24 SECRETS OF EARTH AND SEA 



and of a horse. Between the fore and hind legs of the 

 horse a large elaborately ornate fish is represented, remind- 

 ing us of the fishes between the deer's legs in the Lortet 

 picture. Two other similar fragments of pottery, showing 

 a fish in this position, are recorded by Schliemann. The 

 drawing is conventional and careless. It is of a debased 

 decorative character, and is very far removed from the 

 careful nature-true work of the Lortet cave-man. It is 

 not possible to trace by any known line of transmission 

 a connection between the engraving executed 20,000 years 

 ago in the caves of the Pyrenees and the figures rapidly 

 knocked off in black paint on the Tiryns vase some 17,000 

 years later by the local dealers in cheap pottery. Yet we 

 cannot avoid the suggestion that there is some connection 

 between the two designs. For the Tiryns painting shows 

 not only the curious upright fish between the horse's legs, 

 but also diamond-shaped figures — one marked d in Fig. 6, 

 another near the fish's tail, and another between the man's 

 feet — closely resembling the pair of diamond-shaped 

 figures engraved above the neck of the big stag in the 

 Lortet picture (see Figs. 4 and 5). As we do not know 

 what these diamond-shaped figures or " lozenges " are 

 intended to signify in either case, we do not get, at 

 present, beyond the bald fact of their coincidence. 

 The Tiryns painting also shows (at s in Fig. 6) a 

 "swastika" (see Chapter XVII), and below the man's 

 arm a carelessly drawn bit of the ancient wave-fret or 

 key-pattern. It is, of course, possible that the tradition 

 of an ancient design — even dating so far back in origin 

 as many thousands of years — may be preserved in the 

 use made in the Tiryns decoration of the fish and the 

 diamond-shaped lozenges, though associated with the 

 swastika and the bit of wave-fret which are probably of 

 later origin and are not known in the decorative work of 

 the cavemen. The Mykensean decorative assimilation of 



