I am anxious to draw attention in this chapter to the painted group of ten human figures lately discovered on a rock shelter at Cogul, near Lerida, in Catalonia, and figured and described in the admirable French journal called "L'Anthropologie." These figures are those of young women dressed in short skirts and curious sleeves, the hair done up in a conical mass rising from the sides to the top of the head. Each figure is about ten inches high. The great interest about these drawings is that they are probably tens of thousands of years old, and present to us the women of the reindeer or late Pleistocene epoch. No other such painting of the women of this period is known, and the astonishing thing is that, though these are by no means fine specimens of prehistoric art, yet there is a definitely modern look about the figures and a freedom of touch about the drawing which makes one think at first that the picture is some modern, hasty but clever sketch in silhouette of a number of short skirted school girls at play. The waist is extremely small and elongated, the skirt, or petticoat, bell shaped, and the whole figure "sinuous." One of the figures appears to have a cloak or jacket, but the breasts and legs are bare.
Fig. 24.—Reproduction of drawings from a rock shelter near Lerida, in Catalonia, representing a group of women clothed in jacket and skirt with "wasp-like" waists. The original figures are ten inches high, and the drawing probably dates from the late Palæolithic period.
Fig. 25.—A further portion of the same group as that shown in Fig. 24. In front is a small deer-like animal.
Some three years ago Sir Arthur Evans discovered in the palace of the ancient Kings of Crete coloured frescoes some 3,500 years old representing in great detail elegant young women with greatly compressed waists, strongly-pronounced bustles, and elaborately ornamented skirts. These Cretan paintings of prehistoric young women, both in costume and pose, are like nothing so much as the portraits of distinguished ladies of the fashionable world of Paris exhibited by the painter, Boldini, in the "Salon." It is remarkable that explorers should have found contemporary paintings of young ladies who lived nearly as long before Cleopatra as she lived before us. And it is still more remarkable that those young ladies were "got up" in the same style, and apparently aimed at much the same effects of line and movement, as those which have become the latest fashion in Paris, and may be described as sinuous and serpentine. Not only is that the case, but it is evident that the painter of Knossos, the Minotaur city, and M. Boldini have experienced the same artistic impression, and have presented in their pictures the same significance of pose and the same form, from the tip of the nose to the ends of the fingers and the points of the toes—thus revealing a sympathy reaching across many ages. It seems to me that the same artistic impression is to be detected in the still earlier paintings of the wasp-waisted little ladies of the Cogul rock-shelter in Catalonia. We find here the same sinuous figure with exaggeratedly compressed waist, prominent bosom, and emphasised haunches. But it is many, perhaps forty, thousands years earlier! One is led to wonder whether this type of human female—to-day expressed with such masterly skill by Boldini—may not be at the back of the mind of a portion of the human race—that which populated what are now the shores of the Mediterranean, and probably came there travelling northwards from the centre of Africa. Possibly they brought with them that tendency to, and admiration for, megalopygy which is evidenced by the makers of the earliest known palæolithic cave sculptures (the Aurignacians), and has persisted in some degree ever since in Europe—a tendency and a taste which are on the one hand totally absent in the East and Far East (Japan), and on the other hand have a strong development in the modern Bushmen (and the related Hottentots), an African race, and like the Spanish cave-men, rock painters.
Plate VIII.—Votary or priestess of the goddess to whom snakes were sacred. The original is a statuette in faïence, ten inches high, and was discovered by Sir Arthur Evans in the palace at Knossos in Crete. It dates from 1600 b.c.
I am able to reproduce here (Plates VIII and IX), through the kindness of Sir Arthur Evans and Dr. Hogarth, the keeper of the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford, two very interesting drawings—showing certain features in the dress of women in the prehistoric race which inhabited the island of Crete for some three thousand years previous to the date of these representations, which is about 1600 b.c. They are interesting to compare both with the much more ancient figures from the Spanish cave and with modern female costume. The first (Plate VIII) is a figure in coloured pottery (faïence), representing either a votary or priestess of a goddess to whom snakes were sacred. The petticoat of this lady is very modern, being long, decorated with flounces (a series of five) and bell-shaped. The dress is further remarkable for a tight ring-like girdle which greatly compresses the waist and emphasises the broad hips. The little statue is about ten inches high, and was found by Sir Arthur Evans at Knossos, the ancient buried city the capital of Crete, in the Later Palace. Its date is that of the close of the Minoan period, namely 1600 b.c. The two figures in Plate IX are copied from frescoes representing acrobatic women from the bull-ring, also from the Later Palace at Knossos, and are a couple of centuries later in date. Religious ceremonies in connection with the worship of the bull (whence the fable of the minotaur) were practised in Knossos, and possibly there was a kind of baiting of bulls and jumping over and away from the infuriated animals such as may be seen at this day in the South of France and in Portugal. Possibly the employment of girls in this sport gave rise to the story of the maiden tribute from Athens to be sacrificed to the Cretan minotaur. The drawings are remarkable for the pose—that of the left-hand resembling an attitude assumed in boxing, whilst the dress—a kind of maillot or "tights"—is gripped round the waist by a firm ring (like a table-napkin ring), the compression of which is no doubt exaggerated. This fresco and many others of extraordinary interest, as well as much beautiful pottery and the whole of the plan of the city, its public buildings, granaries, library and sewers at several successive ages (the remains lying in layers one over the other), were discovered and described by Sir Arthur Evans, who is still at work on the wonderful history and art of these prehistoric Cretans, from whom the Mycenæans of the mainland of Greece were an offshoot.