The deposit of Mas d’Azil containing the coloured pebbles belongs already to the modern world, the fauna associated with it all belonging to existing species inhabiting the temperate regions. The rude culture then exhibited heralds the beginning of the Neolithic Period. This later Stone Age is not characterized by any of the artistic genius displayed by the men of the Reindeer Period. Figured representations are now rare. The caves, moreover, which preserved the earlier records, were now used more for sepulture than habitation. Yet the analogy of all primitive races at the present day shows that it would be a mistake to suppose that, though the [act] may have been rude, the practice of picture-writing was not still universally in vogue throughout the European area. We have to bear in mind how many of such records are consigned to perishable materials—such as bark or hides, or in the case of tattooing the human body itself.
During the later prehistoric times, and notably during the Early Metal Age, many abiding records, in the shape of rock-sculptures, paintings, and engravings, and at times graffiti on pottery, are found diffused throughout the whole of our Continent and the adjoining Mediterranean area; and in outlying regions, such as Lapland, the practice of picture-writing can be traced down to modern times.
Fig. 9.
Though a large amount of isolated materials exists on this subject, the evidence, so far as I am aware, has never been put together in a systematic manner. Yet it seems possible that, by means of a due co-ordination of the materials and the application of the comparative method, the European area may eventually be divided into distinct zones or provinces, each characterized [by its certain typical pictographic feature]. Primitive lines of intercommunication may with great probability be made out, and evidences of early racial extension come to light by this method of investigation.
It is interesting to observe that it is in the extreme north of Europe, where the conditions most approach those of the Reindeer Period, that purely pictographic methods have remained the longest. The Lapp troll drums, used as a means of divination by the native shamans, show a variety of linear figures and symbols which had a traditional interpretation. Thus in the simple example given in [Fig. 9], taken from Scheffer’s Lapponia,[19] we see, in the upper compartment, according to the interpretation preserved by Scheffer, four Lapp gods, with rayed heads, one of them identified with the Norsk Thor, above which are the crescent moon, twelve stars, indicated by crossed lines, and seven flying birds—resembling the simplification of the same figures seen in the Cretan linear script.
On another base are three more sacred figures with rayed heads, signifying Christ and two apostles, taken into the Lapp Pantheon at a somewhat lower level. The centre of this compartment is occupied by the sun, and about the field are depicted a reindeer, wolf, bear, ox, fox, squirrel, and snake. To the right are three wavy lines representing a lake and exactly reproducing the Egyptian hieroglyph of ‘water’.
[Fig. 10] shows a more elaborate example,[20] of which the interpretation has not been supplied. The variation of gesture displayed, somewhat rudely it is true, by the various figures on this drum illustrates the intimate and ever-recurring connexion between pictography and gesture-language.
These Lapp troll drums must have been generally in use till the end of the seventeenth century. It was not, indeed, till the middle of the succeeding century that Christianity took a real hold on the population. That there has been a considerable survival of surreptitious heathenism among the Lapps, I myself was able to ascertain during two journeys undertaken with that object through Finnish and Russian Lapland in 1874, and again in 1876. It was specially interesting to observe that some of the traditional figures seen on the old troll drums are still engraved on the reindeer-horn spoons of that region.