had been pierced in it. Firm hatched lines indicate the shadows; a distinct step in advance of the preceding

FIG. 130. REINDEER OF THE CAVE OF THAYNGEN. (After Prof. Mark.)

figures, which were merely outlined.

The cave of Duruthy, first inhabited in the reindeer age, and during its artistic period, was used as a place of burial at a

time
very near the
neolithic age. More
than thirty skeletons
have been discovered
in the
upper and dis-
turbed part of the
Beneath the

cave.

hearth which lies below these graves, a human skull and bones were found in company with carved and engraved teeth of the lion and bear. One of the teeth bears on one side the image of a fish, and on the other, ornamental lines and a barbed arrow.

Here we again meet with the skill, the methods, and even the details of ornament of the pri

mitive artists of Périgord. The engravings, executed by Basque or Béarnese artists, nevertheless bear their distinctive marks, and the barbed arrows .serve them for a signature. Instead of being drawn upon reindeer bones, as

EARLY ENGRAVINGS.

293

at Aurignac, the figures are cut upon bears' teeth. Barbed arrows, symmetrically disposed, and furnished with a varying number of barbs, which constitute their principal ornament, have not, to my knowledge, hitherto been observed upon the figured articles of Périgord and the Pyrenees.1

The artists who engraved these drawings were bear hunters, as at Aurignac, and not reindeer hunters. The seal engraved upon a bear's tooth seems to show that one of these artists, before settling in the neighbourhood of Gave, had dwelt upon or had visited the sea-coast, for he had certainly seen seals.

Sculpture itself has a very remote origin; it was born along with the arts of design proper, in the age of carved flint instruments; for to fashion rude matter into an instrument of daily use is as truly sculpture as the carving of a priceless work of art.

Switzerland, as well as France, can boast of antediluvian artists, some of whom give proofs of great skill. Such, for example, was the man who drew with a flint style upon a piece of reindeer horn the picture of a reindeer grazing, which was certainly under his eyes (fig. 130). M. Hain has justly called attention to the accuracy and even the boldness of this prehistoric drawing. It is vident, he says, that this was not the artist's first attempt, and his work will bear comparison with that of his rivals of Languedoc and Périgord. Professor Hain, however, is of opinion that the head of the animal is too large and the ears too small. He is inclined to think that these two peculiarities are due to the poverty of the pasturage in the districts inhabited by the animal, and, indeed, the theory of the learned professor of Zurich is further confirmed by the hollow belly of the poor brute, which shows that the cravings of its appetite were not always satisfied, &c.

This remarkable specimen found in the cave of Thayn

Louis Lartet ard Chat in Dupare, Une sépulture des anciens troglodytes des Pyrénées, superposée à un foyer contenant des débris humains associés à des úents sculptées de lion et d'ours. Paris, 1864.

gen, near Schaffhausen, proves two facts; first, the certainty of the long-disputed existence of the reindeer in Switzerland in prehistoric times; secondly, the flourishing condition of the arts of design in the same country and at the same epoch. Besides the representation of the reindeer found in the cave of Kesslerloch, a number of not less successful drawings and carvings were likewise discovered there, proving that these Swiss artists were possessed of a talent in no way inferior to that of the reindeer hunters of Périgord and the Pyrenees. Among the carvings we will only cite a head of a horse, and a head of the ovibos (fig. 131), impossible to be mistaken, and among the engravings on bone, the horse (fig. 132), the pig, the bear, and the fox, whose form and attitudes are given with a

fidelity which leaves little to be desired.1 Yet the inhabitants of the cave of Kesslerloch lived at a far earlier period than that in which the lake cities were built, and no trace of pottery or of tissues have been found among them. Domestic animals, including the dog, are also entirely absent.

It is a remarkable fact that the bone caves of England are completely destitute of any specimens of drawing or carving, although fish-hooks, pins, and even needles skilfully wrought in bone have been found in several of those of the reindeer age. The same artistic inferiority exists among the Belgian troglodytes, without even excepting those of the cave of Chaleux, emphatically styled a little

'See in the Matériaux, vol. xi. 1876, p. 102, and the following figures, 40, 43, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, and 58, of which we here reproduce the most important.

SPECIMENS OF EARLY CARVING.

295

quaternary Pompeii. It is to them, however, that we owe one of the most ancient specimens of the plastic art. This is a small wooden figure,' very rudely carved, a sort

FIG. 132. HORSE ENGRAVED IN OUTLINE UPON REINDEER HORN.
(Wand of office.)

of rough sketch, which denotes the infancy of art, and

A drawing engraved upon reindeer horn, but hard to decipher,

was found with this specimen at Pont-à-Lesse.

which dates from its very earliest dawn, since the stratum where it was found is one of the upper layers of the mammoth.1

I am only acquainted with one specimen of Scandinavian art in prehistoric time, a drawing representing a doe, engraved with a flint style upon a carved piece of stag's horn.2

It is yet an open question whether the strange carvings of ships with their crews, which are to be seen on the rocks of Sweden and Norway, should be attributed to the neolithic period or to the age of bronze. M. G. Brunius, who has given special attention to this subject, is of the former opinion, while others, on the other hand, deny them any antiquity.

A

ወ/

FIG. 133. FIGURE OF A NAKED MAN BETWEEN TWO HORSES' HEADS.
(After Ed. Lartet and Christy.)

It is a singular fact that while these prehistoric artists render with delightful simplicity, and at the same time with perfect truth, the natural scenes they had before their eyes, such as a reindeer fight or the chase of the aurochs; while they represented in outline, with a skill unattainable by those of us who have not learnt to draw, the figure of the animals which lived at that remote epoch, they are embarrassed, constrained, and unskilful in their efforts to reproduce the human form. These primitive drawings resemble those of the pretended Book of the Savages,' which really are the work of clever scholars, destined perhaps to become great masters at some future time.

1 The fossil fauna of this stratum belongs to the transition period between the ages of the mammoth and reindeer.

2 Nilsson's Primitive Inhabitants of Scandinavia, plate xv. figs. 258 and 259.