Abstract
THE clever etchings on bone and ivory of the cave-dwellers of western Europe who lived towards the close of the Palæolithic period are well known to all who interest themselves in the pre-history of man. In 1895 M. E. Rivière published the first discovery of engravings and pictographs on the sides of a cavern. The second and quite recent similar record is published in the Comptesrendus of the Paris Academy of Sciences (December 9, 1901, p. 1038) by MM. Capitan and Breuil. These archæolo gists had the good fortune to discover on the walls of the cave of Combarelles, in the neighbourhood of Eyzies (Dordogne), 109 engraved figures which date from the Magdalenian epoch. All the figures are engraved upon the vertical walls of the cave for a distance of 100 metres on each side of the passage. They reach to an average height of 1.50 metres, commencing at about 15 or 20 centimetres above the ground and often extending to the roof—which, in truth, is mostly low, being only one to two metres in height, but this has been, curtailed by stalagmites.
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H., A. A Gallery of Animal Engravings of the Stone Age . Nature 65, 299–300 (1902). https://doi.org/10.1038/065299d0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/065299d0