Page:Palæolithic Man and Terramara Settlements in Europe.djvu/308

230 incompleted figures, consisting mostly of heads, are over 100, among which that of the bison greatly predominates. Man is also represented by about a dozen incomplete designs, badly drawn, grotesque in character, and altogether inferior in execution to the animal figures (Fig. 86). But this peculiarity need not cause surprise as it is a feature of Palæolithic art in general, for no human representation hitherto known of this kind, whether engraved or painted, goes beyond the artistic efforts of nursery children. It is difficult to believe that it is the same hand which has produced these human and animal figures.

Neither the reindeer nor any of the extinct animals is among the fauna depicted on the walls of either Marsoulas or Altamira. Though distant from the principal centre of the painted caverns of the Perigord, they are considered by MM. Cartailhac and Breuil to have passed through precisely the same phases of evolutionary art.

Niaux.

One more cavern must be briefly noticed in this sketch, because of the curious additions it has made to our knowledge of the art of the period. In the Commune of Niaux there are several caverns, but the one which interests us is known as La Grotte des Forges, situated some 4 kilometres from Tarascon (Ariège). The entrance, which is somewhat encumbered by fallen rocks, lies 100 metres above the valley of the Vis-de-Sos, a small affluent of the Ariège. The cavern extends for 1400 metres into the heart of the mountains, in the form of long galleries and spacious chambers adorned with stalactites, and rising sometimes into lofty domes. The floor to a considerable extent is covered with fine sand and rolled gravel, thus proving the action of running water at some former period. MM. Cartailhac and Breuil, to whom we are again indebted for the descriptive details of these mural decorations (L'Anthrop., t. xix., 1908), regard the inner recesses of the cavern as vast solitudes which have undergone no change since the retreat of the glaciers. This, they say, accounts for the fact that the chamber walls, with their figure drawings and enigmatic signs and symbols, are now in precisely the same