“VENUS” FIGURINE FROM WILLENDORF
Some of the movable art is not done on tools. The most remarkable examples of this class are little figures of women. These women seem to be pregnant, and their most female characteristics are much emphasized. It is thought that these “Venus” or “Mother-goddess” figurines may be meant to show the great forces of nature—fertility and the birth of life.
CAVE PAINTINGS
In the paintings on walls and ceilings of caves we have some examples that compare with the best art of any time. The subjects were usually animals, the great cold-weather beasts of the end of the Ice Age: the mammoth, the wooly rhinoceros, the bison, the reindeer, the wild horse, the bear, the wild boar, and wild cattle. As in the movable art, there are different styles in the cave art. The really great cave art is pretty well restricted to southern France and Cantabrian (northwestern) Spain.
There are several interesting things about the “Franco-Cantabrian” cave art. It was done deep down in the darkest and most dangerous parts of the caves, although the men lived only in the openings of caves. If you think what they must have had for lights—crude lamps of hollowed stone have been found, which must have burned some kind of oil or grease, with a matted hair or fiber wick—and of the animals that may have lurked in the caves, you’ll understand the part about danger. Then, too, we’re sure the pictures these people painted were not simply to be looked at and admired, for they painted one picture right over other pictures which had been done earlier. Clearly, it was the act of painting that counted. The painter had to go way down into the most mysterious depths of the earth and create an animal in paint. Possibly he believed that by doing this he gained some sort of magic power over the same kind of animal when he hunted it in the open air. It certainly doesn’t look as if he cared very much about the picture he painted—as a finished product to be admired—for he or somebody else soon went down and painted another animal right over the one he had done.
The cave art of the Franco-Cantabrian style is one of the great artistic achievements of all time. The subjects drawn are almost always the larger animals of the time: the bison, wild cattle and horses, the wooly rhinoceros, the mammoth, the wild boar, and the bear. In some of the best examples, the beasts are drawn in full color and the paintings are remarkably alive and charged with energy. They come from the hands of men who knew the great animals well—knew the feel of their fur, the tremendous drive of their muscles, and the danger one faced when he hunted them.
Another artistic style has been found in eastern Spain. It includes lively drawings, often of people hunting with bow and arrow. The East Spanish art is found on open rock faces and in rock-shelters. It is less spectacular and apparently more recent than the Franco-Cantabrian cave art.
LIFE AT THE END OF THE ICE AGE IN EUROPE
Life in these times was probably as good as a hunter could expect it to be. Game and fish seem to have been plentiful; berries and wild fruits probably were, too. From France to Russia, great pits or piles of animal bones have been found. Some of this killing was done as our Plains Indians killed the buffalo—by stampeding them over steep river banks or cliffs. There were also good tools for hunting, however. In western Europe, people lived in the openings of caves and under overhanging rocks. On the great plains of eastern Europe, very crude huts were being built, half underground. The first part of this time must have been cold, for it was the middle and end phases of the last great glaciation. Northern Europe from Scotland to Scandinavia, northern Germany and Russia, and also the higher mountains to the south, were certainly covered with ice. But people had fire, and the needles and tools that were used for scraping hides must mean that they wore clothing.
It is clear that men were thinking of a great variety of things beside the tools that helped them get food and shelter. Such burials as we find have more grave-gifts than before. Beads and ornaments and often flint, bone, or antler tools are included in the grave, and sometimes the body is sprinkled with red ochre. Red is the color of blood, which means life, and of fire, which means heat. Professor Childe wonders if the red ochre was a pathetic attempt at magic—to give back to the body the heat that had gone from it. But pathetic or not, it is sure proof that these people were already moved by death as men still are moved by it.