AURIGNAGIANS AND BUSHMEN ALLIED 255 



Boldini's modern ladies. We know from carvings and 

 pottery that the men as well as the women of the 

 Mycenaean people wore a tightly-compressing girdle. 

 The form of figure thus produced viz. relatively small, 

 flexible waist, and large hips with protruding buttocks 

 seems to be a less pronounced variety of that of the small 

 ivory figures of Aurignacian age (late Palaeolithic) found 

 in cave deposits of France and of that of the Bushmen 

 women. It seems as though the " ideal " female figure 

 or that admired and pictured by these races and by the 

 modern Latin races is the same in its main features, and 

 differs altogether from that admired in the Far East. 

 Such deeply seated tastes may possibly (indeed, not 

 improbably) be due to a common origin of the Mediter- 

 ranean and African peoples distinct from that of the 

 Mongoloid Asiatic races. 



