y 
SEPTEMBER 7, 1916] 
of former civilisation, the very existence of which was 
formerly unsuspected. Even in later periods arche- 
ology, as a dispassionate witness, has been continually 
checking, supplementing, and illustrating written his- 
tory. lt has called back to our upper air, as with a 
magician’s wand, shapes and conditions that seemed 
to have been irrevocably lost in the night of Time. 
‘The investigations ot a brilliant band of prehistoric 
archzologists, with the aid of representatives of the 
sister sciences of geology and palwontology, have 
brought together such a mass of striking materials as 
to place the evolution of human art and appliances in 
the last Quaternary period on a far higher level than 
had even been suspected previously. Following in the 
footsteps of Lartet, and after him Riviére and Piette, 
Profs. Cartailhac, Capitan, and Boule, the Abbé 
Breuil, Dr. Obermeier, and their fellow-investigators 
have revolutionised our knowledge of a phase of 
human culture which goes so far back beyond the 
limits of any continuous story, that it may well be 
said to belong to an older world. 
To the engraved and sculptured works of man in 
the ‘“‘ Reindeer period"’ we have now to add not only 
such new specialities as are exemplified by the moulded 
clay figures of life-size bisons in the Tuc d’Audoubert 
Cave, or the similar high reliefs of a procession of six 
horses cut on the overhanging limestone brow of Cap 
Blanc, but whole galleries of painted designs on the 
walls of caverns and rock shelters. 
So astonishing was this last discovery, made first by 
the Spanish investigator, Sefior de Sautuola—or rather 
his little daughter—so long ago as 1878, that it was 
not until after it had been corroborated by repeated 
finds on the French side of the Pyrenees—not, indeed, 
until the beginning of the present century—that the 
Palzolithic age of these rock-paintings was generally 
recognised. In their most developed stage, as illus- 
trated by the bull of the figures in the Cave of Alta- 
mira itself, and in those of Marsoulas in the Haute 
Garonne, and of Font de Gaume in the Dordogne, 
these primeval frescoes display not only a consummate 
mastery of natural design, but an extraordinary tech- 
nical resource. Apart from the charcoal used in cer- 
tain outlines, the chief colouring matter was red and 
yellow ochre, mortars and palettes for the preparation 
of which have come to light. In single animals the 
tints are varied from black to dark and ruddy brown 
or brilliant orange, and so, by fine gradations, to paler 
nuances, obtained by scraping and washing. Outlines 
and details are brought out by white incised lines, 
and the artists availed themselves with great skill of 
the reliefs afforded by convexities of the rock surface. 
But the greatest marvel of all is that such polychrome 
masterpieces as the bisons, standing and couchant, or 
with limbs huddled together, of the Altamira Cave, 
were executed on the ceilings of inner vaults and 
galleries where the light of day has never penetrated. 
Nowhere is there any trace of smoke, and it is clear 
that great progress in the art of artificial illumination 
had already been made. We now know that stone 
lamps, decorated in one case with the engraved head 
of an ibex, were already in existence. 
Such was the level of artistic attainment in South- 
Western Europe, at a modest estimate some ten 
thousand years earlier than the most ancient monu- 
ments of Egypt or Chaldzea! Nor is this an isolated 
phenomenon. One by one, characteristics, both 
spiritual and material, that had been formerly thought 
to be the special marks of later ages of mankind have 
been shown to go back to that earlier world. 
The evidences of more or less continuous civilised 
development reaching its apogee about the close of the 
Magdalenian period have been constantly emerging 
from recent discoveries. The recurring ‘‘tectiform” 
NO. 2445, VOL. 98] 
NATURE 
r3 
sign had already clearly pointed to the existence of 
huts or wigwams; the “scutiform” and other types 
record appliances yet to be elucidated, and anotner 
sign well illustrated on a bone pendant from the Cave - 
ot St. Marcel has an unmistakable resemblance to a 
sledge.‘ But the most astonishing revelation of the 
cultural level already reached by primeval man has 
been supplied by the more recently discovered rock- 
paintings of Spain. The area of discovery has now 
been extended there from the Province of Santander, 
where Altamira itself is situated, to the Valley of the 
Ebro, the Central Sierras, and to the extreme south- 
eastern region, including the Provinces of Albacete, 
Murcia, and Almeria, and even to within the borders 
of Granada, 
One after another, features that had been reckoned 
as the exclusive property of Neolithic or later ages 
are thus seen to have been shared by Palzolithic man 
in the final stage of his evolution. For the first time, 
moreover, we find the productions of his art rich in 
human subjects. At Cogul the sacral dance is per- 
formed by women clad from the- waist downwards in 
well-cut gowns, while in a rock-shelter of Alpera,? 
where we meet with the same skirted ladies, their 
dress is supplemented by flying sashes. On the rock- 
painting of the Cueva de la Vieja, near the same 
place, women are seen with still longer gowns rising 
to their bosoms. We are already a long way from 
Eve! 
It is this great Alpera fresco which, among all those 
discovered, has afforded most new elements. Here are 
depicted whole scenes of the chase, in which bowmen 
—up to the time of these last discoveries unknown 
among Paleolithic representations—take a leading 
part, though they had not as yet the use of quivers. 
Some are dancing in the attitude of the Australian 
Corroborees. Several wear plumed head-dresses, and 
the attitudes at times are extraordinarily animated. 
What is specially remarkable is that some of the 
groups of these Spanish rock-paintings show dogs or 
jackals accompanying the hunters, so that the process 
of domesticating animals had already begun. Hafted 
axes are depicted as well as cunningly-shaped throwing 
sticks. In one case at least we see two opposed bands 
of archers—marking at any rate a stage in social 
development in which organised warfare was possible 
—the beginnings, it is to be feared, of ‘‘kultur,’”’ as 
well as of culture! 
Nor can there be any question as to the age of these 
scenes and figures, by themselves so suggestive of a 
much later phase of human history.. They are insepar- 
able from other elements of the same group, the 
animal and symbolic representations of which’ are 
shared by the contemporary school of rock-painting 
north of the Pyrenees. Some are overlaid by palimp- 
sests, themselves of Palzolithic character. Among the 
animals actually depicted, moreover, the elk and bison 
distinctly belong to the Late Quaternary fauna of both 
regions, and are unknown there to the Neolithic 
deposits. 
In its broader aspects this field of human culture, to 
which, on the European side, the name of Reindeer 
age may still on the whole be applied, is now seen to 
have been very widespread. In Europe itself it per- 
meates a large area—defined by the boundaries of 
glaciation—from Poland, and even a large Russian 
tract, to Bohemia, the upper course of the Danube 
and of the Rhine, to south-western Britain and south- 
eastern Spain.’ Beyond the Mediterranean, moreover, 
it fits on under varying conditions to a parallel: form 
1 This interpretation suggested by me after inspecting the object in 1902 
has been approved by the Abbé Bréuil (Anthropologie, xiii., p. 152) and by 
Prof. Sollas, ‘* Ancient Hunters,” ror5, p. 
2 That of Carasoles del Bosque ; Breuil, 
S€qGQ. 
480. 
Anthropologie, xxvi., 1915, P- 329 
