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CAVE PAINTINGS
By REBECCA B. MARCUS
ILLUSTRATED WITH PHOTOGRAPHS

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PREHISTORIC CAVE PAINTINGS

Twelve-year-old Maria de Sautuolo


liked to accompany her father when
he went cave exploring near their
home in northern Spain. It was fun to
hunt for tools left in the cave by an-
cient, unknown men. Then one day
Maria went exploring by herself and
made a discovery of her own. Wan-
dering into a deep part of the cave,
she saw a painted herd of lifelike
bison charging across the ceiling.
Maria's discovery was the first step
in an exciting treasure hunt for cave
paintings that led from Altamira to
Lascaux and Font-de-Gaume, to
Mexico, to South Africa and back in
time to Cro-Magnon man through the
Olmec Indians of 3,000 years ago, and
down to th* present. Maria's adven-
tures were like those of the priests
and explore.s who have devoted their
lives to the search for clues to solve
the mysteries of these paintings.
In a crisp, clear style Rebecca
Marcus conducts an adventure of dis-
covery. She explores the history, ori-
gins, and techniques of the art and
the artists, reveals the meaning of
their work, and describes the methods
used by present-day scientists to date
the paintings and protect them from
mold and temperature changes. She
shows how we, too, can go cave ex-
ploring and discover for ourselves the
remarkable world of these artists of
long ago.

(see back flap)


PREHISTORIC
CAVE PAINTINGS

ROSLINDALE
Cro-Magnon man painting the wall of a cave. He is using a blowtube
to make a picture of a stenciled hand.
PREHISTORIC
CAVE PAINTINGS
by REBECCA B. MARCUS
illustrated with photographs

FRANKLIN WATTS, INC.


575 LEXINGTON AVENUE
NEW YORK, N.Y. 10022

ROSLINDALE
\
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.$&

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The author wishes to thank Dr. Richard A. Gould of the Department of
Anthropology of the American Museum of Natural History for his criti-
cal reading of the manuscript. Thanks are also due the following persons
for their special kindness and courtesy in helping to gather material for
this book:
Seiior Felipe Mendez de la Torre, Jefe de Relaciones Publicas, Cuevas
de Altamira, Spain;
Sefior Tomas Maza Solano, Director de la Revista Altamira, Patronato
de las Cuevas Prehistoricas, Santander, Spain;
Dr. Jean Guichard, Director, Musee de Prehistoire, Les Eyzies, France.

Photo credits appear on page 89.

BOSTON PUBLIC LIBWfltf

Copyright 1968 by Franklin Watts, Inc.


Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 68-25724
Printed in the United States of America

12 3 4 5
CONTENTS
MARIA'S DISCOVERY 3

SEALED IN A CAVE 4

THE SECRET TREASURE AT ALTAMIRA 8

DISCOURAGEMENT AND DISAPPOINTMENT 13

IN THE VEZERE VALLEY IN FRANCE 16

LES COMBARELLES, FONT-DE-GAUME,


AND BACK TO ALTAMIRA 20

DISCOVERY OF THE LASCAUX CAVE 28

THE PAINTINGS AT LASCAUX 29

THE MYSTERIOUS SCENE IN THE WELL 39

CRO-MAGNON MAN 42

ROSLINDALE
BEGINNINGS OF CAVE ART 47

HOW CAVE PAINTINGS WERE PRODUCED 48

SKETCH SHEETS AND ART SCHOOLS 50

CAVE PAINTINGS AND SYMPATHETIC MAGIC 51

CAVE ART MAY HAVE A DIFFERENT MEANING 55

THOUSANDS OF YEARS OF CAVE ART 58

MEXICAN CAVE PAINTINGS 62

ROCK PAINTINGS - SPANISH LEVANTINE ART 64

ROCK ART IN AFRICA 67

VISITING THE CAVE PAINTINGS TODAY 72

APPENDIX I Some Painted Caves in Spain and France 75

APPENDIX II - Radiocarbon Dating 80

GLOSSARY 82

INDEX 86
PREHISTORIC
CAVE PAINTINGS
\T

The painted ceiling in the Altamira cave.


MARIA'S DISCOVERY
"Tows, torosl Bulls, bulls! Father, come and look at the
bulls!" Twelve-year-old Maria de Sautuolo's cry from deep
inside the cave reached her father as he dug in the rubble at
the cave's front.
The cave was in a gently rolling meadow at Altamira, near
Santillana del Mar in northern Spain, a few miles from the
Sautuolo summer home. Marcelino de Sautuolo sometimes
took his daughter with him when he went digging for remains
left by ancient man. Maria liked to poke around in the
there
dark cave, to shine her candle on the walls and ceiling, and
watch the shadows cast by the bulges in the rock.
On this day in 1879, Maria had found her way to a part of
the cave that only a child could have entered walking up-
right. As she flashed her candle on the low ceiling, she saw,
painted on the rock, a herd of animals that looked like bulls.
The paintings were so lifelike that the animals seemed to be

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charging right out of the rock. In wonderment, she called to
her father.
Her father stooped through the opening into the part of the
cave from which Maria's voice came. There he found a treas-
ure, not of gold or precious stones, but of pictures painted on
the ceiling of the cave by men who had lived 15,000 years ago.

SEALED IN A CAVE
The entrance to the Altamira cave had been sealed for
15,000 years. was discovered only by accident.
It

In 1868 a hunter in the meadow saw his dog disappear into


the ground. Following the faint barking of the dog, the hunter
began to dig away at a small hole into which the animal had
apparently fallen.
This hole led to an underground pile of loose rock. In
order to free the dog, the hunter had to move away some of
the rock. In so doing, he discovered that the rocks covered
had fallen and
the entrance to a cave. Part of the cave ceiling
blocked the entrance. The hunter released the dog and con-
tinued his search. Upon his return to Santillana del Mar he
told of his discovery, but no one was curious enough to ex-
plore the cave.
Ten years Marcelino de Sautuolo, a historian and
later,
archaeologist, returned to his home in northern Spain from
a visit to the Paris Exposition of 1878. There he had seen a
display of tools and other objects made by ancient peoples.

(4)
Rhinoceros engraved on bone, found among the remains of ancient man
in southwestern France.

The had been found in 1864 in a cave near the town


articles
of Les Eyzies in the Dordogne valley of southwestern France.
Among the objects Sautuolo had seen were engraved pieces
of animal bone and ivory that came from the tusks of mam-
moths, an extinct type of elephant. One piece of ivory had a
fine engraving of a mammoth, and undoubtedly had been
made by a man who had seen such an animal. Now mam-
moths had not roamed Europe for about 15,000 years. They
had died out about the time the great ice sheet that covered
much of Europe was melting. The engraving, then, had to be
at least 15,000 years old. In all probability, the other objects
found with the piece of ivory were also at least as old.

(5)
Sautuolo had been intrigued by these remains showing the
work of ancient men. Perhaps groups of these men had also
lived near his own home in northern Spain, only a few hun-
dred miles from the Dordogne region in France. Perhaps
these men, too, had left remains that told something about
their lives. He knew of the unexplored, barely opened cave
at Altamira. Might not this be a place to look for evidences
of ancient cavemen?
Soon after his return from Paris, Sautuolo went to Alta-
mira and began to remove more of the rubble and slabs of
rock that had fallen down and sealed the mouth of the cave.
When he had cleared away enough of the fallen rock to enter,
he found himself in a dark chamber. He explored the cham-
ber and saw that it showed signs of having been occupied
by people. Here and there he found bone needles, stone ax-
heads, spear points, knives, and scrapers objects unmis-
takably made by man.
That winter, back in Madrid, Sautuolo spoke of his finds
to his friend ProfessorJuan Vilanova of the University of
Madrid. Vilanova was one of the world's foremost scholars
engaged in the study of ancient man. He encouraged Sau-
tuolo to continue his digging in the cave the next summer.
In the summer of 1879, Sautuolo returned to his country
home in northern Spain. At Altamira he spent many days
digging in the front part of the cave, and found many dif-
ferent objects. Among them were small pieces of bone, each
pierced with a small hole at one end. When he strung the
pieces of bone together, he saw had a necklace that
that he
an ancient man or woman might have worn. Once, on a rocky

(6)
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kid

Some of the bone and stone tools, now in the Altamira Museum, collected
by Marcelino de Sautuolo.
wall in a far part of the cave, he glimpsed black drawings of
animals, but he thought little about them.
So things remained until that day when Maria saw the
painted animals on the ceiling of the low chamber and called
to her father.

THE SECRET TREASURE


AT ALTAMIRA
The chamber in which Maria stood sloped
ceiling of the
downward toward the back of the cave. Just inside the
entrance, Sautuolo was able to stand upright. But as he
walked toward his daughter at the rear he had to lower his
head to keep from hitting the ceiling. Where Maria was point-
ing at the ceiling, the cave's height was just a little over five
feet. Sautuolo had to crouch to look at the ceiling of the cave.
Through the darkness, pierced only by candlelight, Sau-
tuolo saw a herd of bison painted on the ceiling the "bulls"
Maria had seen. They were painted in various shades of red,
but in some there was yellow and brown as well. Some ani-
mals were standing, some sitting with legs folded under them.
One painting showed a bison struck with a spear. The animal's
head was sunken, its hind legs doubled up, as a real animal
would have fallen.
In addition to the bison, there were paintings of wild
boars, deer, and horses. Most of the animals were from four
to six feet long, but some were life-size. They looked so alive

(8)
Necklaces and neck ornaments like the ones
found at Altamira. These are from caves in south-
western France.
/

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4

to
Deer at Altamira. The outline was first engraved, then painted in black.
The body was filled in with shades of brown and red.

that Sautuolo could almost see them breathe. Yet the animals
were mainly types that were no longer found in Spain.
Nothing like these paintings had even been known to exist.
Sautuolo gazed at them in astonishment. Who had made
these beautiful polychrome (many-colored) paintings? When
had they been made, and for what purpose? It seemed clear
to Sautuolo that the artists must have been able to observe
these ancient animals closely to have made such lifelike
paintings. Therefore, the paintings must have been made

Above left: Close-up view of some of the animals on the ceiling at Alta-
mira. Below left: Bison with legs folded under it, Altamira.
many thousands of years ago. He believed the paintings were
that old for another reason. The stone tools sealed inside the
cave when part of the ceiling collapsed showed that Stone Age
men were the last to have been in the cave before it was redis-
covered. Thus the paintings must be the work of Stone Age
men.
Day after day, Sautuolo went into the side chamber to
study its painted ceiling. He saw that the shapes of many of
the animals had been cut into the rock with a sharp tool,
first

then outlined in black and painted in. Sometimes a part of an


animal was painted on a bulge in the rock so as to give the
feeling of the rounded form of the animal.
Many of the animals were painted in different shades of
the same color to bring out the animal's shape. In these paint-
ings, the color was lighter at the center and shaded off into
darker color. This made the animal appear to curve away
from a person looking at the picture.
In addition to the paintings, there were many small engrav-
ings cut into the rock. And, in the far part of the ceiling,
there were a few pictures of hands just hands. Some were
painted in red, and several appeared to be stenciled on the
rock. Probably a hand had been placed against the rock and
paint applied around it. When the hand was removed its
shape was outlined in paint on the bare rock.
Sautuolo explored the cave further, and found more paint-
ings on other parts of the cave. However, these were not as
beautiful as those on the ceiling, for they were in mono-
chrome (one color), red or black.
The walls of most of the cave were bare, yellowish lime-
stone rock. But in the rear, where the height of the ceiling

(12)
Sketch of lines drawn by fingers on the clay of the roof at Altamira.
The head of a cowlike animal is at the right.

was less than four feet, the rock was covered with natural
yellow-red clay. Sautuolo saw designs in the clay that ap-
peared to have been scratched into it by fingers. He made
drawings of these scratches for the notes he was keeping on
his discoveries.

DISCOURAGEMENT AND
DISAPPOINTMENT
In 1880, Sautuolo wrote an article telling of his discoveries
in theAltamira cave. In his article he stated that the paintings
had been made by Stone Age artists. The article was brought

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to the attention of King Alfonso XII of Spain. With much
royal fanfare, the king came to see the cave paintings for
himself. He was so impressed that he permitted his name to
be inscribed on the wall near the entrance, as a sign of his
favor.
Later that year, the International Congress of Anthropol-
ogy and Prehistoric Archaeology was to meet in Lisbon.
(Anthropology is the science that deals with the study of
man. Archaeology deals with the study of relics left by an-
cient man.) Sautuolo wanted his report on the Altamira cave
to be read and discussed at the congress. He knew that this
body must first approve it before scientists all over the world
would acknowledge its truth. He also hoped that some of the
members would come to Altamira when the meeting was
over to see the paintings for themselves.
But Sautuolo was doomed to disappointment. When his
friend Professor Vilanova showed the program committee
Sautuolo's report and asked that be read before the entire
it

congress, the request was denied. The committee members


did not think it possible that paintings such as those de-
scribed in the report could have been made by Stone Age
men. The report was never read before the congress.
Word of the cave paintings spread, however, in spite of
the fact that few people believed they had been made by
Stone Age men. One group of scientists declared that the
paintings had been done by Roman soldiers less than 2,000
years earlier. At one point an insane painter whom Sautuolo
had befriended came forward and "confessed" that Sautuolo
had paid him to paint the caves. But the confession was
easily proved false, and was completely discredited.

(14)
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Santillana del

Altamira
Mar
T EI Castillo
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Pindal
Las Chimeneas
La Pasiega
Covalanas
Las Monedas
La Haza
Hornos de la Pena Sotarriza

FRANCE
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SOME PAINTED S.iniander


CAVES OF NORTHERN SPAIN SPAIN


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one inch equals about 10 miles

The age of the cave paintings remained undecided for


twenty-four years after Maria first saw them. Sautuolo died
in 1888, a saddened and disappointed man. He never knew
that his discovery at Altamira was, in the words of one scien-
tist, "the key that opened the door to the secrets of the past."

(15)

J
IN THE VEZERE VALLEY
IN FRANCE
In 1895, four French schoolboys living in Les Eyzies made
a discovery that led to proof of the true age of the paintings
at Altamira.
Les Eyzies is a village in the valley of the Vezere River, a
branch of the Dordogne. The Vezere valley is a region of
fields, meadows, and low rolling hills. The four boys were
playing in a barn at LaMouthe, about two miles from the
village. The barn was built against the back of a small cave.
In the far wall of the barn they noticed a hole that appeared
to lead into a dark, empty space. They dug at the hole with
sticks to enlarge it, and climbed through.
There, back of the barn wall, was a large cave whose open-
ing had been hidden by fallen rock. The boys lit candles
that they had been carrying in their pockets, and looked
around. They saw a chamber strewn with stones, among
which they recognized some that had been worked into tools.
The stone tools were like those. one of their teachers had
shown them. He had also told the boys of the caves in their
own section of France, where many such tools had been
found, and had further explained that stone tools showed
that Stone Age men once lived in the caves. Now the boys
realized they had come upon no ordinary cave. This one at
LaMouthe must also have been inhabited by Stone Age
people.

The Vezere River near Les Eyzies. Many small caves are worn into the
limestone cliffs that rise above the river at this point.
Perigueux

SOME PAINTED
Cougnac
CAVES OF
SOUTHERN
SPAIN
FRANCE Peche-Mer/e

one inch pquals about 16 miles


r

Engraved spear and harpoons. These were found in La Madeleine, a cave


in theDordogne region of France.

At this point, the boys were too excited to leave the cave.
They explored it further and saw a wall of loose rocks at the
rear. Removing some of the rocks, they worked their way
through the wall, and found themselves in another chamber.
There, by the light of their candles, the boys saw figures of
animals engraved on the wall.
The boys did not know what to make of the engravings.
While most of them resembled modern animals, some were
of animals not known to have lived in France for thousands
of years.

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The four boys scrambled out of the cave to seek expert
advice. Fortunately, it was easily available at Les Eyzies, for
the town was the center for the study of Stone Age man,
particularly the type called Cro-Magnon man. (This was the
earliest example then known of modern man, Homo sapiens.)
The name was given this type of man because skeletons be-
longing to it were first found, in 1868, in a cave called Cro-
Magnon near Les Eyzies. This town in the Vezere valley thus
became the gathering place for archaeologists studying pre-
historic man. The boys rushed to one of the most famous of
them, Emile Riviere, with the story of their discovery.
Riviere was as excited as the boys. With the help of a team
of workmen, he cleared the cave at LaMouthe and confirmed
the fact that there were many Stone Age tools scattered in
the rubble. And, inside the cave, he found a few faded paint-
ings in addition to the engravings the boys had seen.
Upon examining the stone tools and the pictures of ancient
animals, Riviere came to the conclusion that the engravings
and paintings were made by Stone Age people. He believed
this to be so for the same reason that Sautuolo had at Alta-
chamber
mira. First, because the entrance to the decorated
was closed by debris containing Stone Age implements, and
second, because some of the pictures were of animals no
longer living in France.
For several years afterward the cave at LaMouthe re-
mained a curiosity visitedby few people. Archaeologists did
not go so far as to say that the engravings were recent, but
neither were they as sure as Riviere that the art was the work
of Stone Age man. Then, in 1901, the discovery of two other
caves in the Vezere valley finally settled the matter.

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LES COMBARELLES,
FONT-DE-GAUME,
AND BACK TO ALTAMIRA
The first of these caves was discovered at Les Combarelles,
about two and a half miles from Les Eyzies. One of the men
who had worked LaMouthe saw some engrav-
for Riviere at
ings on a wall of the cave. Because he was not an expert, he
hesitated to explore the cave by himself. And, he particu-
larly wanted three scholars of prehistoric archaeology to ex-
amine the engravings first. These were Dr. Louis Capitan,
Denis Peyrony, and a young priest, Abbe Henri Breuil, who
had come to study at Les Eyzies.
Abbe Breuil was at that time twenty-four years old. He had
been ordained a priest, but was not assigned to a parish. His
teachers at the seminary had recognized that Breuil had un-
usual interest and scholarship in the study of prehistoric
man. So, he was assigned do research and to teach the sub-
to
ject of human paleontology the study of ancient life as
based on fossils. Although he was still young when the en-
gravings at Les Combarelles were discovered, Breuil was
already highly respected for his knowledge of prehistoric
archaeology.
The next day the three scientists went to examine the cave
at Les Combarelles. The cave was shaped like a long corridor
or gallery. The walls on both sides of the gallery were en-

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1

graved with animal figures and some figures of men wearing


animal masks.
Most were small,
of the engravings scratched in the rock
many no bigger than a man's hand, but a few were two to
three feet long. They were the finest the men had ever seen.
There were excellent likenesses of mammoths, reindeer,
herds of bison, horses, bears, and lions. The men wearing
masks seemed to be performing some kind of religious dance
or ritual.
Tools and engraved pieces of bone near the cave entrance,
as well as the animals shown, told that the pictures on the
cave wall were as old as those at LaMouthe. And the figures
of mammoths, the first to be found on a cave wall, made it
possible to date the cave art more closely than before. For
mammoths, who were cold-loving animals, had been extinct
in Europe for about 15,000 years, when the climate had be-
come too warm for them.
This placed the cave artists toward the end of the last great
ice age the time of the earth's history called the Pleistocene
Ice Age. European scientists call this last stage of the Pleis-
tocene Ice Age the Wiirm glaciation period, because evi-
dences of this ice stage are abundant in the German province
of Wiirm. American scientists call it the period of Wisconsin
glaciation, because the state of Wisconsin bears numerous
marks of this same ice stage. It was also the time of Cro-
Magnon man in Europe.
As scientists, the three archaeologists knew that they must
study the cave art thoroughly before they made any public
statement about its age.Hardly had they begun their study
when, a week later, Denis Peyrony found still another cave

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with pictures on its walls. This cave was at Font-de-Gaume,
only a mile from Les Combarelles.
The walls of the cave at Font-de-Gaume bore many engrav-
ings, but in addition, paintings in both monochrome and poly-
chrome. The paintings were in red, yellow, brown, and
shaded black. The subjects were bison, mammoths, horses,
bears, reindeer, and woolly rhinoceroses.
Now, the woolly rhinoceros, like the mammoth, had lived
in Europe at the time of Cro-Magnon man. This was added
proof that the paintings, as well as the engravings, had been
made by Cro-Magnon man.
A whole year passed before Dr. Capitan, Denis Peyrony,
and Abbe Breuil had worked up enough evidence about the
age of the cave art to present to other scientists. When this
evidence was presented in 1902, archaeologists finally agreed
that the cave art of southwestern France was at least 15,000
years old.
Still, Abbe was not completely satisfied. He won-
Breuil
dered whether archaeologists had not made a grave mistake
in declaring the art in the cave at Altamira a fraud. He went
to one of his old teachers of prehistory and archaeology,
Abbe Emile Cartailhac, with the plan that they visit the
Altamira cave together.
In 1902, the archaeologist-priests, two of the world's most
highly regarded students of prehistoric man and his art, came
to Altamira. After studying the cave paintings thoroughly,
they declared that the art was indeed the work of Ice Age
man. Sautuolo had been right from the beginning.
This announcement soon turned the attention of other
scientists in the field to northern Spain. For although the

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Skeleton of Cro-Magnon man found in a cave in the Dordogne valley.
Reproduction of bison in Font-de-Gaume made by Abbe Breuil.

paintings in Font-de-Gaume were undoubtedly fine, they did


not compare in color or in number with those at Altamira.
Scientists and artists came to Altamira to see the paintings,
to marvel at their beauty, and to study them.
Working in a crouched position, sometimes some-
sitting,

times lying on his back, Abbe Breuil made sketches and


watercolors of the pictures on the ceiling of the cave. These
were later reproduced in a book written by Breuil, called

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Cave Art at Altamira. This book is still read and studied by
most students of prehistoric man. Indeed, Breuil is consid-
ered the pioneer in the study of Ice Age art.

Interest in discovering more cave art grew after the paint-


were declared true prehistoric art. Two more
ings at Altamira
small painted caves were discovered in France that same
year in the valley of the Dordogne. In northern Spain, in the
region called Cantabria, near the Bay of Biscay, five other

Reproduction of deer in Font-de-Gaume made by Abbe Breuil.


One of Abbe Breuil's paintings of the ceiling at Altamira.

Elephant painted in red on the wall of the cave of Castillo in Spain.


painted caves were found. One of these, El Castillo, had more
than a hundred painted hands, mostly left hands, in addition
to paintings of animals.
The ten-mile stretch between the villages of Montignac
and Les Eyzies in the Vezere proved to be the single greatest
treasury of cave art in France. It is possibly the greatest in
the world. The rock in this region is limestone, a rock that
dissolves slowly in acid. Slightly acidic underground water
has worn many caves in the rock. The water of the river has
also worn caves in the cliffs along its banks. A number of
the caves were inhabited by Stone Age people. Some of them
were painted and engraved. But the most beautifully painted
cave of all, more beautiful even than Altamira, was discov-
ered in 1940 at Lascaux near Montignac.

Painted hands in the cave of Castillo. Some animals are drawn in outline
and some designs whose meaning is unknown can also be seen.

/^
5
xV

i
DISCOVERY OF THE
<LASCAUX CAVE
Four boys from Montignac, the oldest seventeen years,
were out hunting rabbits on September 12, 1940. The dog
Robot, belonging to one of the boys, scampered along at their
heels. The boys climbed a hill south of the village, where
they knew of a hole left by the roots of a fallen tree. They
thought they might chase some rabbits out of the hole.
Robot sniffed around the hole, then crawled in to explore
it. But he did not come out. The ground seemed to have swal-

lowed him. The boys were mystified until they heard a faint
barking from under the ground. Marcel Ravidat decided to
go down into the hole to rescue the dog. Using sticks and the
small knives they carried, the boys widened the hole until
Ravidat could squeeze through.
Hardly had he done so when Ravidat found himself sliding
down a slippery incline. He slid for a distance of about
twenty-five feet and ended up in a large cave. He shouted to
the other boys, who followed him down.
The boys lit matches in order to look around the dark cave.
The dim light of the matches revealed paintings on the walls.
Because they could not see much, they decided to come back
the next day with a better light. They also agreed to keep
their discovery a secret for the time being.
For five days the boys explored the cave by themselves.
They were not altogether ignorant of cave art, for they had
learned something about it in school from one of their teach-

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ers,Monsieur Leon Laval, an amateur archaeologist. They
had also gone with him to visit the caves at Font-de-Gaume
and Les Combarelles. Here at Lascaux the boys realized that
they had found paintings more beautiful than any in the
Vezere valley. ,

At last, theDoys could keep their secret no longer. (They


told Monsieur Laval about their discovery and led him to the
cave. Struck with astonishment at what he saw, Monsieur
Laval hurried back and immediately notified Abbe Breuil of
the find at Lascaux. Breuil came to Lascaux on September
21, to examine the cave paintings.
By 1902, when Breuil had inspected the paintings at Alta-
mira, he had seen most of the other painted caves. /Now he
saw that Lascaux surpassed them all in the variety of figures,
brilliance of color, and in the graceful lines and beauty of the
many animals shown. Lascaux has remained the greatest
jewel of all in the treasury of cave art. \

THE PAINTINGS
AT LASCAUX
(Likemost other painted caves, the one at Lascaux is well
below ground level. Thus the caves are insulated against
weather above ground. Neither frost nor severe changes in
outside temperature reach them to weaken the rock walls.
And, because the caves were sealed for perhaps 15,000 to
20,000 years, no moisture-carrying or mold-carrying air could

(29)
enter. Due to these reasons the paint has not faded out
entirely, but has only become dulled.
Yet the paintings Lascaux have retained their glowing
at
colors over the centuries. "YThis is due to the unusual condition
of the cave walls. Long oefore the paintings were made, a
very thin transparent coating of the mineral calcite was
formed over the surface of the rock. Calcite is the crystalline
form of calcium carbonate, the chief mineral composing lime-
stone. Scientists think the calcite was deposited on the sur-
face of the rock by a slow seepage of calcite-carrying water.
The water then evaporated and left a thin coating of calcite
crystals.
This calcite film served as a varnish on the rock surface.
Paint applied to such a surface tends to keep its color better
than paint applied directly to porous limestone rock. After
the paintings were finished, calcite continued to be deposited
slowly, covering the work as a coat of varnish would. For
some unknown reason calcite stopped being deposited before
the color of the paint was dulled by a thick mineral coating.
Thus the paint was protected against fading and damage.
Almost as soon as one enters the cave, the beauty of the
Lascaux paintings is apparent. Just beyond a small vestibule
is the main hall of the cave, called the "Hall of the Bulls." It

is about one hundred feet long and thirty-two feet wide. The

paintings here are on the walls, not on the ceiling as in


Altamira.
On the left, near the entrance to the hall, is the picture of

a strange animal. It has the body of a rhinoceros, but the


square muzzle of a lion. Two long and fairly straight horns
come out from the front of its head. No animal like it has

(30)
even been known to have lived. Where the idea for such a
painting came from or why it was made is a total mystery.
The Hall of the Bulls is indeed well named. Pictures of four
giant bulls dominate the walls. One of the bulls is halfway
along the left wall, the other three are massed on the right
wall. The largest of the four bulls is over seventeen feet long,
the smallest about thirteen feet long. There is the head of a
fifth bull, but its body is missing. Abbe Breuil thought the
body had once been complete, but was gradually destroyed
by a draft of air that entered the cave at that point.
The bulls are outlined in black and painted in shades of
red, yellow, and brown. In some places the rounded shape of
the rock was used to give the impression of depth, almost as
if parts of the animal figure were sculptured out of the rock.

The other animals pictured on the walls are dwarfed by the


colossal size of the bulls. They are grouped around the first
bull, and appear to be fleeing toward the other bulls. There
are red horses with black manes, and horses painted in
shades of brown and black. A group of small stags in red,
brown, and yellow stands, seemingly on the alert to danger.
Two cows and a calf are shown in red. The knees of one of
the cows are bent as if the animal were wounded and is fall-
ing. There is also the picture of a small brown bear whose
body particularly stands out because of the peculiar shape of
the rock on which it is painted. Perhaps the artist got the idea
of painting a bear on that spot because the shape of the rock
suggested it to him.
A long narrow gallery leads out from the Hall of the Bulls.
The ceiling of this gallery, as well as the walls, is painted with
pictures of cows, goats, and a bull and a stag. One of the

(31)
Right: The strange animal near the entrance to the Hall of the Bulls at
Lascaux. This animal has been called "the Unicorn" because of its
straight horns at the front of its head. Below right: Central section of the
paintings in the Hall of the Bulls, Lascaux. The stags are dwarfed by the
size of the bulls.

Head of the fourth bull in the Hall of the Bulls at Lascaux. The carefully
painted details of the mouth and eye show the painters had observed the
animal at close range.

<'<
v )
cows is jumping over a line of spritely, small horses. This
line of horses has been called the "frieze of little horses."
It is probably the most famous group of horses in any of the
cave paintings.
In fact, the outstanding figures in this whole gallery are
those of horses. One can almost see the quiver of their mus-
cles, so realistic are the paintings. There are running horses,

trotting horses, and horses standing still. One horse has


reared up and fallen backward. Some have long manes and
some have short manes. One group of two horses has been
called the "Chinese horses," because their execution resem-
bles a certain Chinese style of painting.
Here and there in the cave, and in other painted caves as
well, are pictures of gratings, squares, and other abstract de-
signs. No meaning has been found for these designs, but
there are several theories. One theory suggests that they are
animal traps. Another suggests that these symbols represent
human dwellings, and so they have been named tectiforms,
meaning "the form of a roof." Some scientists think that they
are meant to be traps to catch evil spirits. Still others think
they may be the "signature" of the clan or family of the
painter.According to the most modern theory, they represent
male and female sex organs. In all likelihood, the meaning of
these symbols will remain hidden forever.

Above Head and curved back of a stag at Lascaux. The antlers


right:
are particularly well drawn here. Below left: Part of the "frieze of little
horses," with the cow jumping over them. These are some of the most
lifelike horses in any of the painted caves.
^^

..****
Tectiforms, or abstract
designs, from the Castillo
cave in Spain. Designs
such as these are found in
all of the painted caves.

Above Another section of the "frieze of little horses." No meaning


left:

has been found for the "gratings" at the right and between the wild
goats. Below left: These horses have been called the "Chinese horses,"
because of their style of painting. There are a number of tectiforms on
this wall.
A narrow gallery branching from the right of the Hall of
the Bulls widens into another chamber. The gallery has many
engravings, but they are so small and so entangled that they
have been almost impossible to decipher. In addition, there
are paintings whose colors, although clear, are not as bright
as those elsewhere in the cave.
The walls of this whole part of the cave are not covered
with the thin layer of calcite. This may be why the paintings
on them are not well preserved. It may also explain why so

many engravings are found here. Engravings can be cut much


more easily into raw rock than rock covered with calcite
film. J

THE MYSTERIOUS SCENE


IN THE WELL
Off one side of this chamber is a recess whose walls are
to
covered with entangled engravings, one on top of the other.
The figures of some animals have been deciphered, and one
that may possibly be that of a man.
A deep natural depression, like a dry well, is sunk into one
corner of this recess. About twelve feet down its wall, as

Above left: Two bisons painted in red and black at Lascaux. They appear
to be on the lookout for danger. Below These stags in the side
left:

gallery at Lascaux seem to be swimming. The group has been called the
"frieze of swimming stags."
The scene in the well. The rhinoceros at the left was probably painted
at some other time and is not a part of the scene itself.

though in the innersanctum of a shrine, a strange scene is


painted. It is the only one in Lascaux that unquestionably
shows the figure of a man. It is also the only one that seems
to tell a story.
The picture shows a wounded bison, its body pierced by a

(40)
spear and its hanging out. In front of the bison is an
entrails
oddly drawn figure of a man falling backward, giving the
impression he was killed by the bison. Compared with the
artistic drawing of the bison, the man is crudely drawn in
outline. He has the head of a bird. His arms are motionless
and have four fingers for each hand, attached to the wrists
like little sticks.
A bird on the end of a stick is drawn under the man's fall-

ing figure, and a weapon called a spear-thrower points to the


bird. Fartheron to the left is the picture of a rhinoceros fac-
ing away from the man and the bison.
Several different meanings have been suggested for the
scene. Some scientists think the man may represent a sor-
cerer killed while trying to weave a spell over the bison in
order to make it easier for the hunters to kill the animal.They
think this because the man's bird-head tells that he was a
magician or priest wearing a mask. Many also think that the
sorcerer is not meant to be shown as falling, but simply as
leaning backward. Modern scientists say that the rhinoceros
is not an actual part of this scene, but was painted at some
other time.
The meaning of the bird on the pole is a mystery to all
scientists and artists. Some think it represents a funeral pole,
others, the clan of the fallen man. A modern theory holds
that, since the composition is that of a hunting scene, the
birdshows something about hunting methods used by Cro-
Magnon man. The bird on the pole may have been used as a
decoy, to attract the attention of the bison, while the hunters
closed in on their quarry with spears. The greatest mystery
of all is why this scene was painted in such a hidden spot.

(41)
However, something is known about the kind of men who
made the pictures in Lascaux, in Altamira, and in the other
caves. Human skeletons and skulls found in Les Eyzies and
elsewhere in the area have furnished a good clue to the pres-
ence and physical appearance of Cro-Magnon man. The art
in the caves and the implements found near them have given
scientists some idea of how these Ice Age men lived.

CRO-MAGNON MAN
Tools left by Cro-Magnon men show that they lived in the
Stone Age. When a scientist uses the term "Stone Age" he
does not mean a certain time in the earth's history, or a cer-
tain number of years ago. He means that people who made
and used stone tools, and who had not yet found out how to
use metal ones, lived in the Stone Age. There are some Stone
Age tribes living today, in remote parts of Australia and New
Guinea.
Cro-Magnon skeletons show that the men were tall, erect,
and powerfully built. The women were considerably shorter
than the men. The facial appearance of both men and women
was like that of modern Europeans, except that the Cro-
Magnon peoples' foreheads were higher. Scientists think that
if a Cro-Magnon man were to come alive today and was

dressed in modern clothes, he could not be told apart from a


modern European.
At the time Cro-Magnon man lived, beginning about 40,000
years ago, southern France and northern Spain were cold,
although not ice-covered. Vegetation was poor, and there
were few forests. Mammoths and woolly rhinoceroses, pro-

(42)
tected by their thick fur, roamed the land. Reindeer, wild
horses, cave bears, bison, cave lions, and wild boars lived in
the meadows and woods.
in the
The people lived in the mouths of caves or under overhang-
ing rocks, where they found shelter from wind, rain, and
snow. They hunted animals and gathered fruits, nuts, roots,
and berries for food. They knew nothing about farming, but
they used fire for protection against animals at night, for
warmth, and for roasting meat.
The skins of animals provided them with clothing. Bone
and ivory needles were used to sew the skins into some type
of garment. Bone buttons and toggles have been found, show-
ing that the clothing was fastened close to the body. Sharp
awls for punching holes into skins have also been found. Cro-
Magnon man first punched holes in the skins he wanted to
sew together, then used a needle threaded with sinews of
animals for the actual sewing.
Tools were made of bone, ivory, or stone. Some wooden
tools were probably used as well, but none have been found,
for they have long since rotted away. The stone tools were
made of flint or a type of volcanic glass called obsidian.
These stones are very hard, but can readily be chipped into
a desired shape. Also, sharp-edged flakes can be broken off
flint and obsidian. The flakes can be trimmed to make sharp

cutting blades and scraping tools.


Almost nothing is known about the daily lives of these
people, for nothing remains that tells of it. Their culture
customs, family life, and tribal life remains unknown. Their
art and industries the work they did are all that remain.
Scientists give the name "Upper Paleolithic" to the kind of

(43)
r.

Needles (top) and awl (bottom) used by Cro-Magnon man.

industry that produced the tools used by Cro-Magnon man.


"Paleolithic" is derived from two Latin words meaning "an-
cient" and "stone." "Upper Paleolithic industry" means that
the stone tools were more skillfully worked than the cruder
stone implements found among the remains of earlier man.

(44)
Anthropologists have divided the Upper Paleolithic indus-
try into four main groups, according to the type of tools
made. The groups were given names that came from the
places where the tools were first found. Since the earliest
finds of Cro-Magnon man and his industry were in southern
France, these groups all have French names.
The earliest industry was called the Aurignacian, from the
remains found in a cave in Aurignac, in the Pyrenees Moun-
tains. These Cro-Magnon men of the Aurignacian period left
many drawings and paintings on the walls of the caves. They
also left a number of small clay and stone figurines, mostly
of women.
The Aurignacian industry was followed by one called the
Gravettian. Tools of this period were found in La Gravette,
a cave in the Dordogne region. But although the earliest finds
of the Gravettian period were made in France, this industry
was widespread throughout the plains of eastern and central
Europe. Gravettian man left many figurines, almost entirely
of women and of animals. These figurines, only a few inches
high, were carved out of stone or ivory, or modeled in clay
and then fired.
The third industry was called the Solutrian, from the vil-
lage of Solutre. Some small clay and stone figures made by
Solutrian man have been found, but no drawings or paintings.
Solutrian industry is characterized by its especially fine
chipped stone spearpoints shaped like laurel leaves.
The Magdalenian industry, named for a cave called La
Madeleine, was the last and the most advanced of the four
groups. Magdalenian Cro-Magnon men were the great cave
artists of Spain and France.

(45)
Aurignacian figurine of a woman, from
southwestern France. The head has been
broken off and been lost.

Engravings of a horse. Scratches made by fingers and by cave-bear claws


can be seen around the horse and inside its body.
BEGINNINGS OF
CAVE ART
Aurignacian men possibly first got the idea for cave draw-
ings when they saw scratches in the cave walls made by
cave-bear claws. With their fingers, the men scratched wavy
covered the walls of some of the caves. The
lines in clay that
curves of the scratch lines may have suggested the figure of
an animal. An artist then added a few more lines to complete
the animal figure.
The idea may have come about in a different
of using paint
way. Although anthropologists do not know for certain, they
think that Cro-Magnon men painted their bodies and faces,
as part of their religious ceremonies. A paint-smeared hand
may accidentally have touched a cave wall and left a picture
of the hand. Anthropologists suppose that artists, seeing this,
liked the idea of painting hands, but thought of an easier way
to doThey used the hand itself as a stencil. The outspread
so.

hand was rested against the cave wall and paint applied
around it.

Pictures of hands appear in many caves, but there are few


colored hands. Most are the color of the rock, and stand out
against a background of red or black paint. The hand pic-
tures are usually the oldest paintings in the caves. Among
them are hands that appear to have been mutilated. These
have one or more fingers cut off at the first or second joint.
Scientists account for these strangely mutilated hands in this
way:

(47)
As part of the religious practices of certain primitive tribes
today, some members mutilate a certain part of their bodies
as a personal sacrifice to their gods. Sometimes the mutila-
tion an offering to induce a god to grant a special favor;
is

sometimes it is a thanksgiving offering. Cro-Magnon men


may have observed a similar religious practice cutting off
one or more fingers at a joint as a sacrifice to their gods.
Mutilated hands do not appear in all the caves that contain
painted hands. However, they are scattered widely enough
hand mutilation was a fairly common
so that scientists think
practice among the Cro-Magnons.
The shape of the cave walls probably gave Cro-Magnon
artists the idea of making paintings of animals. A bulge in
the rock may have looked to them like the head or shoulders
of a certain animal, just as we sometimes "see" an animal
when we look The artists then thought
at a big rock. of com-
pleting the rest of the body by painting or engraving it.

HOW CAVE PAINTINGS


WERE PRODUCED
In painting the caves, the artists used a fairly common
mineral called ocher, or iron oxide, for their colors. The min-
eral comes in shades of yellow, red, and brown. This is why
the paintings are in these colors. Black paint was made from
the mineral manganese oxide and, only occasionally, from
charcoal. There is no blue or green paint in any of the caves,
for the artists did not know of any mineral that produced
these colors.

[48)
The minerals were placed in hollowed-out pieces of rock
and pounded into a powder. Then the powder was moistened
with a liquid, or binder, so that the paint could be applied.
Several different kinds of binders were used. Animal blood,
vegetable juice, and egg white were among them. The most
common binder was melted animal fat. The pigments mixed
with fat produced an oil paint. Thus the cave paintings might
be considered the first oil paintings ever made.
Modern and scientists who have made studies of
artists
these cave paintings have closely examined the strokes of the
paint. They have come to the conclusion that the liquid paint
was applied with brushes made of hair or feathers, or with
small pads of fur or lichen. The pads were probably used
where large surfaces had to be painted. In most of the caves
the artists first made the outline with a fine brush, then cut
the outline with an engraving tool that anthropologists call a
"burin." At Altamira and in several other caves colored
crayons, little sticklike pieces of ocher, were found neatly
lined up on little stone benches. The crayons were sharpened,
somewhat like lipsticks. They were probably used to make
the outlines of the animals.
some paintings the color was blown onto
In the wall
through tubes made of hollow animal bones or of reeds.
A few such blow tubes were found near the entrance to the
Lascaux cave. By examining the paintings closely, anthropol-
ogists have figured out how the blow tubes were used. The
cave with a brush dipped in liquid
artists outlined the figure
paint, usually black. Then the whole surface to be painted
was smeared over with fat or oil. Next, powdered colors
were blown on, and the powder remained fixed to the oily

(49)
surface. Most of the pictures of hands were made in this way,
with the hand held against the wall, the paint tube held
left

in the right hand, and the paint blown around the left hand.
In painting the caves, there must have been a number of
artists working under the direction of one master artist. Some
were probably merely apprentices who held torches or lime-
stone lamps filled with animal fat to light the dark caves.
There must also have been assistants who ground the min-
erals into powder, mixed the paints, and handed them to the
artists.

Where were high on the wall or on the ceil-


the paintings
ing, some help must have been needed to raise the artists.
Perhaps a scaffolding was erected, or perhaps the artists sat
on the shoulders of others. Or they may have used a brush
with a very long handle.
Painting the ceiling in the Altamira cave presented a spe-
cial problem. The ceiling was too low for the artists to stand
upright as they painted, yet too high for them to reach if they
sat down. Was on which they sat? Did
a scaffolding erected
they kneel and use long-handled brushes? Did they sit on the
shoulders of assistants who in turn sat on the cave floor?
There is no way of knowing.

SKETCH SHEETS AND


ART SCHOOLS
The artists usuallymade small sketches of the drawings or
paintings before they worked on the wall itself. Anthropol-

(50)
ogists know this because several stone "sketch sheets" were
found near painted caves. Large-size reproductions of
in or
the figures on the small sketches could be recognized on the
cave walls.
Near one site, Limeuil, in southwestern France, one hun-
dred and thirty-seven small sketch sheets were found. Some
of the sketch sheets had good drawings on them, some had
poor ones. Many had corrections such as an art teacher
would have made. This has caused anthropologists to think
that an art school was located at Limeuil, where young artists
were trained.
A good sketch sheet must have been highly prized by its
owner. There is some evidence to show that it may even have
been sold to another artist. This evidence comes from the
painting of a bison in Font-de-Gaume. The bison has un-
usually powerful shoulders, found in no other painting. Be-
cause the bison is so distinctive, the original sketch sheet
from which it was painted was easily recognized. It was
found on a Cro-Magnon site about two hundred miles from
Font-de-Gaume. Apparently the original artist had traded his
sketch sheet after it had served its purpose.

CAVE PAINTINGS AND


SYMPATHETIC MAGIC
Strangely, Cro-Magnon man did not actually live in the
caves whose walls were painted or engraved. These caves
were not fit for living quarters because they were hard to
enter, had many narrow passages, and were deep and dark.

(51)
Reproduction by Breuil of a bison with red-tipped arrows shown on its

body. The painting is in the cave at Niaux in France.

Paintings and drawings were not made on walls near the


entrances, where some daylight could reach them so that
they could be viewed. Instead, the pictures were made deep
inside the caves, where no daylight entered. Often they were
made in hidden nooks and crannies. Therefore they must
have been made for some secret purpose.
This secret purpose possibly had to do with "sympathetic
magic" connected with hunting. This is a type of magic prac-
ticed by many primitive people. They believe that a person
making an image of an animal has magical powers over that
animal. Those who make the picture, or who say magic for-
mulas in front of it, can cast a death spell over a live animal
like the one in the picture. Thus success in the hunt is
assured.
In cave art, animals were sometimes shown with their
bodies pierced by darts or spears. The people may have be-
lieved that by performing ceremonies before this kind of
picture they could will the animal to be killed.

(52)
Further evidence points to the possible use of these pic-
tures for purposes of sympathetic magic. A number of pic-
tures show dancing men, wearing animal skins or animal
masks. In one, the man wears the head of a deer. His hands
can be seen, covered with bear paws, while the tail of a wild
horse trails from his buttocks. These are the figures of sor-
cerers performing rites of magic, possibly dancing a beast
dance to charm the spirits of the animals.
If indeed the paintings were made for purposes of sympa-

thetic magic, then ceremonies were probably performed in

Reproduction of an elephant outlined in red, with a dark spot, possibly


meant to show its heart. The painting may have been drawn for purposes
of sympathetic magic. It is in the cave of Pindal, Spain.
^ -

'

e
\ J

Dancing man, probably a "sorcerer," on the wall in the cave of Trois


Freres, France. The cave picture is partly engraved and partly painted
in black. Drawing of the picture made by Abbe Breuil.

front of the picture just before a hunt. Many footprints that


were found pressed into the clay of the cave floor in front of
some of the paintings seem to indicate this. The ceremonies
were probably led by a magician or sorcerer, who may have
been either the head of the tribe or the master artist who
made the picture. Imaginary spears and darts were thrown at
the animals by men dancing to the incantation of the sorcerer.

(54)
Real weapons may sometimes have been used, for some of
the paintings are scarred, as if darts had been thrown at them.

CAVE ART MAY HAVE


A DIFFERENT MEANING
Some modern scientists studying cave art are not entirely
satisfied with the theory that cave paintings were made for
purposes of sympathetic magic. Certain anthropologists, par-
ticularly Andre Leroi-Gourhan, director of the Musee de
l'Homme (Museum of Man) in Paris, have been trying to find
other explanations.
In the late 1940's, Leroi-Gourhan began making studies of
cave paintings by looking for patterns in the way the animals
were grouped. He also studied the positions of the abstract
designs in connection with the groups, and the placing of
groups in various parts of the caves. He was especially struck
by three things. First was the fact that over many thousands
of years, of all the animals living in those times, only a few
types were chosen to be shown. Second, certain kinds of
designs appeared most frequently with certain animal groups.
And with the help of a computer, he found that the same
last,

kind of animal groups, mostly horses, were almost always


near the entrance, and in narrow and deeper parts of the
cave. Other groups, mostly bison and wild cattle, were
usually in larger, more open spaces within the cave.

(55)

i
Mammoth and bulls painted on the walls of the cave at Pech-Merle,
France, discovered in 1922.

According to Leroi-Gourhan, the abstract designs can be


divided into two basic groups, one representing the male,
and the other the female. The designs representing the male
are almost always found associated with horses, and those
representing the female, with bison and wild cattle. He there-
fore reasoned that horses represented the male, and bison
and wild cattle the female. The reason for the placement of
the groups in different parts of the cave is still obscure.
From these observations, Leroi-Gourhan has formed a
theory about the meaning of the cave paintings that is differ-

(56)
':
.%',V:-':;?; ,, vutu
*

Paintings in the cave of Pindal, Spain, discovered in 1908. The meaning


of the strange club-shaped figures at the bottom, center, is unknown.

Horse drawn in red on the wall of La


Pasiega cave in northern Spain. The cave
was discovered in 1911.

_!_
ent from the one generally accepted. He agrees that the paint-
ings have religious meaning, but were not concerned with
sympathetic magic or the hunt. He thinks the caves were
temples of a complicated religion in which male and female
forces played a large part.
There are some disagreements with this theory among sci-
entists, but, nevertheless, it is being studied closely. The
theory has opened up a whole new train of ideas and reason-
ing that may yield a better understanding of the meaning of
cave art.
Whatever theory scientists support, they all agree on one
thing. Cave pictures were not meant for decoration. They
had a deep magical or religious meaning and were important
in the life of Ice Age man.

THOUSANDS OF YEARS
OF CAVE ART
Because the cave artists drew pictures of animals they
observed, earlier pictures show some animals that do not
appear in the later ones.For example, Font-de-Gaume has
especially fine paintings of mammoths and woolly rhinoc-
eroses among its older paintings. None of these animals ap-
pears in later ones, either at Font-de-Gaume or elsewhere. So
the later paintingsmust have been made many hundreds,
perhaps thousands, of years later when the mammoth and
woolly rhinoceros had disappeared from Europe.

(58)
Until 1947 only the approximate age of the cave paintings
was known. In that year a method called radiocarbon dating
was perfected. By this method, the age of any material up to
30,000 years old can be calculated fairly accurately, provided
The carbon, how-
the material contains the chemical carbon.
ever, must have come from a substance that was alive at
some time.
- Human and animal bones, pollen grains from plants, wood
charcoal from ancient and charcoal used to make black
fires,

paint in some of the caves all contain such carbon. Wher-


ever possible, scientists have dated these materials by the
radiocarbon dating method.
Taken altogether, the evidence shows that the cave pic-
tures were made at different times by different groups of
people but all were Cro-Magnon Ice Age men. When a
painting or a drawing had served its purpose for one group
of people, a later people made their own pictures. They cared
little if they engraved or painted over a picture already on the
walls. Each group had to make its own pictures for its own
magic.
The paintings at Altamira, for example, were not all made
during the same period. Traces of older paintings underlie
many of the polychrome paintings. The older ones were made
in Aurignacian times and the later ones in Magdalenian
times. In Lascaux the frieze of little horses is older than most
of the paintings of cows and bulls. A bull of Aurignacian art
in Font-de-Gaume is overlaid by the later painting of a bison.
The period of Cro-Magnon cave art appears to have come
to an end about 12,000 years ago. At about that time the
European climate became warmer. With the warmer climate

(59)
Frieze of rhinoceroses in the cave of Rouffignac in France. The paintings
were discovered in 1956.

came more vegetation that could be used for food. At about


this time, too, men begangrow their
to own food and to do-
mesticate animals. Magic was no longer necessary to ensure
a successful hunt. This may have been the reason cave art in
France and northern Spain was no longer produced after
Magdalenian times.
Between the years 1903 and 1956 one hundred and
at least
eight painted caves had been found in France and the Canta-
brian region of Spain. Abbe Breuil studied and wrote about

(60)
many of them. For when a cave was discovered, it was he
who was usually called upon to judge whether the art was
authentic Ice Age art. Most of his explanations of the meth-
ods used to paint the caves and the meanings of the paintings
themselves are widely accepted. Caves are still being
still

excavated, some in remote places that cannot be easily


reached. Some of the caves are being studied by men trained
by Abbe Breuil. In 1961, the pioneer scholar-priest died at
the age of eighty-four.
In recent years painted caves have been discovered in
southern Italy, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, and in other
parts of Europe. In 1962, a painted cave was found as far east
as the Ural Mountains in the Soviet Union. This cave, the
Kapovaya cave in the southern Urals, has clear paintings of
mammoths, rhinoceroses, bison, and horses, and also some
abstract designs. None of these other European caves has
been studied thoroughly as yet, but the paintings seem to be
similar in style to those in France and Spain. When the
studies are completed, scientists may have to change some
of their theories about cave art, as well as about prehistoric
man in Europe.

(61)
MEXICAN CAVE PAINTINGS
In the 1960's, an American on
writer, Erie Stanley Gardner,
vacation in Mexico, discovered cave paintings near a remote
village in Baja (Lower) California. The paintings were of men,
twelve to fifteen feet tall, and skillfully done in red and black.
One man appears to be the chief, because he wears a pecu-
liar three-pronged headdress. The left side of his body is

painted in black, and the right side in red. Farther down the
peninsula, aMexican guided the writer to another cave that
had pictures of both men and animals. One picture shows a
man who just He still stands with his hands out-
been killed.
stretched, although a number of arrows penetrate his body.
Nothing is known about the people who painted either of
these caves, except that they were probably Stone Age men.
Nor is anything known about the age of the paintings or the
reason they were made. Much more exploration and study
of these Mexican caves are necessary if the meaning of the
paintings be found.
is to
Other exciting Mexican cave paintings were reported
about seventy-five miles northeast of Acapulco in July, 1966,
by two American amateur archaeologists. These men had
heard rumors of paintings on cave walls deep inside the
caves. The paintings had been described to them as "witch-
craft works." They induced one of the local Mexicans to
guide them to the cave.
The men found paintings in colors of red, yellow, green,
black, and white on the wall, more than half a mile inside

Paintings of animals in a cave in Baja, California. (From The Hidden


Heart of Baja, copyright 1962 by Erie Stanley Gardner.)
the cave. Here, as in the Cro-Magnon paintings, no daylight
could enter. The dark secrecy of the interior of the cave hints
that these paintings, like those in Spain and France, were
made some magical or religious purpose.
for
The paintings were found to be less than 3,000 years old,
but they are thought to be the oldest paintings discovered in
North America. They were probably made by artists of the
Olmec people, who lived in Mexico before the Mayas and
Aztecs.
One painting shows two human figures in what may have
been an Olmec ritual. Another shows a seven-foot-long
plumed serpent, with an animal that looks like a jaguar, leap-
ing at the snake. There are also some line drawings on the
cave wall, outlining a human figure and two animal heads.
Little is known about the Olmecs. Archaeologists hope
that a study of the paintings and pieces of pottery found in
the cave will help shed some light on the way of life of these
early Mexicans.

ROCK PAINTINGS-
SPANISH LEVANTINE ART
The idea of painting on rock was not limited to Ice Age
men. Later groups of Stone Age men painted pictures on the
walls of overhanging ledges of rock or in rock shelters, but
almost none were deep inside the caves. Inland from the hilly
eastern coast of Spain, in a region called the Levant, a num-
ber of painted rock shelters have been found. The paintings,

(64)
although not as clear as the cave paintings, have been pre-
served because of the dryness of the climate in that region.
The rock Spanish Levantine art.
art of this region is called
Archaeologists do not agree about the age of these rock
paintings, but they do agree that the art is probably less than
10,000 years old.
There seems to be little or no connection between Spanish
Levantine art and that of the Cro-Magnon Ice Age art. Al-
though the rock shelters were also painted with colors

A group of men, mostly armed, from a rock shelter in Albocacer in


eastern Spain.
One of the honey-gatherers (actual size of painting) in the rock shelter
at the Cuevas de la Arana in eastern Spain.

obtained from powdered minerals, their picture style is al-

together different. The paintings are in red and black only.


They are mostly small, each figure being no larger than a
man's hand. The figures of animals are lifelike, but the fig-

ures of people are not. The people are tall and thin, almost
like stick figures, but easily recognizable as people.
Pictures of animals are combined with pictures of people,
and form compositions that often tell a story. Hunting inci-

(66)
dents are shown, one of a man following the tracks of an
animal. Another scene shows
group of marching warriors
a
holding weapons. In one picture a fleeing warrior loses his
headdress as he collapses, his body pierced by several
arrows.
Some scenes afford a look into the daily lives of the people.
In one, a woman is walking, holding a child by the hand.
In another, two honey-gatherers are climbing a rope to a nest
of wild bees that are attacking them. Women and children
as well as men are shown in many of the pictures.
The reasons for painting the rocks are unknown. Some
painted rock shelters may have been places of worship. But
most of the pictures simply appear to tell a story or to record
an incident in the life of the people.

ROCK ART IN AFRICA


There are a number of rock paintings in various parts of
Africa, but none are as old as those in Spain and France.
It is doubtful that any of these African paintings are much

more than 5,000 years old, and some of them are only several
hundred years old.
The style of the African pictures is very much like that of
the Spanish Levantine paintings. This has led scientists to
think that possibly large groups of people migrated between
Africa and Spain across a land bridge that once connected
the two continents.

(67)
Drawings made of Bushman cave paintings in South Africa.

**+*

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Cave paintings at Tassili, Algeria. The paintings of people tell something


about their everyday life.
South Africa and southwest Africa have rock paintings
about 3,000 years old that were probably painted by Bush-
men. Most of them show scenes of the hunt. Rhodesia and
Nyasaland have about 1,100 known rock paintings, made by
the Bushmen or their ancestors.
High on a plateau midst of the dry Sahara Desert
in the
are rock shelters painted by prehistoric men. The Sahara
was not always a desert. It was once fertile grassland occu-
pied by people who grazed cattle and grew grain on the high
plains. When the climate changed about 2000 B.C., and the
Sahara became dry, the people living there migrated to other
areas. They left behind them many painted rock shelters.

Ancient paintings, in brilliant colors,on the canyon wall at the Zufii

Indian Reservation in southwestern United States.


The most interesting of these are in a region called Tassili,
at the northern edge of the Algerian desert.
The pictures at Tassili are especially interesting because
they tell about the life of the people. Human figures are
shown dancing, watching herds, milking cows, and engaging
domestic occupations. Their dress and hair styles,
in various
weapons and household implements, are all shown. The
paintings were discovered in 1909, but their meaning is un-
known, and may never be discovered.
Rock paintings have been found in Australia. As yet, sci-
entists have not dated them accurately, but some of the paint-
ings appear to be many thousands of years old. Some have
also been found in the dry areas of southwestern United
States. These were undoubtedly the work of American In-
dians living some few hundred years ago, and even later.
Compared to the Cro-Magnon paintings of 15,000 or 20,000
years ago, the Australian and American rock art might almost
be considered modern.

VISITING THE CAVE


PAINTINGS TODAY
Most and rocks can be visited today.
of the painted caves
Actually, many of them are seldom visited, either because
they have only a few paintings, or the paintings are faded.
Also, some of the caves and shelters are inaccessible except
by foot or animal-back. Those at Altamira and Lascaux,

(72)
the finest of all, have been visited by many thousands of
people from all parts of the world.
At Altamira, heavy door has been set into the opening
a
of the cave to protect the paintings from damage that may
result from temperature changes. The door is opened only to
admit visitors, and is closed as soon as they have entered.
The cave is dimly lit by shaded electric lights. The lighting
is skillfully arranged, so that the visitor sees the paintings
by light such as Cro-Magnon man himself may have seen
them.
It no longer necessary to crouch to view the painted
is

ceiling. A deep, wide trench has been dug all around the
main hall of the cave as a path for visitors. The floor of the
trench averages about seven and a half feet from the ceiling.
In other parts of the cave, the floor has been dug out and
lowered to make walking easy. Spanish government guides
conduct parties into the cave and explain the paintings.
The Lascaux cave is entered through two massive metal
doors several yards apart. The outer door opens into a small
well-lighted vestibule. Only after the outer door is closed
is the second, inner door opened. And this is closed as soon

as the last person in the party enters the main hall. Here, and
in the rest of the cave, the lighting is the same as at Altamira.
Dim and subdued, it casts an air of mystery over the paint-
ings.
Until 1963, thetwo French government guides were Ravi-
dat and Marsal, two of the four discoverers of Lascaux in
1940. Then, unfortunately, in 1963 the cave was closed to
the public. In spite of all precautions to preserve the paint-

(73)
ings, a mold had begun to grow on the and to
paintings,
damage their colors. Scientists think the air exhaled by the
many visitors produced conditions favorable for the growth
of the mold.
Research is now being done to find a way to stop the pres-
ent mold growth and to prevent such damage in the future.
When the way is found, the cave will be opened once more.
Government officials hope this will be possible by 1970. You,
the reader, may be among the fortunate ones who will then
be able to see the paintings and Ravidat and Marsal may
be your guides.

(74)
APPENDIX I

SOME PAINTED CAVES


IN SPAIN AND FRANCE

Most of these painted or engraved caves are owned and


maintained by the French or Spanish governments, and are
open to the public. A government guide conducts visitors
through the caves.

In Spain

Altamira near Santillana del Mar


Discovered in 1879.
Has polychrome paintings of bison, deer, horses, and
boars. The first painted cave to be discovered, and one of
the most beautiful painted caves ever found.

Covalanas near the village of Ramales


Discovered in 1903.
Has figures, mostly deer, in red.

El Castillo in Puente Viesgo


Discovered in 1903.
Most paintings are outlined in red or black; some are poly-
chrome. Has many abstract designs and many pictures of

(75)

J
hands. A horse whose body is pierced with three arrows
is considered one of the proofs that Cro-Magnon man prac-
ticed sympathetic magic. A modern-type elephant is
painted in outline on one of the walls. This is one of two
paintings of elephants found in Spain.

Homos de la Pena near the city of Torrelavega


Discovered in 1903.
It has many engravings but no paintings. Engravings are
mostly of horses.

La Haza at Ramales
Discovered in 1903.
A small cave with a few well-made paintings, mostly of
horses painted in red.

La Pasiega in Puente Viesgo, next to El Castillo


Discovered in 1911.
Beautiful outlines of animals, mostly horses, deer, and
bison. Paintings are in red, black, and light brown. Has
many abstract designs.

Pindal near Pimiango


Discovered in 1908.
Engraving of fish, and animals both engraved and painted
in monochrome and polychrome. Painting in outline of a
modern-type elephant, with a red patch near its center that
may represent the elephant's heart.

(76)
In France

Cougnac near Goudon


Discovered in 1953.
Paintings at far end of cave. Very well preserved figures,
in outline, of mammoth, deer, elk, and an elephant.

Font-de-Gaume near Les Eyzies


Discovered in 1901.
First cave with polychrome paintings to be found in
France. Has painted and engraved figures of bison, rein-
deer, horses, and a few woolly rhinoceroses. Paintings
deep in the cave are better preserved than those nearer
the entrance.

LaMouthe near Les Eyzies


Discovered in 1895.
Has engravings of animals, and a few faded paintings.

Lascaux at Montignac
Discovered in 1940.
The most beautifully painted cave ever discovered. Poly-
chrome paintings of bulls, cows, deer, elk, and horses. One
painting of a human figure. The cave was closed to the
public in 1963 because of a growth of mold on the paint-
ings. May be reopened by 1970.

Les Combarelles near Les Eyzies


Discovered in 1901.
Has no paintings, but very fine engravings of animals. Also

[77]
has several engravings of human figures with animal heads
or wearing animal masks.

Niaux near Tarascon-sur-Ariege, in the foothills of


the Pyrenees Mountains
Discovered in 1906.
Well-preserved paintings in black outline and complete
paintings in red. Has very good engraving of a bison
pierced by arrows. Many human footprints in the clay
floor.

Pech-Merle at Cabrerets
Discovered in 1922.
Paintings in black outline of horses, bison, and many mam-
moths. Has painting of fish in red outline. Has many paint-
ings of hands with red dots surrounding them. Engravings
show a cave bear pierced by arrows, and the figure of a
man pierced by a spear. This cave has unusual paintings
of spotted horses. There are many human footprints in the
clay of the floor.

Rouffignac near Cro-de-Granville


Discovered in 1956.
A very large cave; paintings almost a mile inside the cave.
Small electric railway takes visitors to the painted area.
Beautifully painted cave, with animals in black outline.
Has an especially large, beautiful frieze of twenty-seven
mammoths, and another large frieze of woolly rhinoceroses,
each animal four feet long.

(78)
Les Trois Freres near St. Girons (privately owned)
Discovered in 1914.
Some paintings. Has the finest collection of engravings
anywhere, of many animals. Has especially fine masked
human figures performing ritual dances. One picture, part-
ly engraved and partly painted, shows a sorcerer with a
human body and legs, but with a tail, antlers, cat's ears,
and a bearded mask. Dancing human footprints are em-
bedded in the clay floor.

(79)

J
APPENDIX II

RADIOCARBON DATING

Some chemical elements are radioactive that is, they


decay and change into other elements. Uranium is one of
these elements. Over a long period of time it decays into lead.
There are also certain chemical elements that exist in nature
in more than one form. For example, the most common type
of carbon found in nature is carbon 12. Another type found
in nature is radiocarbon 14. Radiocarbon 14 decays slowly
and changes to nitrogen.
Most of the carbon dioxide in the air is made up of oxygen
and carbon 12, but a small part of it is made up of oxygen
and radiocarbon 14. Plants use carbon dioxide in making
food. Some of the carbon dioxide they use has small amounts
of radiocarbon 14. Part of the food they make is used by the
plant for growth. Thus wood and other plant material have
both carbon 12 and radiocarbon 14 in them.
The radiocarbon in the wood (or charcoal, if the wood
has been charred) slowly decays to nitrogen. As time goes
on, less and less radiocarbon remains in the plant material.
Scientists know the length of time it takes for half of the
number of radiocarbon atoms in any given amount of ma-
terial to change to nitrogen. This period of time is called
the half-life of radiocarbon 14. It is equal to 5,570 years, plus
or minus forty years.

(80)
Scientists compare the number of radiocarbon atoms pres-
ent in a piece of plant material of unknown age with a similar
plant material whose age they know. For example, suppose
a piece of ancient charcoal has half the number of radiocar-
bon atoms present as in a piece of modern charcoal of the
same size. Scientists then estimate the ancient charcoal to be
5,57040 years old. (A specially constructed Geiger counter
is used to detect the radiocarbon atoms in a sample.)

Since all food eaten by animals and humans comes from


plants, plant material goes into the growth of animals and
humans. Radiocarbon thus becomes part of their bones, and
ancient bones can be dated the same way as charcoal. How-
ever, most archaeologists do not rely on very accurate dating
by this method for dates earlier than 20,000 years ago.

(81)
GLOSSARY
archaeologist a scientist who studies ancient peoples and
their culture by digging up and studying the relics left by
them.
Aurignacian the earliest period in Upper Paleolithic in-
dustry in France and Spain. The period began about 25,000
years ago and lasted about 5,000 years.
awl a thin-pointed tool used to pierce small holes in leather
or fur.
burin a stone tool with a sharp, chisel-like edge.
calcite the crystalline form of calcium carbonate, the chief
mineral in limestone.
Cro-Magnon a type of man living in Europe, particularly
in France and northern Spain during the last part of the
latest ice age. The type first appeared about 40,000 years
ago.
flint a hard mineral usually chunks embedded in
found in
limestone or chalk. Stone Age man used it for making
sharp tools because it could be chipped or flaked to make
a sharp cutting edge.
frieze a horizontal band on a wall, decorated with paintings
or sculpture.
Gravettian a period in upper Paleolithic industry that fol-
lowed the Aurignacian. Gravettian industry was wide-
spread throughout the eastern and central plains of Europe.
limestone a rock made almost entirely of the chemical
calcium carbonate. Limestone is light-colored rock, usually

(82)
whitish, yellowish, or gray. It is sedimentary rock, origi-
nally formed under the sea.
Magdalenian the last period of the Upper Paleolithic in-
dustry in France and Spain. It dates from about 20,000
years ago and was at its height between 10,000 and 8000
B.C.
mammoth an extinct type of elephant that lived where the
climate was cold. It was a very large animal with a hairy
coat and long curved tusks.
manganese oxide a black mineral found in pockets in clay
formed from decomposed limestone. The mineral was
ground into powder and used in making black paint.
monochrome painting a painting made in one color.
obsidian a mineral, usually black. It is volcanic glass. It

can be chipped and flaked into sharp instruments, particu-


larly knives.
ocher a mineral, iron oxide. found in shades of red,
It is

brown, and yellow. It is ground up and used for paint


pigments.
Age Old Stone Age, a period in man's history
Paleolithic
when his tools were made of chipped and flaked unpol-
ished stone.
paleontology the science that deals with the study of
ancient life, usually as shown by fossils.
Pleistocene Ice Age a period in the earth's history when
parts of the Northern Hemisphere were covered by great
ice sheets. The Pleistocene Ice Age began about 1,000,000
years ago. The last ice sheet melted in Canada about 6,000
years ago.
polychrome paintings paintings done in many colors.

(83)
prehistoric archaeology the branch of archaeology that
deals with prehistoric man.
radiocarbon dating method of determining the age of a
a
once living substance by calculating the number of radio-
carbon atoms still present in that substance.
Solutrian a period in Upper Europe
Paleolithic industry in
that came between the Gravettian and the Magdalenian.
Solutrians left neither paintings nor engravings on cave
walls. They left some clay figures. They are noted for their
special type of stone tools.
Spanish Levantine art the paintings found on the rock of
shelters inland from the coast of eastern Spain, in a region
called the Spanish Levant.
sympathetic magic "magic" practiced by some
a type of
groups of people. People who practice sympathetic magic
believe that they gain power over an animal or a person by
making an image of that animal or person.
tectiforms line designs found in decorated caves. Some are
shaped like gratings, some like fence palings, some are
squares, rectangles, or triangles. A few early archaeologists
thought they represented roofs or dwellings, thus gave them
the name "tectiform." The word comes from a Latin word
meaning "roof," or "covering."
toggle a small rod or bolt placed through a loop as a
fastening.
Wisconsin glacial period the last period of Pleistocene gla-
ciation. began about 100,000 years ago and ended with
It

the melting of the last of the ice sheet in Canada about


6,000 years ago.
woolly rhinoceros an extinct type of rhinoceros that had a

(84)
heavy woolly coat. It lived in regions where the climate
was cold.
Wurm glacial period the European name for the Wisconsin
glacial period.

(85)
INDEX
Acapulco, Mexico, 62 Cave art,

African rock art, 67 age of, 58ff


Alfonso XII, King of Spain, 14 and sympathetic magic, 51-55
Altamira, Spain, 3, 4, 6, 14, 15, 22*. beginnings of, 47-48
25, 27, 29, 42, 49, 50,^597^ 73 how produced, 48
Anthropology, defined, 14 meanings of, 55ff
Archaeology, defined, 14 sketch sheets and art schools
Aurignac, France, 45 used, 50-51
Aurignacian industry, 45 Cave Art at Altamira (Breuil), 25
Australia, 42 Cave paintings, state of today, 72
"Chinese horses" (Lascaux), 34
Baja [Lower] California, 62 Cro-Magnon man, 19, 21, 22, 42-45,
Breuil, Abbe Henri, 20, 22, 29, 31,
46, 47, 48, 51, 59, 65
60, 61
Czechoslovakia, caves in, 61
Bushmen (African), 71

Cantabria region, 27 Dordogne River, 16


Capitan, Louis, 20, 22 Dordogne valley, France, 5, 6, 25

(86)
El Castillo cave, 27 Montignac, France, 27, 28
Musee de l'Homme (Museum of
Font-de-Gaume, 22, 24, 51, 58, 59 Man), Paris, 55
"Frieze of little horses" (Lascaux),
34 New Guinea, 42
New Zealand, rock art in, 72
Gardner, Erie Stanley, 62 Nyasaland, rock art in, 71
Gravettian industry, 45
Olmec culture (Mexico), 64
Hall of the Bulls (Lascaux cave),
30-31 Paleolithic, defined, 44
Homo sapiens, 19 Paleontology, defined, 20
Paris Exhibition of 1878, 4
International Congress of Anthro- Peyrony, Denis, 20, 21, 22
pology and Prehistoric Archaeol- Pleistocene Ice Age, 21
ogy (1880), 14-15
Italy, caves in, 61 Ravidat (French guide), 28, 73, 74
Rhodesia, rock art in, 71
Kapovaya cave (Urals), 61 Riviere, Emile, 19
Robot (dog), 28
La Gravette, France, 45 Rock painting. See Spanish Levan-
LaMouthe, France, 16, 19, 20, 21 tine art and African rock art.

''Lascaux cave (France), 27


calcite deposits in, 31-38 Sahara Desert, rock art in, 71
discovery of, 28 Santillana del Mar, Spain, 3, 4
paintings at, 29 Sautuolo, Marcelino de, 3, 4, 6, 8,

scene in well, 39-42, 73 9, 12, 13, 14, 19

Laval, Leon, 29 Sautuolo, Maria de, 3-4, 8, 15


Leroi-Gourbon, Andre, 55, 56, 58 Solutre, France, 45
Les Combarelles, 20 Solutrian industry, 45
Les Eyzies, France, 5, 16, 19, 20, 27 Spanish Levantine art, 6
Limeuil, France, 51 Stone Age, defined, 42
Stone Age men, 12, 13, 14, 16, 19,
Magdalenian industry, 45 27, 42-45. See also Cro-Magnon
Marsal (French guide), 73, 74 man.
Mexican cave paintings, 62 "Sympathetic magic," defined, 52

(87)
Tectiforms, defined, 34 Vezere valley, 16, 27
Villanova, Juan, 6, 14
University of Madrid, 6
Upper Paleolithic, defined, 43-44,
Wisconsin glaciation period, 21
industries of, 45
Wiirm glaciation period, 21
Ural Mountains, 61

Vezere River, 16 Yugoslavia, caves in, 61

(88)
Photos Courtesy of:

Page ii, Copyright, Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago. From a


diorama in the museum sculptor, Frederick Blaschke.
Pages 2, 57 top, Photo MAS, Barcelona.
Pages 5, 70, French Embassy Press and Information Division.
Pages 7, 26 top, Breuil: The Cave at Altamira. Courtesy, New York Public
Library.
Pages 9, 18, 23, 44, 46 top, Musee National de Prehistoire, Les Eyzies.
Pages 10 top, 11, Spanish National Tourist Office.
Pages 10 bottom, 57 bottom, author.
Pages 13, 27, New York Public Library.
Pages 17, 33 top, 35 bottom, 36 top, 38 top and bottom, 40, Archives Pho-
tographiques, Paris.
Pages 24, 25, Capitan, Breuil, and Peyroni: La Caverne de Font-de-Gaume.
Courtesy, New York Public Library.
Pages 26 bottom. 37, 46 bottom, Alcalde del Rio and Breuil: Les Cavernes
de la Region Cantabrique. Courtesy, New York Public Library.
Pages 32, 33 bottom, 35 top, 36 bottom, 56, French Government Tourist
Office.
Pages 52, 53, 66, Obermaier: Fossil Man in Spain. Courtesy, Hispanic
Society of America.
Pages 54, 65, Courtesy of American Museum of Natural History.
Page 60, Photo Rene, SPADEM.
Page 63, From The Hidden Heart of Baja, copyright
1962 by Erie
Stanley Gardner. Reprinted by permission of the publisher, William
Morrow and Company, Inc.
Page 68, Courtesy, Rhodesia National Tourist Board.
Page 69, South Africa Information Service.
Page 71, Bureau of Indian Affairs.

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Please do not remove cards from this
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REBECCA B. MARCUS, a native of
New York City, is the author of a
number of science books for children.
She is a graduate of Hunter College
and studied at Teachers College, Co-
lumbia University. For twenty years
she taught science in New York City
junior high schools. On her visit to the
Lascaux cave in 19G9, she became so
enthusiastic about the cave pamtmgs
that she began an intensive study of
Cro-Magnon man and his work. Mrs.
Marcus has recently returned with
her husband, an author of science
textbooks, from an extended explora-
tion of the painted caves of France
and Spain.

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