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.

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.

The illustrations in this chapter are (with the exception of Fig. 7) copies, greatly reduced in size, of faithful representations of the great hairy elephant or mammoth which still survived in southern France in the days when the caves were occupied and decorated by men. I am indebted to the valuable little book "Repertoire de l'Art Quatermaire," by M. Salomon Reinach, for these outlines carefully drawn by him from various large illustrations by the use of a tracing and reducing instrument. In the next chapter I have given examples from the same source of similar drawings of other animals.

There are five kinds of artistic work of PalÆolithic age found in the caverns of France and Spain; namely (1) small solid carvings (complete all round) in bone, ivory, or stone; (2) small engravings in sunk outline on similar material, rarely with relief of the outlined figure; (3) large stone statues, 2 ft. to 6 ft. across, in high relief, with complete modelling of the visible surface; (4) rock engravings and paintings on the walls and roofs of caverns or rock shelters, often partly outlined by engraving and scraping of the surface, and then completed in black or red paint or in several colours (black, red, yellow, white); they are of large size, from 2 to 5 ft. in cross measurement; (5) models in clay, one side only shown, the other resting on rock; a few incomplete clay models of this nature representing the bison of about 2 ft. in

length, have recently been discovered in one of the French caverns, and are the only examples of modelling in clay by the PalÆolithic men yet discovered.

Our figures of the mammoth are (excepting Fig. 7) all of the fourth class—namely, rock-paintings in one colour (black or red) partly engraved and scraped. The originals are from 1-1/2 ft. to 2-1/2 ft. long. The mammoths given in Fig. 8 are carefully copied from engravings discovered, reproduced, and described by M. Breuil and his fellow-workers. They are on the walls of the cavern known as the "Font de Gaume," in the commune of Tayac in the Dordogne. Those copied in Fig. 9 and Fig. 10, A, were discovered on the walls of the cave of Les Combarelles in the same district.

Fig. 10, B, is from a cave at Bernifal, near les Eyzies, in the Dordogne, and shows a mammoth enclosed in a triangular design, which is believed to represent a trap, or else a cage. Such triangular figures with upright and also bent supports are found in various degrees of elaboration on both small and large engravings of this period, and are generally accepted as representing huts or enclosures supported by wooden poles. They are called "tectiforms" by the French explorers.

The bones and teeth of the mammoth are very common in the river gravels and clays of Western Europe and England, and a complete skull, with its tusks, dug up at Ilford, in the east of London, is in the Natural History Museum. Frozen carcasses of this animal are found in Northern Siberia, and two showing much of the skin and hair are in the museum of Petrograd. There is no tradition or knowledge of the mammoth among living races of men. The natives of Siberia, who have from time immemorial done a large trade in the ivory, regard the tusks as "horns," and have stories about the ghosts of the mammoth, but no tradition of it as a living beast. The mammoth was closer to the Indian elephant of to-day than to the African one. It had, as these drawings show, a pelt of long hair. Indian elephants from upland regions often have a good deal of hair all over the body: and the newborn young of both the Indian and African elephant has a complete coat of hair. The drawings here reproduced are not only of thrilling interest because they are the work of remotely ancient men who lived with and observed mammoths in the south of France, but also because they show an extraordinary skill in "sketching"—in giving the essential lines of the creature portrayed and in reproducing the artist's "impression." These artists were "impressionists"—the earliest and most sincere—without self-consciousness or other purpose than that of making line and colour truly register and indicate their vivid impressions. It is interesting to note that (as in other works of art showing true artistic gift) actual error in drawing (for instance, in the size and shape of the eye and the placing of the two tusks on the same side of the trunk—possibly due to the unfinished state of the drawing) sometimes accompanies the most penetrating observation and skilful delineation of the characteristic form and pose of the animal. Probably mammoths were getting rare in the south of France when these drawings were made, and were not so familiar in all their details to the artist as were bison, horse, and deer.