252 PREHISTORIC PETTICOATS 



vvaisted little ladies of the Cogul rock-shelter in Catalonia. 

 We find here the same sinuous figure with exaggeratedly 

 compressed waist, prominent bosom, and emphasised 

 haunches. But it is many, perhaps forty, thousand years 

 earlier ! One is led to wonder whether this type of human 

 female to-day expressed with such masterly skill by 

 Boldini may not be at the back of the mind of a portion 

 of the human race that which populated what are now 

 the shores of the Mediterranean, and probably came there 

 travelling northwards from the centre of Africa. Possibly 

 they brought with them that tendency to, and admiration 

 for, megalopygy which is evidenced by the makers of 

 the earliest known palaeolithic cave sculptures (the 

 Aurignacians), and has persisted in some degree 

 ever since in Europe a tendency and a taste which 

 are on the one hand totally absent in the East and 

 Far East (Japan), and on the other hand have a strong 

 development in the modern Bushmen (and the related 

 Hottentots), an African race, and like the Spanish cave- 

 men, rock painters. 



I am able to reproduce here (Plates X and XI), 

 through the kindness of Sir Arthur Evans and Dr. Hogarth, 

 the keeper of the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford, two 

 very interesting drawings showing certain features in 

 the dress of women in the prehistoric race which 

 inhabited the island of Crete for some three thousand 

 years previous to the date of these representations, which 

 is about 1600 B.C. They are interesting to compare both 

 with the much more ancient figures from the Spanish 

 cave and with modern female costume. The first (Plate 

 X) is a figure in coloured pottery (faience), representing 

 either a votary or priestess of a goddess to whom 

 snakes were sacred. The petticoat of this lady is 

 very modern, being long, decorated with flounces (a series 

 of five) and bell-shaped. The dress is further remarkable 



