320 THE FIRST POTTER 



cave-bear among the frozen fields of interglacial Gaul and 

 Britain — did palicolitliic man himself, in his rude rock- 

 shelters, possess a knowledge of the art of pottery ? That 

 is a question which has been much debated amongst 

 archa?ologists, and which cannot even now be considered 

 as finally settled before the tribunal of science. He must 

 have drunk out of something or other, but whether he 

 drank out of earthenware cups is still uncertain. It is 

 pretty clear that the earliest drinking vessels used in Europe 

 were ncitlier bowls of earthenware nor shells of fruits, for 

 the cold climate of interglacial times did not permit the 

 growth in northern latitudes of such large natural vessels 

 as gourds, calabashes, bamboos, or coco-nuts. In all 

 probability the horns of the aurochs and the wild cattle, 

 and the capacious skull of the fellow-man whoso bones he 

 had just picked at his ease for his cannibal supper, formed 

 the aboriginal goblets and basins of the old black European 

 savage. A curious verbal relic of the use of horns as 

 drinking-cups survives indeed down to almost modern 

 times in the Greek w^ord keramic, still commonly applied 

 to the art of pottery, and derived, of course, from Jceras, a 

 horn ; while as to skulls, not only were they frequently 

 used as drinking-cups by our Scandinavian ancestors, but 

 there still exists a very singular intermediate American 

 vessel in which the clay has actually been moulded on a 

 human skull as model, just as other vessels have been 

 moulded on calabashes or other suitable vegetable shapes. 

 Still, the balance of evidence certainly seems to show 

 that a little very rude and almost shapeless hand-made 

 pottery has really been discovered amongst the buried 

 caves where pala3olitliic men made for ages their chief 

 dwelling-places. Fragments of earthenware occurred in 

 the Hohefels cave near Dim, in company with the bones 

 of reindeer, cave-bears, and mammoths, whose joints had 



