(57) Schmidt, 1912.1, p. 144, Tafel B.
CHAPTER V
MAGDALENIAN TIMES—CLIMATE AND MAMMALIAN LIFE OF EUROPE—CUSTOMS AND LIFE OF THE CRÔ-MAGNONS; THEIR INDUSTRY IN FLINT AND BONE; THEIR DISTRIBUTION—DEVELOPMENT OF THEIR ART, ENGRAVING, PAINTING, SCULPTURE—ART IN THE CAVERNS—CLIMAX OF THE MAGDALENIAN ART AND INDUSTRY OF THE CRÔ-MAGNONS—APPARENT DECLINE OF THE RACE.
The art and industrial epoch of Magdalenian times is by far the best known and most fascinating of the Old Stone Age. This period forms the culmination of Palæolithic civilization; it marks the highest development of the Crô-Magnon race preceding their sudden decline and disappearance as the dominant type of western Europe. The men of this time are commonly known as the Magdalenians, taking their name from the type station of La Madeleine, as the Greeks in their highest stage took their name from Athens and were known as the Athenians.
We would assign the minimum prehistoric date of 16,000 B. C. for the beginning of the Magdalenian culture, and since we have assigned to the beginning of the Aurignacian culture the date of 25,000 B. C., we should allow 9,000 years for the development of the Aurignacian and Solutrean industries in western Europe.
Introduction. Industrial and Artistic Development
Well as this culture is known, its origin is obscured by the fact that it shows little or no connection with the preceding Solutrean industry, which, as we have noted (p. 331), seems like a technical invasion in the history of western Europe and not an inherent part of the main line of cultural development. Thus Breuil[(1)] observes that it appears as if the fundamental elements of the superior Aurignacian culture had contributed by some unknown route to constitute the kernel of the Magdalenian civilization while the Solutrean episode was going on elsewhere. Again, early Magdalenian art bears striking resemblances to the superior Aurignacian art of the Pyrenees, especially the parietal art, as shown by comparing the Aurignacian engravings of Gargas with the early Magdalenian of Combarelles. Moreover, the same author observes that, if there is one certain prehistoric fact, it is that the first Magdalenian culture was not evolved from the Solutrean—that these Magdalenians were newcomers in western France, as unskilful in the art of shaping and retouching flints as their predecessors were skilled. Ancient Magdalenian hearths are found in many localities close to the levels of the upper Solutrean industries with their shouldered spear points (pointes à cran) and highly perfected flint work. Yet the Magdalenians show a radical departure from the Solutrean type of flint working; both in Dordogne (Laugerie Haute and Laussel) and in Charente (Placard) the splinters of flint are massive, heavy, badly selected, often of poor quality, and poorly retouched, sometimes almost in an Eolithic manner; at the same time, the chance flints, that is, the piercers and graving-tools made from splinters of any accidental shape, are abundant. To these people flint implements appear to be altogether of secondary importance; although the flints are very numerous, they are not finished with any of the perfection of the Solutrean technique; the laurel-leaf spear head and shouldered dart head have disappeared entirely, but a great variety of smaller graving and chasing forms are employed for fashioning the implements of bone and horn. What a contrast to the beautiful flints so finely retouched and of such carefully selected materials, found in the very same stations in middle and upper Solutrean layers!
Thus Breuil, always predisposed to believe in an invasion of culture rather than in an autochthonous development, favors the theory of eastern origin for the Magdalenian industry, because this is not wanting either in Austria or in Poland; two sites of ancient Magdalenian industry have been found by Obermaier in the 'loess' stations of Austria, while in Russian Poland the grotto of Mas̆zycka, near Ojcow, exhibits workings in bone resembling those found at the grotto of Placard, Charente, in the layers directly succeeding the base of the Magdalenian. The fact that near the Ural Mountains there has also been found a peculiar Magdalenian culture, the origin of which is not western, inclines us to believe that the Magdalenian culture extended from the east toward the west, and then, later, toward the Baltic.