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

by Henry Fairfield Osborn

Fig. 151. Implements of industrial use, of the chase, and of fishing; also suitable for fine engraving and etching on stone or bone. Evolution of the Aurignacian pointe with abrupt retouch along one edge, from the base to the summit of the Aurignacian. After Breuil. About one-third actual size. 1-4. Primitive curved points from the Abri Audit, Dordogne. 5. More evolved curved point from Gargas. 6, 7. Points from Chatelperron, at the base of the middle Aurignacian. 11-28. Microlithic points from La Gravette and Font Robert. The form of 28 suggests that of the pointe à cran or 'shouldered point' characteristic of the late Solutrean.

Decorative art has now become a passion, and graving-tools of great variety of shape, curved, straight, convex, or concave, diversified both in size and in style of technique, are very numerous. We may imagine that the long periods of cold and inclement weather were employed in these occupations. The use of the reindeer horn is developing, and the decoration of the bone with very fine lines drawn by the microlithic tools is at times very remarkable. Here appear the earliest examples of the so-called bâton de commandement, which is supposed to have served as a ceremonial staff or wand; it is made of the reindeer antler with a great hole bored at the point where the brow tine unites with the main beam; some of these bâtons are ornamented with rude engravings, but not as yet with sculpture.

Fig. 152. Prototypes of the Solutrean laurel-leaf point, probably an implement of war or the chase. After Breuil. Large symmetrical flakes chipped over the entire surface. 1, 2. Late Aurignacian types from Font Robert. 3, 4, 5. Points from the Proto-Solutrean layer of the Grotte du Trilobite.

Strong and very sharp graving-tools were also needed for the sculpture out of ivory and soapstone of such human figures and figurines as the statuettes found in the Grottes de Grimaldi and at Willendorf and still more powerful tools for such work as the large stone bas-reliefs of Laussel. At this time the Crô-Magnons were also fashioning stronger tools for the engraving of animals in stone, for shallow forms of bas-relief on the walls of the caves, and for other animal outlines. The most evolved animal figures of this period arouse the thought of Magdalenian art in its beginnings.

As this industrial evolution widens it is apparent that we witness not the local evolution of a single people but rather the influence and collaboration of numerous colonies reacting more or less one upon the other and spreading their inventions and discoveries. These people were essentially nomadic and no doubt carried the latest types of implements from point to point or bartered them in trade. Thus there is not only a definite succession in such places as Dordogne, but in more remote regions the form of the implements may take on some important differences.[(33)] There are also other localities where the industry seems for a while to be suspended; thus in the Cantabrian Mountains of Spain we find only the early and the late Aurignacian.

Stations similar in culture to those of Dordogne extend northward into Germany and Belgium and eastward into Austria and Poland. Thus the characteristic flint spear heads, known as the pointe à soie and pointe à cran extend from Laussel along the Vézère to Willendorf, in Austria; and the female figures of Baoussé-Roussé (Grimaldi) and of Willendorf represent the same stage of evolution as the large stone bas-relief of Laussel. Again, we observe some relations between the Aurignacian cultures of Austria and of the Italian peninsula, such as the pointe à cran, derived from the gravette and found both in various stations of northern Italy and at Willendorf. In western Russia the Aurignacian station of Mezine, Chernigov, shows clearly the types of the superior Aurignacian in the graving of bone and ivory, in the small bâtons recalling those of Spy, in Belgium, and of Brassempouy, in southwestern France, in the large bone piercers perforated at the head, suggesting the primitive needles from the shelter of Blanchard, and in the degenerate statuettes resembling the type of Brassempouy.

Distribution of the Aurignacian Industry

When the general geographic distribution of the Aurignacian (Fig. 153) is compared with that of the Mousterian (Fig. 125) it is surprising to find how many of the stations are identical; it would appear as if the Crô-Magnons had driven the Neanderthals from their principal stations over all of western Europe for the pursuit of their own industries and of the chase. We have already spoken of the invasion of the Mousterian stations along the Riviera, in the Pyrenees, in the Cantabrian Alps, and along the Dordogne and the Somme; this occupation also extends along the Meuse, the Rhine, and the Danube; but, whereas there are only six stations in all Germany of unquestioned Mousterian age, there are more than double that number in Aurignacian times. The Crô-Magnons entered the grottos of Sirgenstein and Räuberhöhle, near the headwaters of the Danube; northwest of Sirgenstein they established the open 'loess' station of Achenheim, west of Strasburg; in the lower layers of the 'newer loess' was also the station of Völklinshofen, south of Achenheim; along the middle Rhine were the 'loess' stations of Rhens and Metternich, and to the far north, close to the borders of the Scandinavian glacier, was the somewhat doubtful Aurignacian station of Thiede. The Crô-Magnon men entered the Sirgenstein grotto and scattered the implements of their culture above the 'lower rodent layer,' composed of the Obi lemming, and also left remains of the woolly rhinoceros, the woolly mammoth, the stag, and the reindeer on the floor of the cavern. The Upper Aurignacian also extends down the Danube as far as Willendorf, and possibly to Brünn, Moravia, which last, however, may be of Solutrean age. Altogether between seventeen and twenty Aurignacian stations have been discovered in the region north of the Danube and along the Rhine.