June 9, 192 1] 



NATURE 



46 I 



has penetrated half a mile into the hill. Man 

 did not live in deep, dank caves requiring arti- 

 ficial light; his habitation was made under over- 

 hanging rocks on the sunny side of the valley, or 

 occasionally in the mouth of a cave. These cave 

 drawings, then, were not home decorations, and 

 one could scarcely imagine a prehistoric man rush- 

 ing half a mile into a hill with a blazing brand 

 to light him in order to paint an animal in some 

 narrow crack from mere ]oie de vivre. The only 

 other explanation is that this art was used for 

 some form of magic or ritual ceremonial. When 

 we recall that the animals sometimes show 

 arrows in their flanks, and when we find the 

 human hand depicted (in one cave at any rate, 

 mutilated by certain joints of the fingers being 

 removed), not to speak of the presence of a number 

 of queer signs at the meaning of which we can 

 only guess, we are forced back to the conclusion 

 that sympathetic magic is the sole explanation. A 

 good catch is all-important to a hunting people, 



figures of even a later date are sometimes placed 

 in a fifth phase. The fact that the succession of 

 styles is the same over such a wide area indicates 

 either schools of tradition for the medicine men 

 or priestly caste- — i.e. for those who did the 

 magic in the caves — or, at any rate, a fairly close 

 intercourse between the various regions. This is 

 still more startling in the case of decorated bones 

 from the deposits themselves, where ^tee find 

 similar peculiar geometric decorations from Can- 

 tabria to the Ukraine. 



In a new and unpublished cave there is the 

 painting of a sorcerer masked as a stag dominat- 

 ing a frieze of engraved animals. 



Group 2. The Eastern Spanish style. This is 

 thought to be of Upper Palaeolithic age, for the 

 following reasons : (a) There is a painting of a 

 bison at Cogul ; of an elk at Cueva del Queso ; of 

 a chamois at Tortosilla (chamois have long ago 

 disappeared from the province of Albacete, South 

 Spain) ; of an elk, a reindeer, and a rhinoceros at 



-Panel in the second rock shelter at Cantos de la Visera (Albacete, S. Spain). Paintings in the Eastern Spanish group 



of horses, stags, bulls, etc. 



and no doubt these paintings and engravings, that 

 are so lifelike in appearance, were used to further 

 this object. 



All the drawings are not of the same age, and 

 they can be divided into a number of phases of 

 different ages. These phases are determined by 

 a careful consideration of the various styles 

 that are painted or engraved one over the 

 other. When such a palimpsest occurs, the 

 engraving or painting on the top is obviously 

 newer than those underneath. W^hen a number of 

 caves in the various regions arc examined it is 

 found that the succession of the styles is the same, 

 whether we are in Cantabria. in the Pyrenees, or 

 in Dordogne. Of course, certain local styles make 

 their appearance in various places, but the main 

 succession is the same. Detailed studies have 

 enabled us to assign dates to these various styles, 

 and we can now confidently affirm that phase i 

 is Aurignacian ; phase 2, Lower Magdalenian ; 

 phase 3, Middle to Upper Magdalenian ; and 

 phase 4, Upper Magdalenian. Certain geometrical 

 NO. 2693, VOL. 107] 



the newly discovered rock shelter of Minateda 

 (Albacete). (b) The figures of horses painted in 

 the Eastern Spanish group at Cantos de la Visera 

 are exactly similar in technique to a small horse 

 painted in red among the northern group 1 at 

 Portel in the Pyrenees. This Eastern Spanish style 

 is peculiar in that it is found, not in deep caves, 

 but under rock shelters, that are, however, deep 

 enough to protect the paintings from actual 

 moisture, which would give rise to moss growth 

 that would soon destroy the paintings. The 

 climate of East Spain is neither rigorous nor 

 damp, and there is no reason why these paintings, 

 made with oxides of iron as pigments, should not 

 have lasted until to-day. Another characteristic 

 of this group is the number of human beings 

 depicted, often armed with bows and arrows. The 

 most important discoveries made in this group in 

 recent years are : (a) The rock shelter of Cantos 

 de la Visera ; (b) the rock shelter of Minateda ; 

 (c) the rock shelters of the Barranco de Valltorta 

 (province of Castell6n). The first of these was 



