SECRETS OF EARTH AND SEA 



CHAPTER I 

 THE EARLIEST PICTURE IN THE WORLD 



IN Figs, r and 2 on the next page a cylindrical piece 

 of the antler of a red deer is represented of half the 

 natural size. On it are carved by in-sunk lines certain 

 representations of animals. It was found in the cavern of 

 Lortet, near Lourdes, in the department of the Hautes 

 Pyrdn^es, in the south of France, together with many other 

 remains of prehistoric man. This cavern was excavated 

 and all its contents of human origin carefully preserved 

 by M. Edouard Piette in 1873 ^"d the following years. 

 Drawings of this and other remarkable carved pieces of 

 bone and antler, many in the form of harpoon heads, and 

 of small chipped flint implements, all found in this cave, 

 were published by him.^ He excavated also several other 

 caverns with great care, and his collections were be- 

 queathed by him on his death to the great Museum of 

 National Archaeology at St. Germain, near Paris, where I 

 have had the advantage of studying them. 



The age assigned to this carving is that called by Piette 



' " L'Age du Renne," a posthumous work, with one hundred coloured 

 quarto plates of objects in the Piette collection, is published by Masson, of 

 Paris, and gives the complete list of Piette's numerous earlier papers, issued 

 as his excavations proceeded. 



I 



