250 PREHISTORIC PETTICOATS 



modern look about the figures and a freedom of 

 touch about the drawing which makes one think at first 

 that the picture is some modern, hasty but clever sketch 

 in silhouette of a number of short-skirted school-girls at 

 play. The waist is extremely small and elongated, the 

 skirt, or petticoat, bell-shaped, and the whole figure 

 " sinuous." One of the figures appears to have a cloak or 

 jacket, but the breasts and legs are bare. 



Some three years ago Sir Arthur Evans discovered in 

 the palace of the ancient Kings of Crete coloured frescoes 



FIG. 29. Reproduction of drawings from a rock shelter near Lerida 

 in Catalonia, representing a group of women clothed in jacket and 

 skirt with " wasp-like " waists. The original figures are ten inches 

 high, and the drawing probably dates from the late Palaeolithic 

 period. 



some 3500 years old representing in great detail elegant 

 young women with greatly compressed waists, strongly- 

 pronounced bustles, and elaborately ornamented skirts. 

 These Cretan paintings of prehistoric young women, both 

 in costume and pose, are like nothing so much as the 

 portraits of distinguished ladies of the fashionable world 

 of Paris exhibited by the painter, Bolclini, in the " Salon." 

 It is remarkable that explorers should have found con- 



