Men of the Old Stone Age: Their Environment, Life and Art

by Henry Fairfield Osborn

The Upper Palæolithic covers the greater part of the 'Reindeer Epoch' as it was conceived by Lartet and Christy, who began their systematic study and exploration of the caves of Dordogne in 1863. They were soon joined by Massénat and the Marquis de Vibraye, while Dupont took up the work in Belgium and Piette made the artistic development, especially in the Pyrenees, his chosen field.

Lartet was the first to perceive that the culture of the grotto of Aurignac was quite distinct from that of the Lower Palæolithic in northern France; he also recognized in the shelter of Laugerie Haute, in Dordogne, that there was still another culture, which is now known as the Solutrean; also that in the shelter of Laugerie Basse, in Dordogne, there was yet another industry, that which we now know as Magdalenian. M. de Mortillet was the first to recognize the superiority of the Solutrean industry in stone, which in this period reached its height, and its succession by the Magdalenian period, in which the industry in bone and horn reached a climax; but he failed to recognize the very important preceding position of the Aurignacian, and it was not until 1906 that the clear presentation by Breuil of the entire distinctness of the Aurignacian industry led to the adoption by the Archæological Congress at Geneva of three cultural divisions of the Upper Palæolithic. In the meantime Piette had discovered that in the Mas d'Azil there was a distinct cultural phase, the Azilian, following the Magdalenian, and thus a fourfold division of the Upper Palæolithic (Breuil,[(7)] Obermaier[(8)]) was established, as follows:

AZILIAN.—Industry of the surviving Crô-Magnon and other resident races, and of newly arrived brachycephalic and dolichocephalic races in western Europe; decadent forms of flint and bone workmanship; entire absence of art. Daun stage of Postglacial retreat; Europe with a milder climate and forest and meadow fauna like that of early historic times.

MAGDALENIAN.—Closing stage of the industry and art of the Crô-Magnon race; bone implements highly developed; marked decline in the flint industry. Close of Postglacial Period; climate alternately cold and moist (corresponding with the Bühl and Gschnitz Postglacial advances of the ice in the Alpine region), or cold and arid; Europe covered with the tundra and steppe fauna; life chiefly in the shelters and grottos.

SOLUTREAN.—Culminating stage of flint industry; apparent invasion in eastern Europe of the Brünn (Brüx, Předmost, and [?] Galley Hill) race. The highly developed flint industry of the Solutrean types; art development of the Crô-Magnon race partly suspended. Dry, cold climate; life largely in the open.

AURIGNACIAN.—Appearance of the Crô-Magnon race in southwestern Europe, succeeding the Mousterian industry; art of engraving and drawing and sculpture of human and animal forms developing. Animal life the same as during the fourth glaciation; climate cold and increasingly dry; life chiefly in the grottos and shelters.

The successive phases of development of Upper Palæolithic industry and art have been traced with extraordinary precision in Dordogne, in the Pyrenees, in northern Spain, and along the Danube and upper Rhine by a host of able workers—Cartailhac, Capitan, Peyrony, Bouyssonnie, Lalanne, and others. Breuil has made himself master especially of the Aurignacian and has succeeded Piette as the great historian of Upper Palæolithic art. Obermaier's chief service has been the comparison of the Upper Palæolithic of the Danubian region with that of the Dordogne and northern Spain both in regard to the geologic age and the archæologic and racial succession. The labors of Schmidt along the upper Rhine and Danube have not only brought this region into definite prehistoric relation with the Dordogne and the Pyrenees but have given us by far the clearest evidence of the relation between the human and the industrial development and the succession of climatic phases in northern Europe. Finally, the explorations of Commont along the River Somme have proved that this region, too, was frequented throughout all Upper Palæolithic times, during which it exhibits an industrial development hardly less important than that of the Lower Palæolithic.

There are two very distinct lines of thought among these archæologists: the first is shown in the tendency to regard the industries as mainly autochthonous, or as following local lines of development; the exponents of this theory dwell most strongly on the transitions between the Mousterian, the Aurignacian, and the Solutrean industries. For example, the chief object of Schuchhardt's tour[(9)] through the Palæolithic stations of Dordogne was to observe the transitions from one period to another and the evidence afforded of successive changes of climate. This writer is impressed with the transitions; he notes that the typical curved knives of the Abri Audit furnish a transition from the Mousterian scrapers to the Aurignacian 'points' of La Gravette and La Font Robert; that the Solutrean takes up all the fine threads of the Aurignacian culture and spins them further into Magdalenian times. Thus we get an Aurignacian-Solutrean-Magdalenian industrial cycle which is comparable to the Chellean-Acheulean-Mousterian cycle.

Breuil, on the other hand, from the archæologist's standpoint—because he is not especially interested in the matter of racial development—is a strong exponent of the idea of successive invasions of cultures, either from the south or Mediterranean region or from the central region of Europe, which he calls the 'Atlantic'; and he distinguishes sharply between these two great areas of Upper Palæolithic evolution, namely, the southern and the central European, pointing out that it was only after the establishment of more genial climatic conditions, like those of modern times, that there was an added element of northern or Baltic invasion. Certainly the archæologic testimony strongly supports this culture-invasion hypothesis and it appears to be strengthened in a measure by the study of the human types, although this study has not progressed beyond the stage of hypothesis. When the Upper Palæolithic races have been studied with as close attention as those of the Lower Palæolithic we may be able to establish positively the relation between these human types and the advance of certain cultures and industries.