ANCIENT CARVED IVORIES 5 



dwellers. This was a large segment of a mammoth tusk 

 bearing two deep and broad grooves. The piece of ivory 

 measured 40 cm. in length and from 15 cm. to 20 cm. in 

 width, and the grooves, evidently made by a graving tool, 

 marked out a part of it 35 cm. long and from 3 to 4 cm. 

 wide, running to a point at the end. The grooves were so 

 deep, that only a slight shock would have been needed to 

 detach the piece within them and thus secure a fine ivory 

 poignard. This precious relic of ivory working in the far 

 distant past was found by M. Galou under a loosened rock 

 at the entrance of the Gorge d'Enfer, and Doctor Capitan 

 conjectures that the carver may have been surprised by the 

 avalanche that brought down the rock, and in his haste to 

 escape, have cast away his nearly completed work.* It is 

 assigned to the so-called Magdalenian period, that of the 

 cave dwellers of La Madeleine. 



Doctor Capitan believes that all this prehistoric ivory work 

 was done either in the manner above indicated, or by thin- 

 ning the piece of ivory by means of repeated percussion. 

 He states that the saw does not seem to have been used at 

 this early date, appearing only in the later reindeer period. 



A prehistoric ivory carving of surpassing interest and im- 

 portance is the headless and imperfect figure of a woman 

 carved out of mammoth ivory, and found in the Grotto du 

 Pape, Brassempouy (Dept. Landes), France; this has been 

 called the "Venus of Brassempouy." It accentuated rudely, 

 and even coarsely, the female torso, and may have had some 

 connection with a worship of the reproductive powers of 

 nature.f Another female figure, with a similarly exagger- 

 ated outline, lying on the ground beneath a reindeer, is 



*Congres International d' Anthropologic et d'Archeologie Prehistoriques; Compte Rendu 

 de la treizifeme session, Monaco, 1906, Vol. I, pp. 404, 405, Monaco, 1907. This ivory 

 has never been published. 



fGeorge Grant McCurdy, "Recent discoveries bearing on the antiquity of man in 

 Europe," in Smithsonian Institution, Annual Report for 1909, pp. 531-583; see pp. 539-540. 



