A STUDY OF PREHISTORIC ANTHROPOLOGY. 617 



There has also been found an instrument made of reindeer horn, the 

 use of which is as yet unknown. It has been named " Baton (or stick) 

 de Commandement," and is supposed to have been some sort of emblem 

 of authority. Their leugth was such as to require the principal part of 

 a reindeer horn, and from two to three holes about three-fourths of an 

 inch in diameter were drilled through sideways.* 



These artistic manifestations are intended not alone for utility, as in 

 the decoration of implements, weapons, and utensils, but they display 

 art for its own sake. Sketches have been discovered which, like those 

 of many artists of the present day, appear to have been purely for 

 l^ractice or for innate 1 ove of the work.t They are mere essays, attempts 

 in which the artists have made various efltbrts on the same piece with- 

 out any attempted relation one to the other. The piece known as the 

 combat of reindeer, live animals. Marquis de Vibraye's collection, is 

 an example. Another is a sketch of eight animals, horses and deer, 

 from the Cavern of Lartet, Judge Piette's collection. These are each 

 on one piece ; the lines run into each other. The animals represented 

 are without relation to each other. They have even been done from dif- 

 ferent planes, so that some are upside down. Some are complete ; 

 others incomplete. The author of these sketches was only utilizing his 

 material, as does the artist of to-day when he puts many studies on 

 the same canvas. The mammoth engraved on a laminated piece of 

 his own tusk, and the bear on a flat pebble, are purely artistic, are 

 done solely for their art ; while the sculpture of the mammoth and 

 reindeer, decoration of the handles of daggers and poiguards are such 

 utilization as put one in remembrance of like work done by Benvenuto 

 Cellini. Similar illustrations are found in the various ^^ Batons de Com- 

 mandementP^ 



The excellent and artistic work shown in these engravings and sculp- 

 tures is itself strange enough. But the really wonderful and incompre- 

 hensible thing concerning them and the civilization belonging to this 

 epoch is that at the close of the period the entire culture painted on its 

 existence disappeared. It passed away and left no trace. Whatever 

 may be the truth concerning this in other parts of the world, it appears 

 to be certain in its relation to western Europe. This leads one to speak 

 of the close of this period, and what has been called by some of the 

 archaeologists the hiatus; that is, the gap between that and the suc- 

 ceeding epoch or period. 



. I have already shown how the human occupation during the paleo- 

 lithic period was spread generally over western Europe, but whether 

 the subdivision or epochs according to the classification of de Mortillet 

 extended to and were developed in other countries than France has not 

 been determined, and there were persons of both ways of thinking. On 

 one proposition, however, the archieologists seem to be agreed, that there 

 were subdivisions in the paleolithic period, and they are to be traced 

 and recognized by the differences in the human industry according to 

 * Plate xciii, Fig. 2, and Plate xciv, Figs. 1, 3. t Plate xciv, Fig. 4. 



