September 22, 1916] 



SCIENCE 



407 



acter had imposed themselves on a hetero- 

 geneous population. That there was a con- 

 siderable 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 de- 

 rived 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 — in- 

 deed, if we compare 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 excel- 

 lence — as we see them, for instance, in 

 Switzerland or Norway — they are often 

 the work of races of very different physical 

 types. The negroid contributions, at least 

 in the southern zone of this Late Quater- 

 nary field, must not be underestimated. 

 The early steatopygous images — such as 

 some of these of the Balzi Rossi caves — ■ 

 may safely be regarded as due to this eth- 

 nic type, which is also pictorially repre- 

 sented in some of the Spanish rock-paint- 

 ings. 



The nascent flame of primeval culture 

 was thus already kindled in that older 

 world, and, so far as our present knowl- 

 edge goes, it was in the southwestern part 

 of our continent, on either side of the Pyre- 

 nees, that it shone its brightest. After the 

 great strides in human progress already 

 made at that remote epoch, it is hard, in- 

 deed, to understand what it was that still 

 delayed the rise of European civilization 

 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 

 favored 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 elsewhere the lighted torch? 



Something, indeed, has been recently 



done towards bridging over the "hiatus" 

 that formerly separated the Neolithic from 

 the Palasolithic Age — the yawning gulf be- 

 tween two worlds of human existence. The 

 Azilian — a later decadent outgrowth of the 

 preceding culture — which is now seen par- 

 tially to fill the lacuna, seems to be in some 

 respects an impoverished survival of the 

 Aurignacian. 7 The existence of this phase 

 was first established by the long and pa- 

 tient investigations of Piette in the strati- 

 fied deposits of the cave of Mas dAzil in 

 the Ariege, from which it derives its name, 

 and it has been proved by recent discover- 

 ies 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 

 increasing tendency of the reindeer to die 

 out in the southern parts of the area, so 

 that in the fabric of the characteristic har- 

 poons deer-horns are used as substitutes. 

 Artistic designs now fail us, but the poly- 

 chrome technique of the preceding age 

 still survives in certain schematic and geo- 

 metric figures, and in curious colored signs 

 on pebbles. These last first came to light 

 in the cave of Mas dAzil, but they have 

 now been found to recur much further 

 afield in a similar association in grottoes 

 from the neighborhood of Basel to that of 

 Salamanca. So like letters are some of 

 these signs that the lively imagination of 

 Piette saw in them the actual characters of 

 a primeval alphabet! 



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 Prance 

 and elsewhere under the misleading name 

 of " Tardenoisian. " At Of net, in Bavaria, 

 it is associated with a ceremonial skull 



7 Breuil, "Congr. Pr£hist., " Geneva, 1912, p. 

 216. 



