Secrets of Earth and Sea

by Sir E. Ray Lankester

CHAPTER II

PORTRAITS OF MAMMOTHS BY MEN WHO SAW THEM

SOME fifty-five years ago pieces of reindeer's antler were discovered in the cave known as "La Madeleine" in the Dordogne (a department of France some eighty miles east of Bordeaux), upon which were engraved the outlines of various animals such as reindeer and horses. They and the bone spear-heads and needles, and the flint knives found with them, were the first revelation to later man of the existence of the prehistoric cave-men. Among the carvings was a piece of ivory which excited the profoundest interest. Partly hidden by a confused mass of scratches it showed the well-drawn outline of the great extinct elephant, thus scratched or "engraved" on a bit of its own tusk (Fig. 7). The engraving was barely 5 in. long, and has been reproduced in many books. The specimen is now in Paris, and was for long the only known representation of the Mammoth by the ancient men who lived with it in Western Europe.

Fig. 7.—Engraving of a mammoth drawn upon a piece of mammoth's ivory, found in the cave of La Madeleine in the Dordogne, in 1864. The specimen is in the Museum of Natural History, Paris. The engraving is here represented of the actual size.

During the last fifteen years, however, our knowledge of the works of art executed by these ancient men has increased to an extraordinary extent, chiefly owing to the energy and skill of the French explorers of the caverns in the south central region of that country. As long ago as 1879 a little girl, the daughter of Señor Sautuolo—a proud woman she should be if alive to-day—when visiting the cavern of Altamira, near Santander, in the north of

Spain, with her father, drew his attention to a number of "pictures of animals," painted on the rocky vault or roof of the cave. At first no one believed that these pictures were more than a few hundred years old, whilst some held them to be modern and made with fraudulent purpose. In 1887 Piette, the distinguished French investigator of the remains of human work in the caverns of the French Pyrénées (whose great illustrated book of carved and engraved portions of reindeer antler, ivory, and stones discovered by his excavations, is a classic), declared that in his opinion the pictures of the Altamira cave were of the same age as the bone and ivory carvings of the Madeleine cave—that is to say, dated from what "prehistorians" call the later Palæolithic age, an age when the mammoth, the bison, the cave lion, and the reindeer still existed in Western Europe, and when the British Isles were not yet separated by sea from the Continent. The age indicated is probably from 25,000 to 50,000 years ago. Still, the opinion prevailed that the "wall-drawings" and "roof-drawing" of the Altamira cave were either mediæval or modern until the French explorers discovered wall-paintings in some of the caves of the Dordogne. Then they proceeded to a careful investigation of the Altamira cave, and discovered conclusive evidence of the great age of the paintings by the removal of some of the undisturbed deposit in the cave, in which were found flint implements and small engravings on bone, proving the deposit to be of the late Palæolithic age. When this deposit was removed, pictures of animals, partly engraved and partly completed in colour (black, red, yellow, and white), were found on the wall of the cave previously covered up by the deposit. M. Cartailhac, who had been a leading opponent of the view that the Altamira wall-pictures were very ancient, now renounced his former position and became an enthusiastic investigator and exponent of these pictures. M. Breuil, who had discovered wall-pictures, including those of the mammoth, in French caves, and had been met by disbelief and even suspicion, now received due recognition, and joined Cartailhac in preparing a complete account of the wall and roof pictures of the Altamira cave. The Prince of Monaco, who had carried out, with the aid of French experts, an investigation of the caves on his property at Mentone, on the Mediterranean "Riviera," undertook the expense of producing a splendid volume, giving coloured reproductions of the Altamira pictures. To him the world is indebted, not only for most important discoveries of human skeletons and objects of human workmanship in the caves of Mentone (there are no wall-pictures there), but for the publication in illustrated form of the Mentone discoveries and of those obtained in the Altamira cave. He has not rested at this stage of accomplishment, but has produced at his own expense large volumes by MM. Breuil, Capitan, and Peyrony, illustrating and describing the discoveries made by them of wall-paintings and engravings of animals in the cave known as the "Font de Gaume," in the Dordogne. The Prince has also published a volume, by MM. Breuil, de Rio, and Sierra, reproducing the drawings found in a whole series of caves and rock-shelters in various parts of the Spanish peninsula, where the rock-painting race seems to have persisted to a somewhat later period and to have painted, more frequently, pictures of human beings as well as of animals. These, whilst less artistic and truthful than those of the North Spanish and South French area, yet have surpassing interest, since they have special similarity to ancient rock-paintings found in North Africa and to the rock-paintings of the Bushmen of South Africa.

The Prince of Monaco has finally established the great study in which he has played so valuable a part by founding in Paris an "Institute of Human Palæontology"; that is, "of the study of prehistoric man," which he has endowed with a magnificent building, comprising laboratories and residences for professors, together with funds to pay for its maintenance and the proper publication of results. This he has done in addition to founding entirely at his own expense a similarly complete Institute for the study of "oceanography"—the study of the living contents and history of the great seas.