A notable advance in the line of culture entirely indigenous to southwestern Europe has been lately revealed through the interesting discoveries by Piette at the station of Brassempuoy and in the grotto of Mas d'Azil. Carvings in ivory, designs upon bone, evidence of a numerical system, of settled habitations, and, most important of all, of a domestication of the reindeer, of the horse, and the ox in the pure stone age have been found; and that, too, in the uttermost southwestern corner of Europe. In the lake dwellings of Switzerland, as also in Scandinavia, a knowledge of agriculture, pottery, and the domestication of animals is evinced, likewise as a native discovery. From other quarters of the continent in the stone age comes similar testimony to a marked advance of man culturally. The justly celebrated carving of a reindeer from Thayngen, almost worthy of a modern craftsman, betrays no mean artistic ability. The man who drew it was far from being a savage, even if he knew no metals, and buried his dead instead of cremating them. The evidence as to early domestication of animals is perhaps the most startling. Carved horses' heads, with halters and rude bridles, have been surely identified by Piette and others. [Illustration: BONE CARVING. Thayngen. (After Bertrand, 1891.)] A system of writing seems also to have been invented in western Europe as far back as the stone age.[E] Letourneau and Bordier have advanced good evidence to this effect, although it is not yet incontestably proved. The Phoenicians were perhaps antedated in their noted invention by the dolmen builders, by the lake dwellers of the earliest times, and, according to Sergi, also by the people of the Villanova pre-Etruscan culture in Italy. In an earlier time still in the Po Valley, as far back as the stone-age _Terramare_ period, pottery was made, and that, too, of a very decent sort. And all this time there is not the slightest evidence of contact with or knowledge of the East. As Reinach says, in no dolmen, no lake station, no excavation of the stone age is there any trace of an Assyrian or Babylonian cylinder, or even an Egyptian amulet. Even the jade and nephrite found in western Europe from Switzerland to Norway, which has so long been regarded as evidence of early commerce with the East, he denies as proof of such contact. The case thus put may perhaps be over-strenuously stated, yet one can not but realize from it that western Europe has too long been libeled in respect of its native aptitude for civilization. This is not constituted of bronze alone, nor is its trade-mark cremation. Thus, while an intensive outbreak of culture of a high order may not have arisen west of the Alps, it can no longer be denied that the general standard of intelligence was surely rising of its own native volition.