Magdalenian harpoon head, 4¾ inches long, made from an antler and discovered in the rock shelter of La Madeleine, where engraved art of early man—a picture of a mammoth—was first found, by Lartet, in 1864. (After Lartet and Christy, 1875.)
The first illustration of a blade, probably Magdalenian. (After Mercati, 1717.)
Weapons and Tools—from Hand Ax to Arrowhead
One of the many mysteries of prehistory is who invented the bow and arrow. The smaller Solutrean points argue that their makers used a bow and invented this primitive but effective machine. But since the bow was made of wood, it has not been preserved in the caves and terraces that spared the bone spear-throwers of the Magdalenians and the flint projectiles; so for evidence we must fall back on the paintings of primitive man. We find the spear-thrower portrayed in South Africa but not in Europe. The newer weapon, the bow, is on the walls of rock shelters in southern and eastern Spain. At first these paintings were thought to be neolithic. Later they were credited to the Magdalenians, in spite of the fact that the use of the human form and the bizarre and almost humorous caricature contrast with the subjects and the style of Magdalenian art. Now they are generally credited to the Capsians, a people from northern Africa. The paintings resemble prehistoric work from Rhodesia and the Tassili Mountains of southern Algeria, and also the historic and protohistoric designs of the Bushmen (see illustrations, pages [111] and [112]).
Our first machine, the spear-thrower, as used by early man and certain later peoples in the New World as well as the Old. An invention difficult to conceive and effect, it marked an important step forward in man’s use of his brain and his body. In effect, it extended the length of the human arm by at least two feet and therefore its power by perhaps 50 per cent. (After Harrington, 1933.)
THE FIRST PAINTINGS
Although prehistoric engravings of animal figures on bone had been discovered in European caves as early as about 1840, and engravings on cave walls in the sixties, it was not till 1878 that paintings were found. The discoverer was a child. While Marcelino de Sautuola was searching among the debris on the floor of the cave of Altamira, near Santander, in Spain, he heard his little daughter cry “Toros! Toros!” and saw her point to polychrome paintings of bison and other animals on the roof of the cave. One of them appears at the top of this page. The other painting shown is from the French cave of Font-de-Gaume. These two caverns contain the finest lineal art of early man, chiefly Magdalenian. (The bison after Cartailhac and Breuil, 1906; the deer after Capitan, Breuil, and Peyroni, 1910.)