The tool used by the prehistoric man in engraving the cylinder of stag's antler was undoubtedly a suitable chipped-out piece of flint—a flint graving tool, in fact a "burin," such as are abundant in these caves.
Fig. 6.—Fragment of a roughly-painted vase of the Dipylon age (circa 800 B.C.) from Tiryns, figured by Schliemann and cited by Hörnes in his "History of Pictorial Art in Europe." Compare the fish between the horse's legs with the fish in the Lortet picture of the Three Deer; also note the lozenge-shaped designs (similar to the pair above the big stag in the Lortet picture) near the fish and near the man's head (d); and, further, the swastika (s).
Attention has been drawn by Hörnes in his "History of Pictorial Art in Europe" to the resemblance of the Lortet picture to a fragment of a roughly painted vase of the Dipylon age (circa 800 B.C.) found at Tiryns and figured by Schliemann in his account of excavations made at that ancient Mykenæan fortress of the Peloponese. The fragment (Fig. 6) shows very roughly drawn figures of a man and of a horse. Between the fore and hind legs of the horse a large elaborately ornate fish is represented, reminding us of the fishes between the deer's legs in the Lortet picture. Two other similar fragments of pottery, showing a fish in this position, are recorded by Schliemann. The drawing is conventional and careless. It is of a debased decorative character, and is very far removed from the careful nature-true work of the Lortet cave-man. It is not possible to trace by any known line of transmission a connection between the engraving executed 20,000 years ago in the caves of the Pyrénées and the figures rapidly knocked off in black paint on the Tiryns vase some 17,000 years later by the local dealers in cheap pottery. Yet we cannot avoid the suggestion that there is some connection between the two designs. For the Tiryns painting shows not only the curious upright fish between the horse's legs, but also diamond-shaped figures—one marked d in Fig. 6, another near the fish's tail, and another between the man's feet—closely resembling the pair of diamond-shaped figures engraved above the neck of the big stag in the Lortet picture (see Figs. 4 and 5). As we do not know what these diamond-shaped figures or "lozenges" are intended to signify in either case, we do not get, at present, beyond the bald fact of their coincidence. The Tiryns painting also shows (at s in Fig. 6) a "swastika" (see Chapter XVII), and below the man's arm a carelessly drawn bit of the ancient wave-fret or key-pattern. It is, of course, possible that the tradition of an ancient design—even dating so far back in origin as many thousands of years—may be preserved in the use made in the Tiryns decoration of the fish and the diamond-shaped lozenges, though associated with the swastika and the bit of wave-fret which are probably of later origin and are not known in the decorative work of the cave-men. The Mykenæan decorative assimilation of geese to the ship's barnacle exercised its influence over three thousand years and led to the mediæval belief in the hatching of young geese from barnacles attached to floating timber, and even from the buds of trees (see my "Diversions of a Naturalist": Methuen, 1915). Nevertheless it must not be supposed that the connection of the Lortet engraving and the vase-painting of Tiryns is probable or more than a very remote possibility. The gap in time is too vast, and our present ignorance of what took place in that interval too complete, to warrant us in regarding the resemblance as more than a coincidence.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] "L'Age du Renne," a posthumous work, with one hundred coloured quarto plates of objects in the Piette collection, is published by Masson, of Paris, and gives the complete list of Piette's numerous earlier papers, issued as his excavations proceeded.
[2] Seven years ago the ape-like lower jaw and thick walled brain-case called "Eoanthropus" were discovered in a sparse gravel near Lewes in Sussex. It is probably of older date than either the Neander men or the Heidelberg men. See on this subject the chapters on "The Missing Link" in my "Diversions of a Naturalist" (1915) and those on "The Most Ancient Men" and "The Cave-men's Skulls" in "Science from an Easy Chair. First Series" (1910).