II74 LIFE : OUTLINES OF GENERAL BIOLOGY 



number of skeletons have been discovered, as notably at Spy near 

 Liege, but also in Dordogne as well. 



These Mousterians appear to have been overwhelmed, indeed in 

 time replaced, by a new race of invaders. These were of amazingly 

 fine human type; dolichocephalic, no longer heavily brow-ridged, 

 but with vertical forehead and prominent chin. They were very tall, 

 like the Patagonians to-day, and bore themselves fully erect, without 

 the surviving slouching gait of their less fully human predecessors; 

 and so were thus more fully fitted for their extensive expansions and 

 conquests. The women — and doubtless their feminine ideal still 

 more definitely — are of the extremest type of build for easy and 

 ample maternity: indeed, may not this unusually marked contrast 

 in figure between the sexes indicate a large survival (and possible 

 selective development) of women of the previous race ? The climate 

 WcLS still cold, though with receding glaciers; yet with full continu- 

 ance of the reindeer, and with good hunting now possible over 

 larger areas; also active fishing, as shown by well-made hooks. 

 Their first group, the Aurignacians, exhibit advances in mastery of 

 flint, and this with characteristic handlings, earlier and later; they 

 also worked skilfully in horn and bone ; and even in ivory, a great 

 technical advance. This able as well as vigorous people increasingly 

 destroyed or expelled the great carnivores, which had so largely 

 kept back their predecessors from the caverns, and thus made them 

 at least more fully their own ; yet not merely for dwellings, though 

 thus used at and near their entrance. From their burials here or 

 outside we find them possessed of colouring matters for painting 

 or tattooing their bodies, and also of necklaces and bracelets of 

 teeth or of pierced shells. Their supreme achievement, however, and 

 one of which previous peoples give no sign, was that of initiating 

 the fine arts — of drawing — say rather engraving, of painting, and 

 even of attaining to sculpture. These new arts and techniques at 

 first seemed confined to the comparatively small objects of personal 

 use and distinction, which are now treasures in museums, and 

 justly to be admired throughout coming time. Fortunately for 

 archaeology and art-history alike, the schoolmaster of Les Eyzies, 

 M. Peyrony, became more and more interested in the caverns which 

 were yielding such marvels, and undertook the quest and careful 

 exploration of others; so, penetrating the dark long passage of one 

 of these, he had the magnificent surprise of finding in this one of the 

 finest mural decorations of the palaeolithic past — art-gallery and 

 temple in one. Animal pictures are vigorously sketched, engraved, 

 and even painted on wellnigh every sufficiently smooth rock-face 

 then free from stalactitic masses ; and these are still often admirably 

 preserved, as it were under varnish or glass, by the subsequent 

 thin deposit. Beside the art interest of all this, arises the anthropo- 

 logical question — to what purpose? Comparison with kindred but 



