To return to the European shores of the Mediterranean, a remarkable
group of prehistoric rock-carvings already known in mediaeval times as
the Maraviglie, or ‘Marivels’,[33] is found near the Col di Tenda in the
Maritime Alps--in the neighbourhood, that is, of a very old line of
communication between Provence and the Po Valley. The earliest known
groups of these figures lay at an elevation of between 7,000 and 8,000
feet about the Laghi delle Maraviglie, in the heart of Monte Bego.[34]
More recently a still more extensive series has been discovered by
Mr. Clarence Bicknell, cut like the others in the glaciated schist
rocks and at a similar lofty elevation in the neighbouring Val di
Fontanalba.[35] I have myself visited a more outlying group at Orco
Feglino[36] in the Finalese, only a few miles from the Ligurian coast.
These figures, of which examples are given in Figs. 19 and 20,
represent oxen, often engaged in ploughing, and men in various
positions, sometimes brandishing weapons and apparently signalling, and
a variety of arms, implements, and other objects. Among the weapons,
the halberds and daggers are characteristic of the earlier part of the
Bronze Age,[37] and it is noteworthy that the sword which characterized
the later phase of that culture is entirely absent. The figures of
the oxen ploughing are depicted as if seen from above--a circumstance
explained by the way in which these rock terraces look down on the
cultivated lands below.[38] Many of these oxen are conventionalized to
such an extent that they have rather the appearance of rude figures of
scorpions or beetles with tails.
The same figures are often repeated in the schist slopes, and we
have not here such connected groups as we see, for instance, on the
sculptured slabs of Scandinavia. The picture-signs of the Maraviglie
had perhaps a votive intention. It seems to me that some of the figures
may represent packs, and that merchants as well as warriors and tillers
of the soil took part in their representations.
The records of primitive pictography extend to the Vosges and Jura,
and reappear east of the Adriatic. In a fiord of the Bocche di
Cattaro, not far from the site of Rhisinium, the capital of the old
Illyrian kingdom, my own explorations were rewarded by the discovery
of a curious group of painted signs on a rock-face above a sacred
grotto, and in a somewhat inaccessible position. They consisted
mainly of animals and varieties of the swastika sign. That they
were of pre-Christian date may be regarded as certain, but a fuller
investigation of them at my own hands was cut short by _force majeure_.
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