 

 cally, morally and socially, is materialistic evolu- 

 tion, the very quintessence of concentrated in- 

 tellectual darkness and autocracy, that permits of 

 no conclusions save its own most arbitrary de- 

 ductions. 



The findings of the Spanish investigator Seiior 

 de Sautola, or rather of his little daughter, as 

 long ago as 1878, of the wonderful rock-paintings 

 of the "Paleolithic age," were not recognized until 

 corroborated by repeated new discoveries. Here 

 there was question of the original hypothetical 

 savages; and what did men find in their cave 

 homes or meeting places on what we now know as 

 the French side of the Pyrenees? 



In their most developed stage, as illustrated by the bulk of 

 the figures in the Cave of Altamira itself, and in those of 

 Marsoulas in the Haute Garonne, and of Font de Gaume in 

 the Dordogne, these primeval frescoes display not only a 

 consummate mastery of natural design, but an extraordinary 

 technical resource. Apart from the charcoal used in certain 

 outlines, the chief coloring matter was red and yellow ochre, 

 mortars and palettes for the preparation of which have come 



'Sir Arthur Evans, D. Litt., LL.D., P.S.A., F.R.S. "New 

 Archeological Lights on the Origins of Civilization in Eu- 

 rope." From the Smithsonian Report, p. 429. 



