Page:Archaeological Journal, Volume 29.djvu/478

400 leadiug us to suppose that tho skins were not thrown loosely over the person, but were cut into suitable forms, and sewn together.

"It may be objected that it would be extremely difficult to sew leather with a bone needle. But, possibly, the passage of the needle was rendered more easy by subjecting the leather to some previous treatment; and we know that Esquimaux women chew the leather upon which they are about to work in order to prepare it for sewing.

"No implements for spinning—no spindle-whorls—are found in the caves with remains of this early period; but the cave-folk probably used sinew-thread, and spun it by simple hand-twirling on the thigh. The Laps still prepare sinew-thread in this manner, and it is an art practised by the New Zealanders and many other savages.

"Even in this remote period of man's history we do not only learn that he had wants to supply, and that he sought by the exercise of his ingenuity to supply those wants; we find him feebly but distinctly feeling after art—decorating objects with carving, and sculpturing the forms of his fellow-man and the contemporary animals, such as the mammoth and the reindeer, upon pieces of ivory, horn, bone, and stone.

"Several of these sketches and carvings are extremely spirited, and nearly all show, at least, the attempt to copy nature. In order to appreciate the importance of this fact, it is necessary to observe how few modern savages make any attempt to copy natural objects with fidelity. Perhaps the Esquimaux furnish the solitary exception.

"When savages wish to represent any natural object, they usually adopt a purely conventional treatment; and, what is very remarkable, this conventional treatment becomes peculiar to themselves, and is not shared in common with other savage tribes. Having once adopted a conventional form for any particular object, they copy it, and it only, over and over again.

"No one, for instance, can mistake the typical 'man' of the Mar- quesan: you see this hideous caricature of the human countenance in collection after collection, and it is always line for line the same. Speaking generally, modern savages (with the exception of the Esquimaux) caricature, rather than copy, nature. Like an inexperienced artist, the savage seizes upon some prominent characteristic and exaggerates it, instead of preserving the natural proportions and the graceful outlines of the original. I will not go so far as to say that the cave- people, those men who lived contemporary with the mammoth, produced works of high art, but they certainly possessed a skill in drawing far in advance of that attained by most modern savage tribes. As far as we know, this skill in drawing was possessed by but a limited number of the cave-people, and it appears to have perished with them.

"The later stone-using pre-historic races did not inherit it, at least no sculptured representations of animals or natural objects to be referred to this later period have reached our time; and even during the Bronze Period such figures are extremely rare,—Sir John Lubbock says, 'they are so rare, that it is doubtful whether a single well authenticated instance could be produced.'

"This remark, however, cannot be intended to apply to the New World, for the sculptured stone pipes found in the Ohio mounds furnish