GENERAL REMARKS ON PREHISTORIC ART 1N EUROPE.
Universality of outlines of the record of man's exist ence before the dawn of history which we have now given are sufficient to enable us to draw certain highly important conclusions as to his early character and later development. He presents himself to us at first as very little above the brute; he is unintelligent, unambitious. Tens of thousands of years pass by and he changes scarcely perceptibly. But, taking our observations at widely-separated intervals of time, a change is visible. Small and unimportant as it seems to us, there is a gain, a progress, a steady advance. What if it cost him two hundred thousand years (see Vol. I. p. 18o) to learn that a stone could be polished, and thus improved as a tool, by rubbing it with another stone? The whole of the future was before him.
Ethnic Character of advancement did not proceed everywhere alike. It was, as it has always been, ethnic in its character. Nations, like individuals, have different gifts, and as in historic times first one nation, then another, has contributed that in which it is most skilled to the general progress of the race, so in studying the art-products of prehistoric ages we recognize clearly that the various tribes who succes sively occupied European soil, though each was superior in intellectual powers to its predecessor, by no means excelled in the same lines. The epoch known as the Solutreen (see p. 19) was the high-water mark of art in chipped stone (see 151. I, 6); in the Magdal6nien Epoch, which immediately followed, bone was in greater favor than stone, and the skill in working the latter fell off noticeably.
Art of I& .11agaralenien the Magdalenien, however, the arts of design, not wholly unknown in the Solutreen, acquired an aston ishing development at the hands of a race imbued with a strong ccsthetic sense. They covered their tools and weapons with intaglios and engrav ings, or they sought to adapt them to the form of some natural object. Their models were principally drawn from the animal world. Several statuettes in stone and bone have been discovered in deposits dating from this age. Some of these are of the human figure, male or female, but the majority depict animals of the chase. From these and the engravings on bones we can learn what were the principal animals which then inhab ited the European woods and streams. The mammoth, the reindeer, the elk, the aurochs, the bison, and their associates, all long since extinct in Central Europe, are shown with a vigor of outline that betokens the real though untrained artist. There are also a few fishes, some birds—notably the swan—and rarely plants.
Suljects of the engraver would attempt to represent a scene from life. One such incident is a combat between two deer; the one is down, the other stands over him. Again, there is a
hunter chasing a herd of aurochs. In such scenes there is no real group ing. The animals are depicted in single file—a method employed by the Indian tribes of the plains in painting their buffalo skins, and quite com monly by all peoples at the incipiency of art. (See Vol. I. pl. 38.) Decorative decorative designs abound in the works of this epoch, but they are very simple. Usually they are straight lines set at an angle and repeated; there are no composite figures, such as tri angles, crosses, or squares. Curved lines are noticeably rare, except as parts of compositions. It is doubtful if there are examples of their use for pure decorative effect. The figure of the circle or of the spiral is not seen, and there is an absolute lack of any drawings which we might sup pose were intended for symbols or ideograms. The zigzags, the chevrons, and such-like figures, common enough, were simply for ornament, and aspired to no more recondite use.
Loss of Artistic artistic sense revealed in these produc tions does not appear in rare examples and limited localities; it is com mon to a11 the remains of the Magdalenien Epoch, in France, Germany, Belgium, and England. This testifies to its ethnic character; it was a trait of the whole people who then inhabited those regions. All the more surprising is it to note how completely it disappears in the next epoch, that of the early lacustrine habitations, at the beginning of neo lithic times. The abundant remains from the lakes of Zurich and Pfaf fikon in Switzerland show no trace of the arts of design and drawing. The nations whose existence and culture they disclose were far ahead of the cave-dwellers of the Magdalenien Epoch in technical procedures, in the arts of practical life, and in social organization. They had definite religions, domestic animals, agriculture, but they had not the imagination and the perception of significance in line and color which characterize a people endowed with the feeling for art.
Introduction of has been observed (p. 47), the introduc tion of bronze brought with it a revival of the love of decorative art and an appreciation of symmetry of form. This can be traced without much doubt to the influence of Etruscan models and artisans; and this ancient state, in turn, seems to have borrowed its inspiration at some remote date from the nascent civilization of the Orient and from Egypt, but espe cially from the former. Whatever may have been the capacities of the white race in Europe for independent self-development, the fact remains that in later prehistoric as well as in historic times it owed its artistic and intellectual progress chiefly to stimuli which came to it from the far-distant East, perhaps from another race of men.