Men of the Old Stone Age: Their Environment, Life and ArtOsborn, Henry Fairfield
History
Men of the Old Stone Age: Their Environment, Life and Art
Osborn, Henry Fairfield
Art, Primitive; Prehistoric peoples; Stone age
Edouard Lartet, in 1860, began exploring the caverns of the Pyrenees and
of Périgord, first examining the remarkable cavern of Aurignac with its
burial vault, its hearths, its reindeer and mammoth fauna, its spear
points of bone and engravings on bone mingled with a new and distinctive
flint culture. This discovery, published in 1861,(28) led to the full
revelation of the hitherto unknown Reindeer and Art Period of the Old
Stone Age, now known as the Upper Palæolithic. As a palæontologist, it was
natural for Lartet to propose a fourfold classification of the 'Reindeer
Period,' based upon the supposed succession of the dominant forms of
mammalian life, namely:
(_d_) Age of the Aurochs or Bison.
(_c_) Age of the Woolly Mammoth and Rhinoceros.
(_b_) Age of the Reindeer.
(_a_) Age of the Cave-Bear.
Lartet, in association with the British archæologist, Christy, explored
the now famous rock shelters and caverns of Dordogne--Laugerie, La
Madeleine, Les Eyzies, and Le Moustier--which one by one yielded a variety
of flint and bone implements, engravings and sculpture on bone and ivory,
and a rich extinct fauna, in which the reindeer and mammoth predominated.
The results of this decade of exploration are recorded in their classic
work, _Reliquiæ Aquitanicæ_.(29) Lartet, observes Breuil,(30) clearly
perceived the level of Aurignac, where the fauna of the great cave-bear
and of the mammoth appears to yield to that of the reindeer. Above he
perceived the stone culture of the Solutrean type in Laugerie Haute, and
of the Magdalenian type in Laugerie Basse. Lartet also distinguished
between the archæological period of St. Acheul (= Lower Palæolithic) and
that of Aurignac (= Upper Palæolithic).
It remained, however, for Gabriel de Mortillet, the first French
archæologist to survey and systematize the development of the flint
industry throughout the entire Palæolithic Period, to recognize that the
Magdalenian followed the Solutrean, and that during the latter stage
industry in stone reached its height, while during the Magdalenian the
industry in bone and in wood developed in a marvelous manner. Mortillet
failed to recognize the position of the Aurignacian and omitted it from
his archæological chronology, which was first published in 1869, _Essai de
classification des cavernes et des stations sous abri, fondée sur les
produits de l'industrie humaine_:(31)
(5) _Magdalénien_,[K] characterized by a number and variety of bone
implements;
(4) _Solutréen_, leaf-like lance-heads beautifully worked;
(3) _Moustérien_, flints worked mostly on one side only;
(2) _Acheuléen_, the 'langues de chat' hand-axes of St. Acheul;
(1) _Chelléen_, bold, primitive, partly worked hand-axes.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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