8 president's address. 



Following in the footsteps of Lartet and after him Eivi^re and Piette, 

 Professors Cartailhac, Capitan, and Boule, the Abb6 Breuil, Dr. 

 Obermeier and their fellow investigators have revolutionised our know- 

 ledge 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 Senor de Sautuola — or rather his little daughter — as long 

 ago as 1878, that it was not till after it had been corroborated by 

 repeated finds on the French side of the Pyrenees — not, indeed, till the 

 beginning of the present century — that the Palaeolithic Age of these 

 rock paintings was generally recognised. In their most developed 

 stage, as illustrated by the bulk of the figures in the Cave of Altamira 

 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 technical 

 resource. Apart from the charcoal used in certain 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 gi'adations, to paler nuances, obtained by scraping and wash- 

 ing. 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 monuments of Egypt or Chaldaea ! 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. I 



