More Science From an Easy Chair Part 8

CHAPTER XV

THE PYGMY RACES OF MEN

The tradition of the existence of dwarfs, not as isolated examples, but as a race with their own customs, government, and language is familiar among civilised people, and exists among scattered and remote savages. We have all heard of them in that treasury of primitive beliefs--the nursery. Therefore, the fact that there are at this moment in various parts of the world dwarf or pygmy tribes of men, living in proximity to but apart from those races which have a stature identical with our own, has a great fascination and interest. Some few races of men have an average height of an inch, or thereabouts, greater than that of the people of the British Islands, whilst some are shorter by as much as two or three inches. But, on the whole, it may be said that, putting aside the pygmy races, of which I am about to write, mankind generally does not show a very striking range of normal stature--the ma.s.s in any race or region of the globe varying from 5 ft. 4 in. to 5 ft. 8 in., and tending to the higher rather than the lower figure.

The pygmy races are sharply separated from normal mankind by as much as a foot, and even more, in average stature, ranging from 4 ft. to something less than 4 ft. 11 in. in height. They are, enumerating them in the order of their purity of race and completeness of their isolation: (1) The Mincopies, or Andaman Islanders; (2) the Congo pygmies (comprising the tribes known as the Akkas, or Tiki-Tikis, the Bambutis, the Watwas, the Obongos, and Bayagas); (3) the bushmen of South Africa; (4) the Aetas of the Philippine Islands; (5) the Samangs of Malacca, and very similar isolated pygmy tribes which have been observed in New Guinea, and also in the Solomon Islands and in Formosa. The Veddas of Ceylon, the Senois of Malacca, and the Toalas of Celebes are apparently races which have resulted from the "crossing" of true pygmies with other normal-statured races inhabiting the islands in which they are found. The Brahouis of Beloochistan and the "monkey-men," or Bandra-Loks, east of the Indus, appear also to belong to the pygmy race.

Next to their agreement in small size, the most interesting facts about the pygmies we have just enumerated is that, notwithstanding the wide area over which they are found in scattered, isolated communities--viz. from the Congo to South Africa on the one hand, and, on the other hand, from Central Africa to the Indian Ocean, and on to New Guinea, the Philippine Islands, and Formosa--yet they all have short, round skulls of full average brain capacity, and have their hair growing in tightly curled-up peppercorn-like tufts--two characters found combined in no other race. They usually have finely-developed, straight foreheads, and the jaws do not project strongly; the lips are usually fine and thin, and the nose, though very broad, is not always greatly flattened. They are well-shaped, well-proportioned little people, neither grotesque nor deformed. To a great extent their corporeal features suggest an infantile or child-like stage of development, and the same is true of their intellectual condition and of their productions. Their habitations are very primitive, either caves or low clay-made huts, of the shape of half an egg. They do not make pottery, and neither keep herds nor till the ground, contenting themselves with such food as wild fruits and roots and the animals they kill with spear or arrow or capture in traps. They do not mutilate or bedaub their bodies (though the Andamanese indulge in a kind of "tattooing"). Among them the struggle for life does not exist in its more brutal forms. They take care of the sick and feeble, the children, and the old people. Cannibalism is unknown amongst them; they punish murder and theft. They are honest, and, moreover, are monogamous, and punish adultery, which is rare among them. Their religion is remarkably simple. It is limited to reverence for a Supreme Being, without any offering of sacrifice, and they do not worship ancestors nor exhibit the superst.i.tions known as "animism." It has been argued that these characteristics, taken together, indicate a primitive condition of humanity. On the other hand, many writers regard them as degenerate offshoots of negro-like races of larger stature and more complicated mental development.

There is no name by which the whole series of these small-sized people is indicated excepting the ancient designation of "pygmies." Many careful students of human races separate the pygmies of Africa as "negrilloes" from the pygmies of Asia, whom they designate "negritoes," and it is held that the negrilloes (Congo pygmies and bushmen) hold the same relation to African negroes and Zulus as the negritoes (Andamanese, and scattered tribes in New Guinea, the Philippines, Formosa and the Solomon Islands, as well as in Malacca and Annam and in the north-west and in other parts of Hindustan) hold to the full-sized, frizzly haired Papuans. This, no doubt, is a convenient way of stating the case, but the important fact remains that the pygmies of purest race, both of Africa and Asia, have the remarkable characteristics in common which we have noted above. Their bodily and mental peculiarities certainly suggest, whether the suggestion can be verified or not, the former existence in the tropical regions of Africa and Asia of a widely spread pygmy race of uniform character, a race which has been, to a large extent, destroyed by other races of larger and more powerful individuals, but has also in many regions (especially on the Asiatic Continent) intermarried with the surrounding larger people, and given rise to hybrid races. At the same time, it seems that in other regions this race has, by isolation in forests and mountain ranges and by the exercise of special skill in the use of poisoned arrows and in the arts of concealment, evasion, and terrorising, succeeded in maintaining its existence and primitive independence dating from remote prehistoric times.

Whether we regard the pygmies as one race or as the result of local modification of larger races, it is noteworthy that they are of lighter tint than the black races close to or among whom they live.

Some, both of the African and Asiatic pygmies, are very dark brown--practically black--but many are of a paler and yellowish tint.

We must not forget that the babies and quite young children of negroes are nearly "white." The Asiatic pygmies, notably the Andamanese, are darker than their African fellows. It must necessarily be difficult in studying such a race to make due allowance not merely for admixture of blood from surrounding populations, but to estimate correctly what the little people have learnt in the way of art and habit from their neighbours and what is their own. The Andaman Islanders, though provided with metal by trading, still use the sharp-edged splinters of volcanic gla.s.s-stone to shave their heads, which they keep entirely bald!

It is one of the merits of the showman's enterprise in modern times that he brings to a great city like London groups of interesting savages, without imposture and without ill-treatment, and enables us to see and talk with them almost as though we had travelled to their remote native forests. It would certainly be a successful and worthy enterprise on the part of the Anthropological Society of London to start a garden and houses such as those maintained by the Zoological Society, but arranged so as to receive some five or six groups of interesting "savages." The society would be responsible for careful and humane treatment of their guests, and return them after a sojourn, say, of a couple years, to their native country and replace them by specimens of other races. Under the auspices of showmen I have seen Zulu Kaffirs, Guiana Indians, North American Indians, Kalmuck Tartars, South African bushmen, and Congo pygmies in London, besides many hundreds of African negroes of various tribes. Farini's bushmen and Harrison's Congo pygmies were perfect samples of the dwarf race about which I am writing. But I also saw and examined carefully, in 1872, at Naples, with my friend Professor Panceri, the two African pygmies, Tebo and Chairallah, who were the first to reach Europe. They were subsequently adopted by and lived for some years under the care of Count Miniscalchi Erizzo. They were very intelligent, and learnt to read and to write well, and to play difficult music on the piano, with feeling and appreciation. We were especially concerned to determine by the stage of growth of their teeth and other indications whether they were merely ordinary young negroes, as some anthropologists supposed, or really representatives of the dwarf race as a.s.serted by the traveller Miani, who bought them, in exchange for a dog and a calf, in the country of the Mombootoos, south of the Welle River, and west of the Albert Nyanza. They were still young and growing when we examined them, but Tebo ceased growth when he had reached a stature of 4 ft. 8 in. We had no difficulty in coming to the conclusion that they were, when we saw them, really of exceptionally small stature for their age as indicated by the teeth which were in place in their jaws.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 23.--Copy of a figure from a group drawn on a Greek vase (dating from 300 B.C.), representing a number of the pygmies of the remote Upper Nile engaged in battle. The resemblance of the peaked cap and of the beard to those of the little figures carved by Black Forest peasants and intended to represent the mythical "gnomes" or dwarf mining-elves is noteworthy. (From Saglio and Derenberg's "Dictionnaire des Antiquites Grecs et Romaines.")]

The Akkas living near the sources of the Nile were known to the ancient Egyptians, and were the foundation of stories and fabulous exaggerations among the ancient Greeks. Even before Homer these stories existed, and the little people were called "pygmies," which means "of the length of the forearm" (Greek, pugme). Homer refers to the wars of these pygmies with the cranes, and as a matter of fact the African pygmies do wage a kind of war upon the great cranes which swarm in the marsh-land of their country. Naturally enough the really small size of the African pygmies (they are about 4 ft. in height, some two or three inches less, some as much as eight inches more) was exaggerated by report and tradition, just as the really big eggs of the great extinct ostrich-like bird of Madagascar were represented in the story of Sindbad, in the "Arabian Nights," as being as large as the dome of a temple, and the bird large in proportion. The Egyptians, as we have seen, knew the pygmy Akkas, and Egyptian fact was ever the romance of the Greeks.

Herodotus mentions the African pygmies from beyond the Libyan desert, citing, as is his wont, the accounts of certain travellers with whom he had conversed, and a later Greek writer tells of a pygmy race in India, a statement which our present knowledge confirms. It is a curious fact that Swift's Lilliputians are thus traceable to the Central African dwarf race, for Greek legend related that Hercules visited the country of the pygmies, where on waking from sleep he found one division of the army guarding his right leg, another his left, and others his arms. Hercules got up, swept them all into the lion's skin which he used as a cloak, and went on his way, shaking out his small tormentors from their prison as though they were so many ants. It seems fairly certain that Swift derived the initial scene in his story of Gulliver's adventures among the Lilliputians from this legend.

Miani's pygmies were members of a tribe discovered by the distinguished traveller Schweinfurth, who, in 1870, was the first to visit the country of the Niam-Niam, to the west of the sources of the Nile, and had the honour of showing that the myths of the ancient Greeks as to a nation of pygmies were based on fact, and that the definite words of Aristotle as to the existence of these pygmy people on the upper reaches of the Nile were correct. Schweinfurth found to the south of the Niam-Niam country a tribe of full-statured negroes called the Mombootoos, whose chief, Moonza, kept close to the Royal residence a colony of pygmies who were called in that country by the name "Akkas." Schweinfurth ascertained that they are spread to the number of many thousands along the borders of the great Congo forest and form numerous tribes. They are very generally well treated by their more powerful neighbours, as by Moonza. Partly from fear of their poisoned arrows and their crafty methods of attack and subsequent disappearance into the forest, partly on account of a superst.i.tious dread of them, the Congo pygmies are not only tolerated, but protected, by the larger people. They alone are at home in the steaming darkness of the immeasurable forest into which no other natives dare to enter.

It is a remarkable fact that the Egyptologist Mariette had, before these discoveries, found on an ancient Egyptian monument the portrait of a dwarf inscribed with the word "akka"--the identical name by which they are known at this day in the region where Schweinfurth found them.

Public interest in the pygmy race was rearoused three years ago by the announcement that the party of English naturalists at that time exploring the interior of New Guinea had come across a tribe of these little people in the mountains of that island. The existence of these pygmies in New Guinea was already well known, but fuller accounts of them will be valuable. The Italian traveller Beccari, in 1876, speaks of them as "Karonis," and states that they occupy a chain of mountains parallel to the north coast of the north-west peninsular of the island. D'Albertis, Lawes, and other travellers have seen and described individuals of the pygmy race of the mountains of New Guinea. It is interesting to find that they are described as having the body covered with fine, woolly hair, a feature which is recorded by Schweinfurth, by Stanley, and by an ancient Greek writer, in regard to the Congo pygmies of Africa, and led in former times to the notion that the old traditions and accounts of African pygmies referred, not to human beings, but to chimpanzees!

The Laplanders are the only very small-sized people in Europe, but they run from 5 ft. upwards, whereas the negrites and negrillos run from about 4 ft. to less than 5 ft. The Lapps (of whom there are about 25,000 in Finmark and Lapmark) are a thick-set, round-headed (brachycephalic), dark-yellow race, and have always been credited with powers of witchcraft and magic by their neighbours and by modern sailors. They live in immediate contact with the Finns (both are Mongolian races), who are very tall and have fair hair and blue eyes.

Some writers have supposed that the Lapps are the remnants of a small race which was formerly spread over the whole of Europe, and was exterminated or driven out by the larger races. But we have no evidence in favour of this view and strong evidence against it, since we now know the skulls and skeletons of a great number of the prehistoric inhabitants of Europe belonging to the Bronze, to the Neolithic, and to the Palaeolithic periods. None of these skeletons belong to an abnormally small-sized race, though the Bronze-age people were smaller than their predecessors and successors. The cave-dwellers of the "reindeer" epoch of the Palaeolithic period were big men, with fine, high skulls, and even the earlier Palaeolithic men of the glacial period, the man of the Neanderthal, the couple from Spy, and the three recently dug up near Perigueux (of whom I have written in another book),[8] were not diminutive men. It is true they were not tall--only about 5 ft. 4 in. in height--but they were very powerful and muscular, and totally different physically from the Lapps or from any of the tropical pygmy men. It is a remarkable fact that in one cave at Mentone, on the Riviera, explored by the Prince of Monaco, two skeletons have been found belonging to a shortish negro-like race (indicated by the form of the skull), and apparently a little later in date than the Neandermen. We must remember that at that remote date there was continuous land connection between Europe and Africa. There is, in fact, no reason to suppose that a pygmy race ever existed in Europe, though, of course, individuals of exceptionally small stature are often produced, and in some regions the whole population is shorter than it is in others.

A very interesting question in connection with the origin and significance of pygmy races of men is, "Why is any race smaller in size than another?" Every species among the higher animals has its standard size from which only in the rarest cases are there departures. That in itself is a curious fact. How was the standard size determined, and how is it maintained? The whole question lies there. At first sight it seems to many people quite simple to account for "pygmies"; they will tell you that the poor creatures are half-starved and so unable to grow to full size. That explanation does not, however, meet the case, for the African and Asiatic pygmy races are just as well nourished as most of their neighbours. Also if we look a little further we find that the women of every race are smaller than the men, and often much smaller. That is not because they are ill-nourished as compared with the men. And, again, we find very closely similar species of animals existing side by side, one a large species and the other a small one, having the same opportunities of obtaining regular nourishment. There are many instances, but take for example the beautiful Great Koodoo antelope of Africa, with its fine spiral horns, which measures 5 ft. at the shoulder, and the Little Koodoo, a complete miniature of it existing alongside of it, and standing only 3 ft. 5 in. at the shoulder. Take the two common white b.u.t.terflies of this country, the Large White and the Small White, also the Large Tortoisesh.e.l.l b.u.t.terfly and the small. Take the instance of many plant genera of which larger and smaller species are found growing side by side. The difference in size in these cases cannot be traced to any insufficiency of nutrition in the smaller kind.

It is evident that difference of size in animals has some deep-lying cause, which is not merely the greater or less abundance of food.

Numerous specimens of a perfectly well-formed elephant, closely allied in structure to the Indian elephant, but only 3 ft. high, are found fossil in Malta and the neighbouring Mediterranean region, and in Liberia a species of hippopotamus, distinct from that of other African regions, is common, which is not bigger than a common pig. Pygmy hogs, pygmy deer, pygmy buffaloes (and many other pygmy animals) are known as thriving wild species, so that it seems clear that there are other causes at work than semi-starvation in the production of pygmy races.

A second suggestion which is sometimes made is that the smaller race, or smaller species of two allied forms, is the original one, and that the larger forms have developed from these and established themselves, without completely destroying the smaller original race. This view has at various times been favoured in regard to the pygmy race of man.

There is something plausible in the view that these little men are nearer than normal mankind are to the monkeys, and the fur-like hairiness of their skin has been cited in support of it; but a fatal objection is that the men of the pure pygmy race of Africa and Asia are really not more, but less, monkey-like than many full-sized savages. They have heads and faces nearer in shape to those of Europeans than have the Australians, the Tasmanians, and the negroes.

They are more intelligent, shrewd, and skilful than their full-sized neighbours. It is quite possible that they are a very ancient race--more ancient, in their isolation and freedom from complicated customs, habits, and mode of life than other savages--but they are not primitive in the sense of being ape-like in structure or in want of mental capacity.

A third possibility in regard to the pygmy people is that they have been "selected" by natural conditions which favoured the survival of small individuals, and thus established a small race--just as man has established small races of horses, dogs, cattle, or what not, by continually selecting small individuals for breeding, until he has produced such races as the Shetland pony, the toy terrier, and the Kerry cow. It is necessary to discover or to suggest (if this explanation is to be accepted) what precisely is the advantage, in a state of nature, to a small-sized race in being of small size. The guess is made that the small people can more easily hide, whether in forest or among the rocks and caves of mountainous regions, from aggressive larger-sized mankind. The objection to this view is that though it may explain the present habits and dwelling-places of some of the pygmy race, it is not capable of explaining their first segregation and formation as a distinct race. Another general advantage which small animals have over larger ones of the same species is that if the food of the species is widely distributed but limited in amount, a hundred individuals weighing 5 st. each will secure more of it than fifty individuals weighing 10 st. each. The total weight of individuals is the same, but the smaller series will cover twice the area and have twice as much opportunity to secure the limited amount of food, whilst, in proportion to their size, requiring less. It cannot be doubted that, other things being equal, this obvious relation must tend to limit the increase in size of animals which have to search for their special food, and must favour small races.

Some writers have supposed that small limited areas, such as small islands, favour the production of small races by some mysterious law of appropriateness similar to that which lays down that "who drives fat oxen should himself be fat." The pygmy buffalo of the island of Celebes, the Anoa, is cited as an instance, and the pygmy men of the Andaman Islands as another. But there are plenty of facts which would lead to an exactly opposite conclusion. Gigantic tortoises are found in the Galapagos Islands and in the minute islands of the Indian Ocean, and never on the big continents. Gigantic birds bigger than ostriches abounded in the islands of New Zealand and Madagascar. Some of the tallest races of men are found in the Pacific islands, whilst the tallest European population is that of the north of the island called Great Britain. Probably the real relation of islands to the matter is that owing to their isolation and freedom from the general compet.i.tion of the vast variety of living things in continental areas, they offer unoccupied territory in which either exceptionally small or exceptionally big races may flourish--if once they reach the island shelter, or are by variation produced there--without compet.i.tive interference.

An important consideration in regard to the formation and segregation of a human variety or race is that mankind shows a tendency to segregate in groups, like with like. To a large extent this is true also of animals, but in man it acquires a special dominance, owing to the greater activity in him of psychical or mental influences in all his proceedings. The "cagots" of mid-France are the descendants of former leper families. They remain separated from the rest of the population, and do not now know why, nor do their hostile neighbours.

Such "outcast" or "accursed" tribes and family groups are found also in Great Britain, and throughout the world. Possibly the "pygmies" owe their preservation to this tendency. Virchow regarded the Lapps as a race produced by disease--a pathological product. It is possible that former liability to disease and present immunity from it is the final explanation of the tropical pygmy race. In the United States black pigs are able to eat, without harm, a common marsh herb, the "Red-root" _Lachnanthes tinctoria_, which kills other pigs. Hence a black race is established, not because it is black, but because, in it, blackness is "the outward and visible sign of an inward and chemical grace"--that is to say, of a physiological or chemical power of resistance to, and immunity from, the poison of an otherwise nutritious plant. Such "correlations" were described by Darwin, and are of extreme importance and interest--far more so than is, at present, recognised by naturalists. I am inclined to the supposition that the obvious outward signs, the round head, bombous forehead, furry skin, and diminutive size of the pygmies are the outcome of an inward physiological condition peculiar to them, which has enabled them to resist disease or to eat certain kinds of food, or possibly to develop great mental acuteness, and so has led to the establishment of these peculiar small people as a race, without their smallness itself having anything to do with their selection and preservation. In that case smallness would be a "by-product," a "correlated" character, not the "effective life-saving" character.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 8: "Science from an Easy Chair," Methuen, 1909.]

CHAPTER XVI

PREHISTORIC PETTICOATS

After the last great extension of glaciers in Europe, during which nearly all of Great Britain and the North of France and Germany were buried with Scandinavia under one great ice-sheet--and when this ice-sheet had receded, and the climate was like that of the Russian "steppes," cold and dry--there were men inhabiting the caverns on both sides of the Pyrenees. The tract of land which we call "Great Britain"

was a part of the Continent of Europe. There was no "English Channel."

The Thames and the Rhine opened by a common mouth into the North Sea.

The mammoth and the hairy rhinoceros still lingered on in France and the more central regions of Europe. Wild horses, the great ox (Aurochs), the bison, ibex, chamois, were abundant, and the thick-nosed Saiga antelope, now confined to the Russian and Asiatic steppes, was present. The most abundant and important animal immediately north of the Pyrenees was the reindeer. The cave-men of France and Central Europe were a fine race--living by the chase, and fabricating flint knives and sc.r.a.pers, fine bone spearheads and harpoons, as well as occupying themselves in carving ivory and reindeer antlers, so as to produce highly artistic representations of the animals around them.

They rarely attempted the human face or figure, and when they did were not so successful as in their animal work. They also painted on the walls of some of their caverns, with red and yellow ochre, carbon, and white chalk representations--usually about one-third the size of nature--of some of the most important animals of the chase. They must have used lamps, fed with animal fat, to illuminate the walls, both when they were at work on the pictures and also afterwards, when they exhibited the finished pictures to the less gifted members of the tribe, as wonderful, even magical appearances. It is uncertain to what extent races of men succeeded one another or were cotemporaries in this period in Europe, but there is good reason for attributing the cave pictures to an early occupation of the caves by men who also carved, in ivory and stone, small figures of women resembling the Hottentot Venus--whilst the later occupants made no such statuettes, but carved in relief on bone or engraved it.

This was probably not less than 50,000 years ago, and may well have been much more. Earlier than the date of these Reindeer men (the Magdalenians, Solutrians and the Aurignacians[9]), in the preceding cold, humid period of the glacial extension (probably from 80,000 to 150,000 years ago) these and other caves were occupied by an inferior race--the Neandermen. They could not carve beasts on ivory nor paint, but could make very good and well "dressed" flint weapons, and could make large fires in and about the caves, both to cook their meat and to keep off the wild beasts (lions, bears, and hyenas), who contended with the strange, low-browed Neandermen for the use of the caves as habitations.

On this side of the Pyrenees the Reindeer men have left some wall-pictures, and new discoveries of great importance in the form of rock carvings of human figures as well as pictures and huge figures of horses, etc., are being made in France as I write these lines. But the best preserved and most numerous wall pictures are those of the cave of Altamira near Santander. These comprise some partially preserved representations in yellow, red, white, and black of the great bison, the wild boar, the horse, and other animals. A group representing some twenty-five or more animals (each about one third the size of nature), irregularly arranged, exists on a part of the roof, and others are found in other parts of the cavern. Among the wall-pictures made by ancient cave-men are numerous drawings of human beings in masks representing animals' heads--probably indicating the "dressing-up" in animal masks of priests or medicine men in the way in which we know to-day is the custom among many savage tribes. Twenty-seven of these "decorated" caverns were known in 1910--eleven in Spain, one in Italy, and fifteen in South and Central France--and others are continually being discovered. The most careful and critical examination by scientific men leaves no doubt as to the vast antiquity of these paintings, and as to their dating from a time when the animals painted (including in some cases mammoth and rhinoceros, as well as bison, reindeer, wild boar, ibex, red deer, bear, and felines) were existing in the locality. The covering up of some of the drawings (which are partly engraved and partly painted) by earthy deposits and by encrustations of lime, and the presence in the cave deposits of the worked flints and bones characteristic of the Reindeer men, leave no doubt that these pictures are of that immense antiquity which we express by the words "Quaternary period," "Upper Pleistocene" or "Reindeer epoch."

It is, of course, only in accordance with what one would expect that these pictures are of very varying degrees of artistic merit. But some (a considerable number) are quite remarkable for their true artistic quality. In this respect they differ from the rock paintings of modern savage races--the Bushmen of South Africa, the Australians, and the Californian Indians--with which, however, it is instructive to compare them. Many of them agree in their essential artistic character with the carving and engraving of animals on bone and ivory so abundantly produced by the later Reindeer men. It is also the fact that these Franco-Spanish wall paintings were executed at different periods in the Reindeer epoch. Some are more primitive than others; some are very badly preserved, mere scratched outlines with all the paint washed away by the moisture of ages; but others are bright and sharp in their colouring to a degree which is surprising when their age and long exposure are considered. The French prehistorians, M.M. Cartailac and the Abbe Breuil, have produced a sumptuous volume containing an account, with large coloured plates, of the best preserved of the Altamira paintings--a copy of which I owe to the kindness of H.S.H.

the Prince of Monaco, who has ordered the publication of the work at his own charges. This has been followed by an equally fine work under the same auspices, ill.u.s.trating the wall-pictures of the Cavern of the Font-de-Gaume in the Dordogne, for which we have to thank the Abbe Breuil. A further volume on Spanish Caves has also appeared from the same source in the present year. It is not surprising that the country folk, who, in some of the Spanish localities, have known the existence of these paintings from time immemorial, should regard them as the work of the ancient Moors, all ancient work in Spain being popularly attributed to the Moors, as a sort of starting-point in history. It is, however, very remarkable that little damage appears to have been done by the population to the paintings, even when they exist in shallow caves or on overhanging rocks. No doubt weathering, and the oozing of moisture, and the flaking caused by it, has destroyed most of the Pleistocene paintings which once existed, and it is an ascertained fact that some--for instance, those of Altamira--are breaking to pieces owing to the opening-up and frequentation of the caverns.

It has been remarked that, although these paintings belong to what is called the "reindeer epoch," yet in the cave of Altamira there are no representations of reindeer, but chiefly of bison and wild boar. It is also remarkable that in the case of the painted rock shelters of Calapata (Lower Aragon) and of Cogul (near Lerida, in Catalonia), no reindeer are represented; but on the former there are very admirable drawings of the red deer, and on the latter silhouettes of the bull, of the red deer, and the ibex. In fact, no representations of reindeer have been observed on cave walls or rock-shelters south of the Pyrenees. It is possible that this may be due to the date of the Spanish paintings being a good deal later than that of those French cave-paintings which show reindeer, mammoth, and rhinoceros. And we have to bear in mind that in the North of Africa (Oran) engraved drawings on exposed rocks are known, which are for good reasons attributed to the Neolithic period; that is to say, they are later than the Reindeer epoch of the Palaeolithic period, whilst some are even much later.

In any case we have to remember that there are two very different and possible explanations of the presence or absence either of certain animals' bones or of representations of certain animals in one "decorated" cave and not in another. The one explanation is that animals have succeeded one another in time in Western Europe--changing as the climatic conditions have changed--and that when, in two cave-decorations or cave-deposits compared, the animals are different, the cause may be that the one deposit or cave-decoration is more recent than the other. The other explanation is that (as we well know) at one and the same moment very different animals occupy tracts of land which are only a hundred miles or so apart, but differ in climate and general conditions. At this moment there are wild bears and also wolves in France, but none in England; the elk occurs in Sweden and Russia, but not in the West of Europe; the porcupine in Italy and in Spain, but not in France. As late as the historic period the African elephant flourished on the African sh.o.r.e of the Mediterranean, but not in Spain; now it is not found north of the Sahara at all. So we have various possibilities to consider in comparing the animal pictures on the cave walls of Spain with those found in France, and may well suspend judgment till we have knowledge of a greatly extended area.

I am anxious to draw attention in this chapter to the painted group of ten human figures lately discovered on a rock shelter at Cogul, near Lerida, in Catalonia, and figured and described in the admirable French journal called "L'Anthropologie." These figures are those of young women dressed in short skirts and curious sleeves, the hair done up in a conical ma.s.s rising from the sides to the top of the head.

Each figure is about ten inches high. The great interest about these drawings is that they are probably tens of thousands of years old, and present to us the women of the reindeer or late Pleistocene epoch.

No other such painting of the women of this period is known, and the astonishing thing is that, though these are by no means fine specimens of prehistoric art, yet there is a definitely modern look about the figures and a freedom of touch about the drawing which makes one think at first that the picture is some modern, hasty but clever sketch in silhouette of a number of short skirted school girls at play. The waist is extremely small and elongated, the skirt, or petticoat, bell shaped, and the whole figure "sinuous." One of the figures appears to have a cloak or jacket, but the b.r.e.a.s.t.s and legs are bare.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 24.--Reproduction of drawings from a rock shelter near Lerida, in Catalonia, representing a group of women clothed in jacket and skirt with "wasp-like" waists. The original figures are ten inches high, and the drawing probably dates from the late Palaeolithic period.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 25.--A further portion of the same group as that shown in Fig. 24. In front is a small deer-like animal.]

Some three years ago Sir Arthur Evans discovered in the palace of the ancient Kings of Crete coloured frescoes some 3,500 years old representing in great detail elegant young women with greatly compressed waists, strongly-p.r.o.nounced bustles, and elaborately ornamented skirts. These Cretan paintings of prehistoric young women, both in costume and pose, are like nothing so much as the portraits of distinguished ladies of the fashionable world of Paris exhibited by the painter, Boldini, in the "Salon." It is remarkable that explorers should have found contemporary paintings of young ladies who lived nearly as long before Cleopatra as she lived before us. And it is still more remarkable that those young ladies were "got up" in the same style, and apparently aimed at much the same effects of line and movement, as those which have become the latest fashion in Paris, and may be described as sinuous and serpentine. Not only is that the case, but it is evident that the painter of Knossos, the Minotaur city, and M. Boldini have experienced the same artistic impression, and have presented in their pictures the same significance of pose and the same form, from the tip of the nose to the ends of the fingers and the points of the toes--thus revealing a sympathy reaching across many ages. It seems to me that the same artistic impression is to be detected in the still earlier paintings of the wasp-waisted little ladies of the Cogul rock-shelter in Catalonia. We find here the same sinuous figure with exaggeratedly compressed waist, prominent bosom, and emphasised haunches. But it is many, perhaps forty, thousands years earlier! One is led to wonder whether this type of human female--to-day expressed with such masterly skill by Boldini--may not be at the back of the mind of a portion of the human race--that which populated what are now the sh.o.r.es of the Mediterranean, and probably came there travelling northwards from the centre of Africa. Possibly they brought with them that tendency to, and admiration for, megalopygy which is evidenced by the makers of the earliest known palaeolithic cave sculptures (the Aurignacians), and has persisted in some degree ever since in Europe--a tendency and a taste which are on the one hand totally absent in the East and Far East (j.a.pan), and on the other hand have a strong development in the modern Bushmen (and the related Hottentots), an African race, and like the Spanish cave-men, rock painters.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Plate VIII.--Votary or priestess of the G.o.ddess to whom snakes were sacred. The original is a statuette in faence, ten inches high, and was discovered by Sir Arthur Evans in the palace at Knossos in Crete. It dates from 1600 B.C.]

I am able to reproduce here (Plates VIII and IX), through the kindness of Sir Arthur Evans and Dr. Hogarth, the keeper of the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford, two very interesting drawings--showing certain features in the dress of women in the prehistoric race which inhabited the island of Crete for some three thousand years previous to the date of these representations, which is about 1600 B.C. They are interesting to compare both with the much more ancient figures from the Spanish cave and with modern female costume. The first (Plate VIII) is a figure in coloured pottery (faence), representing either a votary or priestess of a G.o.ddess to whom snakes were sacred. The petticoat of this lady is very modern, being long, decorated with flounces (a series of five) and bell-shaped. The dress is further remarkable for a tight ring-like girdle which greatly compresses the waist and emphasises the broad hips. The little statue is about ten inches high, and was found by Sir Arthur Evans at Knossos, the ancient buried city the capital of Crete, in the Later Palace. Its date is that of the close of the Minoan period, namely 1600 B.C. The two figures in Plate IX are copied from frescoes representing acrobatic women from the bull-ring, also from the Later Palace at Knossos, and are a couple of centuries later in date. Religious ceremonies in connection with the worship of the bull (whence the fable of the minotaur) were practised in Knossos, and possibly there was a kind of baiting of bulls and jumping over and away from the infuriated animals such as may be seen at this day in the South of France and in Portugal. Possibly the employment of girls in this sport gave rise to the story of the maiden tribute from Athens to be sacrificed to the Cretan minotaur. The drawings are remarkable for the pose--that of the left-hand resembling an att.i.tude a.s.sumed in boxing, whilst the dress--a kind of maillot or "tights"--is gripped round the waist by a firm ring (like a table-napkin ring), the compression of which is no doubt exaggerated. This fresco and many others of extraordinary interest, as well as much beautiful pottery and the whole of the plan of the city, its public buildings, granaries, library and sewers at several successive ages (the remains lying in layers one over the other), were discovered and described by Sir Arthur Evans, who is still at work on the wonderful history and art of these prehistoric Cretans, from whom the Mycenaeans of the mainland of Greece were an offshoot.

The point to which I chiefly desire to call attention is that this Cretan people practised compression of the waist, and so have a certain point of agreement with the prehistoric race of Lerida represented in Figs. 24 and 25 and with Boldini's modern ladies. We know from carvings and pottery that the men as well as the women of the Mycenaean people wore a tightly-compressing girdle. The form of figure thus produced--viz. relatively small, flexible waist, and large hips with protruding b.u.t.tocks--seems to be a less p.r.o.nounced variety of that of the small ivory figures of Aurignacian age (late Palaeolithic) found in cave deposits of France and of that of the Bushmen women. It seems as though the "ideal" female figure or that admired and pictured by these races and by the modern Latin races is the same in its main features, and differs altogether from that admired in the Far East. Such deeply seated tastes may possibly (indeed, not improbably) be due to a common origin of the Mediterranean and African peoples distinct from that of the Mongoloid Asiatic races.