246 PREHISTORIC PETTICOATS 



On this side of the Pyrenees the Reindeer men have 

 left some wall-pictures, and new discoveries of great 

 importance in the form of rock carvings of human figures 

 as well as pictures and huge figures of horses, etc., are 

 being made in France as I write these lines. But the 

 best preserved and most numerous wall pictures are 

 those of the cave of Altamira near Santander. These 

 comprise some partially preserved representations in 

 yellow, red, white, and black of the great bison, the wild 

 boar, the horse, and other animals. A group representing 

 some twenty-five or more animals (each about one third 

 the size of nature), irregularly arranged, exists on a part 

 of the roof, and others are found in other parts of the 

 cavern. Among the wall-pictures made by ancient cave- 

 men are numerous drawings of human beings in masks 

 representing animals' heads probably indicating the 

 " dressing-up " in animal masks of priests or medicine- 

 men in the way in which we know to-day is the 

 custom among many savage tribes. Twenty-seven 

 of these " decorated " caverns were known in 191 o 

 eleven in Spain, one in Italy, and fifteen in South and 

 Central France and others are continually being discov- 

 ered. The most careful and critical examination by 

 scientific men leaves no doubt as to the vast antiquity of 

 these paintings, and as to their dating from a time when 

 the animals painted (including in some cases mammoth 

 and rhinoceros, as well as bison, reindeer, wild boar, ibex, 

 red deer, bear, and felines) were existing in the locality. 

 The covering up of some of the drawings (which are 

 partly engraved and partly painted) by earthy deposits 

 and by encrustations of lime, and the presence in the cave 

 deposits of the worked flints and bones characteristic of the 

 Reindeer men, leave no doubt that these pictures are of that 

 immense antiquity which we express by the words "Quater- 

 nary period," " Upper Pleistocene " or " Reindeer epoch." 



