Page:Palæolithic Man and Terramara Settlements in Europe.djvu/321

Rh determined animals, the head and shoulders of a small horse and a group of several large horses, one of which has its head turned in the opposite direction of the supposed procession, and lastly two bisons. Owing to weathering and angularities of the rock surface, it was impossible to bring out in one view all the art characteristics of these animal sculptures. But the two illustrations here reproduced conclusively prove that we have in the Cap-Blanc sculptures works of art of a high order. But when we think that they were executed thousands of years before the dawn of the oldest of the old-world civilisations of Assyria, Egypt, Greece and Rome, curiosity gives place to wonder and boundless admiration.

As these pages are being sent to press I hear from M. Cartailhac that the station of Laussel has yielded still more extraordinary sculptures, viz., human figures executed in relief, with the same realistic style and skill as the animal frescoes just described. According to a communication by Dr Lalanne to the Académie des Inscription et Belles-lettres, these figures consist of two females and one male. The most important of them is the figure of a woman 0.46 metre in height, sculptured in high relief with traces of red, suggesting that it had been painted. The head has apparently been effaced, but the body is well represented, and shows rounded fleshy prominences on the buttocks, reminding one of the steatopygous condition of certain African races. In the April number of L'Homme Préhistorique the writer comments as follows on this important discovery :— "Cette figure est la plus complete, la plus belle et la plus grande de toutes les representations humaines de la periode quaternaire, connues jusqu'a cejour." The second female is minus the lower limbs, but the hair and breast are well developed. The male figure is in the attitude of a hunter. (See L'Anth., xxiii., p. 130.)

Human representations.

It has been hitherto a matter of astonishment that, notwithstanding the great success of the Palæolithic artists in delineating the lower animals in all their varying moods and attitudes, no delineation of the human form has yet been found which betrays that close attention to details