Ill] 



AND HISTORIC TIMES 



91 



marques de proprie'te ou de marques de tribus comme les 

 Wasms en usage chez tous les nomades de Sud algerien." 



Dr Munro has shown a wise hesitancy in accepting this 

 conclusion. He rightly points out that if the horse had been 

 employed for riding, "we would undoubtedly ere now have had 

 a representation of the fact, either among the varied assortment 

 of objects in the Palaeolithic art gallery, or among the scenes 

 of animal life so fortuitously brought to light in the caves of 

 Combarelles, La Mouthe, and others." He would explain the 

 supposed bridle and covering on the back of the horse by the 

 hypothesis that the hunter after trapping the wild horse 

 brought him home, being able to cow him completely in a 

 short time, and that the supposed horse-cover "may be nothing 

 more than the skin coat of the hunter thrown over the back of 

 the animal when led home by means of a halter made of thongs 

 or withies, to be there slaughtered." 



But it must be pointed out, that even if the markings on 

 the animals are not accidental, they may very, well be purely 

 conventional, such as those to be found on numerous objects in 

 the early Iron age of central 

 Europe and in the geometrical 

 period of Greece. We have 

 many representations of horses, 

 dogs, and cows 1 , decorated with 

 circles (Fig. 43), and other de- 

 signs, which the artist had never 

 seen on any animal. So Dutch 

 potters commonly decorated 

 their Delft cows and horses by 

 scattering little flowers all over 

 them. As M. S. Reinach holds' 2 , the cave pictures may be 

 due to the desire of the primeval hunters to employ magic in 

 capturing their prey. 



It is by no means clear that man had tamed the steed in 

 Neolithic times, and from the evidence derived from the British 

 barrows it would appear that there is no authentic case of such 



1 So on a late Mycenean vase from Enkomi in Cyprus a cow is pourtrayed, 

 the body of which is covered with conventional patterns, which plainly were 

 never seen in nature. 2 L'Anthropologie, 1903, pp. 257-66. 



Fm 43 Miniature Axe . Hallstatt. 



