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.
[Illustration: 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.
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.
[Illustration: FIG. 8.–Outline engravings of mammoths on the wall of
the cavern known as the "Font de Gaume," near Eyzies (Dordogne). Each
figure is about 2 ft. long.]
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 1½ ft. to 2½
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.
[Illustration: FIG. 9.–Similar engravings from the neighbouring cave of
Combarelles. The lower figure is an enlargement of the smaller of the
two above it.]
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.
[Illustration: FIG. 10.–_A_, similar engraving from the cave of
Combarelles. _B_, Mammoth enclosed by plank-like structure–supposed to
be either a cage or a trap. (Called tectiform structures, and often
seen in these wall engravings.) From the cave of Bernifal, five miles
from Eyzies.]
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.