14 NATURE 
[SEPTEMBER 7, 1916 
of culture, the remains of which are by no means 
confined to the Cis-Saharan zone, where incised figures 
occur of animals like the long-horned buffalo (Bubalus 
antiquus) and others long extinct in that region. This 
southern branch may eventually be found to have a 
large extension. The nearest parallels to the finer 
class of rock-carvings as seen in the Dordogne are, 
in fact, to be found among the more ancient specimens 
of similar work in South Africa, while the rock-paint- 
ings of Spain find their best analogies among the 
Bushmen. 
That there was a considerable amount of circulation, 
indeed—if not of primitive commerce—among the 
peoples of the Reindeer age is shown by the diffusion 
of shell or fossil ornaments derived from the Atlantic, 
the Mediterranean, or from inland geological strata. 
Art itself is less the property of one or another race 
than has sometimes been imagined—indeed, if we com- 
pare those products of the modern carver’s art that 
have most analogy with the horn and bone carvings of 
the Cave men, and rise at times to great excellence 
—as we see them, for instance, in Switzerland or Nor- 
way—they are often the work of races of very different 
physical types. The negroid contributions, at least in 
the southern zone of this Late Quaternary field, must 
not be under-estimated. The early steatopygous 
images—such as some of those of the Balzi Rossi 
caves—may safely be regarded as due to this ethnic 
type, which is also pictorially represented in some of 
the Spanish rock-paintings. 
The nascent flame of primeval culture was thus 
already kindled in that older world, and, so far as our 
present knowledge goes, it was in the south-western 
part of our continent, on either side of the Pyrenees, 
that it shone its brightest. After the great strides in 
human progress already made at that remote epoch, 
it is hard, indeed, to understand what it was that still 
delayed the rise of European civilisation in its higher 
shape. Yet it had to wait for its fulfilment through 
many millennia. The gathering shadows thickened 
and the darkness of a long night fell, not on that 
favoured region alone, but throughout the wide area 
where Reindeer man had ranged. Still the question 
rises—as yet imperfectly answered—were there no relay 
runners to pass on elsewheré the lighted torch? 
Something, indeed, has been recently done towards 
bridging over the ‘“thiatus’’ that formerly separated 
the Neolithic from the Palzolithic age—the yawning 
gulf between two worlds of human existence. The 
Azilian—a later decadent outgrowth of the preceding 
culture—which is now seen partially to fill the lacuna, 
seems to be in some respects an impoverished survival 
of the Aurignacian.* The existence of this phase was 
first established by the long and patient investigations 
of Piette in the stratified deposits of the Cave of Mas 
d’Azil in the Ariége, from which it derives its name, 
and it has been proved by recent discoveries to have 
had a wide extension. It affords evidence of a milder 
and moister climate—well illustrated by the abundance 
of the little wood snail (Helix nemoralis), and the in- 
creasing tendency of the reindeer to die out in the 
southern parts of the area, so that in the fabric of the 
characteristic harpoons deer-horns are used as substi- 
tutes. Artistic designs now fail us, but the polychrome 
technique of the preceding age still survives in certain 
schematic and geometric figures, and in curious 
coloured signs on pebbles. These last first came to 
light in the Cave of Mas d’Azil, but they have now 
been found to recur much further afield in a similar 
association in grottoes from the neighbourhood of 
Basel to that of Salamanca. 
of these signs that the lively imagination of Piette saw 
in them the actual characters of a primeval alphabet! 
“3 Breuil, ‘Congr. Préhist.” Geneva, 1912, p. 216. 
NO. 2445, VOL. 98] 
So like letters are some . 
The little flakes with a worked edge often known as 
“pygmy flints,’’ which were most of them designed 
for insertion into bone or horn harpoons, like some 
Neolithic examples, are very characteristic of this 
stratum, which is widely diffused in France and else- 
where under the misleading name of ‘‘ Tardenoisian.”’ 
At Ofnet, in Bavaria, it is associated with a ceremonial 
skull burial showing the co-existence at that spot of 
brachycephalic and dolichocephalic types, both of a 
new character. In Britain, as we know, this Azilian, 
or a closely allied phase, is traceable as far north as 
the Oban Caves. 
What, however, is of special interest is the exist- 
ence of a northern parallel to this cultural phase, first 
ascertained by the Danish investigator, Dr. Sarauw, 
in the lake station of Maglemose, near the west coast 
of Zealand. Here bone harpoons of the Azilian. type 
occur, with bone and horn implements showing geo- 
metrical and rude animal engravings of a character 
divergent from the Magdalenian tradition. The settle-_ 
ment took place when what is now the Baltic was still 
the great ‘‘ Ancylus Lake,”’ and the waters of the North 
Sea had not yet burst into it. It belongs to the period 
of the Danish pine and birch woods, and is shown 
to be anterior to the earliest shell mounds of the 
Kitchen-midden people, when the pine and the birch 
had given place to the oak. Similar deposits extend 
to Sweden and Norway, and to the Baltic Provinces 
as far as the Gulf of Finland. The parallel relation- 
ship of this culture is clear, and its remains are often 
accompanied with the characteristic ‘‘pygmy’’ flints. 
Breuil, however,* while admitting the late Falzolithic 
character of this northern branch, would bring it into 
relation with a vast Siberian and Altaic province, dis- 
tinguished by the widespread existence of rock-carv- 
ings of animals. It is interesting to note that a rock- 
engraving of a reindeer, very well stylised, from the 
Trondhjem Fjord, which has been referred to the 
Maglemosian phase, preserves the simple profile ren- 
dering—two legs only being visible—of Early Aurig- 
nacian tradition. 
It is a commonplace of archeology that the culture 
of the Neolithic peoples throughout a large part of 
Central, Northern, and Western Europe—like the 
newly domesticated species possessed by them—is 
Eurasiatic in type. So, too, in southern Greece and 
the Aigean world we meet with a form of Neolithic’ 
culture which must be essentially regarded as a pro- 
longation of that of Asia Minor. 
It is clear that it is on chis Neolithic foundation 
that our later civilisation immediately stands. But in 
the constant chain of actions and reactions by which 
the history of mankind is bound together—short of the 
extinction of all concerned, a hypothesis in this case 
excluded—it is equally certain that no great human 
achievement is without its continuous effect. The 
more we realise the substantial amount of progress of 
the men of the Late Quaternary age in arts and crafts 
and ideas, the more difficult it is to avoid the conclu- 
sion that somewhere ‘‘at the back of behind "—it may 
be by more than one route and on more than one con- 
tinent, in Asia as well as Africa—actual links of con- 
nection may eventually come to light. 
Of the origins of our complex European culture this 
much at least, can be confidently stated: the earliest 
extraneous sources on which it drew lay respectively 
in two directions—in the Valley of the Nile on one 
side and in that of the Euphrates on the other. 
Until within recent years it seemed almost a point 
of honour for classical scholars to regard Hellenic 
civilisation as a wonder-child, sprung, like Athena her- 
4 “Les subdivisions du paléolithique supérieur et leur signification.” 
Congrés intern. d' Anthrop. et d Archéol. préhist., X1V™ Sess., |Généve, 
1912, pp. 16s, 238. 
