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

by Henry Fairfield Osborn

A third method of dating the art is still more significant; it is through a similarity in the engravings on bone, found in the old hearths associated with flints, to the mural decorations which are found upon the walls. Thus, at Altamira, engravings on bone associated with Solutrean and Magdalenian flints enabled Alcalde del Rio and Breuil to date the engravings on the limestone walls. Hence, in grottos which have never been closed up and which have been frequented at different times from the Palæolithic to the present epoch one observes that the mural designs in the caverns are invariably accompanied by Upper Palæolithic implements with a similar style of decoration; and this is the case at Font-de-Gaume, Combarelles, Portel, Mas d'Azil, Castillo, Pasiega, and Hornos de la Peña. The bone engravings of the female red deer found at Altamira are identical in their artistic period with those found on the walls of the same grotto. The excavations at Castillo, where numerous shoulder-blades of the deer were found engraved in the same style as those of Altamira, prove that all these engravings and drawings are to be referred to ancient Magdalenian rather than to upper Solutrean times. The engravings upon the walls in the grotto of Hornos de la Peña, of Aurignacian times, are dated through the discovery at the base of the layer of Aurignacian flints of an engraved equine figure similar to the engravings at Altamira.

A fourth method applies to those not infrequent cases when two or three designs are superposed one upon the other, from which it necessarily follows that the underlying designs must antedate those above.

Through the application of these four methods Breuil has succeeded in dating all the steps in the advance of art from Aurignacian into Magdalenian times.

Engraving, Painting, and Sculpture

In the archaic drawings of the caverns of Pair-non-Pair, La Grèze, and La Mouthe most of the animal figures are somewhat heavily and deeply engraved; the proportions are not true; the head is usually too small, with a large, short body which is often lightly modelled, resting on thin extremities. Quadrupeds are frequently represented with but two legs, as in the case of the mammoth. That the powers of observation were only gradually trained is shown by the fact that details which in later drawings are well observed are here overlooked; the profile drawings of animals, with one fore leg and one hind leg represented, are quite like those of children.

Progress toward a true representation of animal form in drawing begins very early; even in middle Aurignacian times primitive drawing and engraving commences to replace sculpture. Both the flint 'burins' and the engravings on the walls of the grottos show that the beginnings of drawing may be traced back to early Aurignacian times. While the Palæolithic artists early in the Aurignacian had obtained a certain facility in plastic work, their drawings, which are solely contours—somewhat imperfect and deeply engraved lines—show a gradual development. The degree of skill attained in late Aurignacian times we know from the engraving of a horse on a stone fragment from Gargas, and from a sketch of the hinder quarter of a horse found in the cave of Hornos de la Peña, which is engraved on the frontal bone of one of the wild horses; the latter is strikingly similar to one of the engravings found at the entrance to the same grotto. The engravings on a slab of slate of the heads of two woolly rhinoceroses[(37)] (Fig. 161) probably belong to the late Aurignacian. Similar attempts are found in the Abri Lacoste. Ornamentation develops in the middle Aurignacian, but retains a simple geometric character.

Fig. 158. Female figurine carved in crystalline talc, discovered at the Grottes de Grimaldi, near Mentone. This figurine, possibly modelled after one of the Grimaldi negroids, represents the enceinte condition common to many of these figures. It is peculiar in showing that abnormal development behind the hips known as steatopygy. After Reinach.

The parietal art on the walls of the caverns, mostly deep engravings, consists of stiff profiles in single lines and in red or black coloring. The animals represented are the ibex, the horse, the bison, and rarely the mammoth. The caves where these are found are Pair-non-Pair, La Grèze, La Mouthe, Bernifal, Font-de-Gaume, Altamira, and Marsoulas. Crucibles for grinding the color are found in the grotto of Marsoulas, the color being made by grinding up the red and yellow oxides of iron.

The development of art during the whole Aurignacian is continuous and is undoubtedly the work of one race; Breuil considers it the work certainly either of the tall Crô-Magnons or of the small Grimaldis; there is, however, no evidence of the survival of the Grimaldi race, and we may safely attribute this entire art development to the Crô-Magnons.