Page:Palæolithic Man and Terramara Settlements in Europe.djvu/289

Rh was better cutting implements for minute working in bone, horn, ivory, and wood. Hence the flint factories put out fewer of the larger implements and more of the small, sharp, cutting and piercing tools, such for example as could be used in boring the eye of a needle. The domain of art sculpture, engraving, and painting assumed a wider range, embracing not only the manufacture of small plaques with miniature figures, but the decoration of the walls of inhabited caves with sculptured friezes and life-size paintings of animals, illustrating sometimes with a masterly hand the habits, ways, and peculiarities of the fauna of the period. All these operations required for their proper execution an assortment of special tools.

In domestic economy there is evidence that they boiled or roasted the flesh of the captured animals and utilised the skins as garments. Possibly some round pebbles abundantly met with in the kitchen débris might have been used as "potboilers." A few stone mortars and pestles (PI. VII., No. 14) which occasionally turned up would appear to have been used only for mixing colouring matter, either to paint their bodies or the walls of the caverns they frequented. Tailoring was extensively practised in making skin garments ; and the needles, pins, buttons, etc., as well as the small flint instruments used for such fine work are abundantly represented. Their ornaments consisted of perforated teeth, shells, and pendants made of various materials.

The number and variety of artistic objects found in the debris of Magdalénien sites, together with the discovery of large engravings, paintings, and sculptured friezes, on the walls of the caverns they frequented, testify to their skill in the execution of real works of art. Of this artistic phase in the history of the Palæolithic people we shall now give a brief description.

Wall Pictures.

The caverns adorned with wall pictures in the form of engravings, sculptures, and paintings in various colours number about thirty, nearly all of which are situated in the south-west of France, the Pyrenees, and the north of Spain. They all belong to one phase of art which appears to have been practised for a long time. Although there are indications that