Fig. 33.—Fuegian Harpoon.
of which one, now in the museum of the University of Toronto, shown in Fig. 26, illustrates the probable design of the curved blades. In the caves of the Dordogne and Garonne valleys repeated discoveries of bone needles, in association with the barbed fish-spear, have been noted. They are objects of delicate manipulation, the value of which is proved by the occurrence of examples accidentally broken, and drilled with a new eye. The caves of the Dordogne pertained, even in the remote era of the mammoth or reindeer periods, to a race of inland hunters and fishermen to whom such a harpoon would have been cumbrous, if not wholly unsuited to their requirements. But the Kent’s Hole Troglodyte had probably more formidable prey to encounter, and so adapted the implements of the chase to his special requirements. Of the bilateral barbed fish-spear, a good, though imperfect example is shown, the natural size, in Fig. 32, from Laugerie Basse, in the Dordogne. Another, Fig. 34, was found imbedded in the red cave-earth of Kent’s Cavern, underneath a bed of black earth, containing flint-flakes and bones of extinct mammals, over which the stalagmitic flooring had accumulated to a thickness of a foot and a half. Similar implements have been recovered from other Dordogne Caves. Fig. 35, from La Madelaine, is a variation of the latter type, in which the barbs are disposed alternately on either side.
Fig. 34.—Fish-spear, Kent’s Cavern.
Fig. 35.—Fish-spear with bilateral barbs, La Madelaine.
Fig. 36.—Fish-spear with unilateral barbs, La Madelaine.
It is alike interesting and highly suggestive of the characteristics of man as a rational being, thus to find his ingenuity, when stimulated by similar necessities, begetting closely analogous results in ages separated by intervals so vast that we vainly strive to measure them by any standards of historical chronology. But the ingenuity manifested in the construction of his fishing and hunting gear very inadequately reveals to us the aptitudes of the men of the drift or the cave periods. In those remote epochs, as now, man was an intelligent being, gratifying his taste in many ways by works often involving great labour, and leading to no other practical results than many labours of the carver and house-decorator, the painter, sculptor, and engraver of our own day. Among the works of art, for example, of the cave-men of the Dordogne, contemporary with the mammoth and the reindeer of Central France, various incised drawings of animals, executed both on bone and slate, apparently with a flint stylus or graver, have excited an unusual interest. They include representations of the fossil horse, as on a carved baton, or mace, Fig. 37; of the reindeer, in groups, and engaged in combat; of the ox, fish of different kinds, flowers, ornamental patterns, and some ruder attempts at the human form. Carvings in bone and ivory illustrate the same ingenious mimetic art. But the most remarkable of all is the portraiture of the mammoth, Fig. 38, outlined on a plate of ivory, and to all appearance drawn from the life. It represents the extinct elephant, sketched with great freedom and even artistic skill; and not only compares favourably with the best specimens of modern savage delineation, but exhibits so much freedom of handling as to look more like the sketch of an artist skilled in the use of his pencil. I can recall no example of savage art exhibiting such freedom; and none but an experienced draughtsman could execute with pencil or etching-needle anything approaching to the expression and character given by means of a few lines, executed with no laboured effort, but evidently dashed off by one who had full confidence in his powers.
