1 6 SECRETS OF EARTH AND SEA 



used in making nets. It has also been suggested that 

 some of these carved rods were used as ,',' fasteners " of the 

 skins used as clothing. 



I venture to suggest that the elaborately carved 

 cylinder which we are considering and others bearing 

 similar carvings, which only show up when a printing of 

 them is taken, were used by the men who made them for 

 this very same " printing " as an end in itself. The picture 

 could be thus impressed on skins, birch bark, and other 

 material. This race was thoroughly familiar with the use 

 of paint formed by mixing grease with charcoal (to produce 

 black), red ochre (to produce red), yellow ochre (to pro- 

 duce yellow), and some preparation of limestone or chalk 

 (to produce white). Coloured pictures representing animals 

 of the chase, coloured with red, yellow, white, and black 

 and outlined by engraving, have been discovered on the 

 rock walls of the caves used by them. Such pictures are 

 found of relatively early as well as of late date within 

 the post-Glacial Palaeolithic period (see Chapter III). The 

 rock picture of a single animal is usually from two to five 

 feet long. People who could make those coloured designs 

 and who could draw and compose so admirably as the 

 author of the " Three Red Deer " would have desired to 

 "roll off" and to possess printings of their favourite repre- 

 sentations of animal life, whilst we must admit that their 

 skill and ingenuity was assuredly equal to the task of 

 so printing them. If this carving of the " Three Red 

 Deer " were never printed it could not have been executed 

 in the first place, nor seen and admired when completed. 

 If even only half a dozen or a dozen impressions were 

 taken from it for ornamenting the skins or other material 

 used by a chief, or a wizard, or a woman, its production 

 becomes intelligible. It is true that there is nothing 

 known as to the use of such printing from a cylinder 

 among existing primitive people, but it is known in 



