With their exploration a remoter vista has opened out in recent years; a wholly new standpoint has been gained from which to review the early history of the human race. A brilliant band of prehistoric archæologists has brought together such a mass of striking materials as to place the evolution of human art and appliances in the Quaternary Period on a level far higher than had been previously ever suspected. The investigations of Lartet, Cartailhac, Piette, Breuil, Obermaier, etc., have revolutionised our knowledge of a phase of human culture which goes so far back beyond the limits of any continuous story that it may well be said to belong to an older world.
These sentences of Sir Arthur Evans[11] gain further emphasis from Professor Boyd-Dawkins: “It is not too much to state that the frescoed caves in Southern France and Northern Spain throw as much light on the life of those times as the Egyptian tombs do on the daily life of Egypt, or the walls of the Minoan palace on the luxury of Crete, before the Achæan conquest.”
The picture of Palæolithic life revealed by these dwelling places attracts from every point of view. But as our last is fish and fishing, to fish and fishing we must stick. I shall therefore limit myself to the caves which furnish specimens or representations of ichthyic interest, with the one exception of “marvellous Altamira,” which, though it unfortunately yields us no portrayals of fishing, from every other aspect compels mention.
So astonishing was the discovery of this cave with its whole galleries of painted designs on the walls and ceilings that it required a quarter of a century and the corroboration of repeated finds on the French side of the Pyrenees for general recognition that these rock paintings were of the Palæolithic age, and that features, which had been hitherto reckoned as exclusively belonging to the New Stone Man, can now be classed as the original property of the Man of the Old Stone Age in the final production of his evolution.
These primeval frescoes in their most developed state (Evans, ibid., tells us) show not only a consummate mastery of natural design, but also an extraordinary technical resource. Apart from the charcoal used in certain outlines, the chief colouring matter was red and yellow ochre, mortars and palettes for the preparation of which have come to light. In single animals the tints are varied from black to dark and ruddy brown or brilliant orange, and so by fine gradations to paler nuances, obtained by scraping and washing.
The greatest marvel is that such polychrome masterpieces as the bisons standing and couchant or with limbs huddled together were executed on the ceilings of inner vaults and galleries, where the light of day never penetrated. Nowhere does smoke blur their outlines, probably (as Parkyn[12] suggests) because of long oxidisation. The art of artificial illumination had evidently progressed far. We now, indeed, know that stone lamps, decorated in one case with the head of an ibex, already existed.
“Les extremes se touchent” was here aptly exemplified, for to a very young child was it reserved to discover the very oldest art gallery in the world. In 1879 Señor de Santuola chanced to be digging in a cave on his property, when he heard his little daughter cry, “Toros, toros!” Realising quickly that this was no warning of an impending charge by bulls, he followed her gaze to the vaulted ceiling, where his eyes there espied “the finest expression of Palæolithic art extant.”
This little Spanish girl was the first for many, many thousands of years to behold a collection of pictures, which demonstrate not only the high point of excellence to which the art of the Troglodytes had attained, but also, from the absence of perspective and of decorative as compared with pictorial composition, indicate how long is probably the interval and how far is the separation between them and the Men of the Neolithic Age.
Not only in the character of their Art, which if more specialised in subjects was superior in representative quality, but also in the substance and in the method of fashioning their fishing and hunting implements, the separation between the Old Stone and the New Stone Man is very marked.
The former for their stone implements almost always used flint. They worked it to shape merely by flaking or chipping. The latter employed also diorite, quartzite, etc., and in addition to flaking fashioned them by grinding and polishing.[13]