THE OREGON SUNDAY JOUKNAL, PORTLAND, j SUNDAY MORNING, DECEMBER 5, 1920.
Wot
Creditable
Paintings
in FuM
Colors
Paintedljy
Of
Pi'ehistoric
Days
THE Hall of" the Age of Man, a
j most Interesting department of
j the American Museum of Nat
ural History, New York, i3 now ap
proaching completion.
This hall, by means of models and
pictures, presents a complete view of -
the various stages In the evolu
tion of man, as well as of the
animals that surround him. In
the infancy of Ws development
In various parts of the world.
Perhaps the most singular tact
about prehistoric man shown
here Is the high degree of artis
tic ability which, he, displayed.
How
Women
Wore
Their
Hair ir
Their
Cave
Homes.
It is amazing to find that men
living 60,000 years ago, and even more,
could : make " life-like pfctures of animals
find natural scenes that compare credit
ably with the work of some of our ablest
modern artists.
For example, ther,e is a mural painting
. In the American Museum which shows the
-. men of the Cro-Magnon! period in France,
who lived probably 60,000 years ago, deco
: .'rating the walls of their cave in the Dor
"dogne district." The wall painting which
the prehistoric artists are finishing is an
exact. reproduction of a prehistoric paint
ing actually found In a cave In Dordogne.
The prehistoric painting shows a group
of gigantic hairy mammoths who lived at
the same1 time as the artists and must
have i been one of the most exciting fea
tures of c their existence. This picture,
executed very realistically in colors, there
fore gives us a very characteristic scene
of We in that early time and corresponds
to what an American artist might seek to
portray in decorating the Walls of a public
building in these days,
f The prehistoric wall painting may be
compared, for instance, with the muraj
painting executed by Mr. E. H. Blashfleld
for the court house at "VVilkesbarre,
Pa. The artist is otte of the best
known of contemporary mural .
painters, and ' in this work- he
Bvmbolizes the relation of the
law court to our American life. . He is our
counterpart of the . cave-painter and,
strange to say, the difference in artistic
ability shown is not as great as mighj be
expected. ' ! .
When -Mr. Blasbfield's attention was
called to this matter he was not at all
offended at the suggestion that he might
te compared with a prehistoric cave
painter, and t he furnished 'this Interesting
comment: ' .
"There does not seem to be any such
thing as absolute and consecutive progress
In art There are variations in different
periods, and In each period there Is hew
progress, b.ut only along lines upon which
attention has been newly concentrated.
"The Greek, artlstsj 2,000 years, ago,
reached higher points, than any other art
ist; so did the mediaeval artist, the reaais
. sance artist, th modern artist, each In his
turn. But the artists . of each epoch
reached the highest point in certain quali-'
ties only at the cost of losing or Ignoring
certain other qualities which artists of
other epochs developed to a higher degree.
" "In ai word or two, modern art reaches
higher points in certain directions i than
any earlier art. In certain other direc
tions early art reaches points which no
modern art attains." .
Of "course, these cave men were rough
and uncultivated In other respects. They
had little social organization, as we un
derstand it to-day, they had no govern
ment, no army, no universities; they had
little knowledge of the mechanical arts;
In fact, they lacked most ot the things that
we regard as making up civilization. They
had no agriculture and livd by hunting
and fishing. '
r The cave must have been a kind of art
- school, where many ot the tribe stayed at
home and learned to paint. This leads to
Our
Cave
Dwelling
Ancestors
1
V
ft 1
a
ass"
-1
A Remark
ably Fine " ;
M u r a 1
&.R. - Al ii
:; .
Painting in Full Colors of an Ancient Bison Found
on the Ceiling of a Cave in France.
the reflection that the hunting and fishing
members of the tribe must have been will
ing to give upa large share of their hard
won game and other spoils in order to
support the artists at their refined occu-
pation. Evidently the, cave men, while
they may have been "low brows' in most
respects, were "high brows" in regard to
art . ' .. '
The artistic excellence attained by the
cave men raises many important points
concerning the doctrine - of evolution.
These people appear to have suddenly
come intp existence. There is no record
of a long line of ancestors slowly working
up to this proficiency in sart Did man
evolve by slow stages from his animal
state, or did he evolve ty sudden jumps
at widely separated times and places?
This is a great question, which is not yet
settled, but which the remains of the cave
men may help to clear up.
In order to understand just how ad
vanced these cave men were it is desir
able to have the opinion of an expert.
Professor Henry Fairfield Osborn, director
t,
7r
7- fr '
.1.. .u X..-.ti
v
2 (a
of the American
Museum, desc ribing
this phase of early
life, says:
"C o n t e m p 0 rane-,
ously with the disap
pearance ot the last
glacial period in
Europe a highly:
evolved race, in. no
respect . inferior ! to
modern man, entered
that continent from
the East and drove
, out or exterminated
the Neanderthal race, of which they were
both the mental and physical superiors.
"Their cultural capacity Is indicated not '
alone by their physiognomy and the cubic
content of their brain, but has also been
demonstrated by the handiwork and es
pecially the artistic productions which they
have left in the caves of. Southern Europe.
The Palaeolithic murals and sculptures in
relief painted on the walls of limestone
grottoes in France and Spain Indicate
greater artistic sense and ability than have
been found among any other, uncivilized
people." :
The painting, made oy c. R. Knight for,
the Hall of the Agey of Man represents
four Cro-Magnon artists at work, on the
famous procession of mammoths which was
found in the cave of Font-de-Gaume, In
Dordogne. Two half -kneeling figures are'
holding . lamps made of hollowed out
stones to enable the artists to see clearly
In the dimness of the cave. One artist,
who Is bending over Is engaged in incislng
the outlines of the mammoth on the lime
stone wall with a sharp flint; the other
(C) 1920. I&niational Feature Serrlce. Inc. '
M'f:
I1
Mural Painting of Justice in the WilkesrBarre
(Pa.) Courthouse, by Mr. E. H. BlashBeld,
Probably- the Foremost Mural Painter of
the Day. Copyright by Mr. Blashfield.
artist is laying on the colors, employing a
shoulder bone as a pallet. The man sit
ting down is preparing colors , from red
and yellpw ochre.
" The man standing up, with a staff, is a
chieftain, who takes care that the artists
do their day's work and receive their feed.
Everybody should visit the Hall of the
Age of Man and see ther various steps by
which his ancestors emerged from the
brut stage. The ancestry of man is
held to have begun in Asia two million
years or more ago. He is descended from
an ape-like creature, not positively identi
fied. There is in the hall a Jaw of a rare
fossil animakcalled the "Propliopithecus,"i
which may have been an ancestor of both
man and the existing apes.
We can look at a reproduction of the
very early' "Pithecanthropus," found In
Java, which is neither distinctly an ape
Jior, distinctly, human.
A collection of the great man apes en
ables one to see the exact differences be
tween men and apes.
The earliest known positively human
relic is the jaw of the Heidelberg man, a
fossil which is believed to be 250,000 year3
old. The Heidelberg man may have been
the ancestor of the Neanderthal race
which was-widely spread in Europe over
a hundred thousand years ago. The Mu
seum possesses the actual remains of a
Neanderthal man, found at Krapina. -
Along with! the Neanderthal man in
Europe lived herds of woolly rhinoceroses
and wopily-mammoths.
The Neanderthals' were conquered and
largely exterminated by the Cro-Magnon
race, who entered from the East and
whose artistic work excites so much in-
Great Britain Eights Reserred.
5 D
V.
. -
1 i "
t1
.WW1 r.
Extremely Creditable Fresco
Prehistoric Stag Hunt, Painted in Dark
Red by Paleolithic Artists.
terest The contrast between the ; Cro
Magnon heads and those of. the Neander
thals is very wide, asVthe former are
nearly like those of the Caucasian race to
day. '
The Cro-Magnons were displaced by the
Neolithic, . or "New Stone" race, who
showed lower . intelligence and artistic
ability, but greater combative force.
The new race, which i3 considered the
ancestor of the most warlike nations "of
to-day, was chiefly concerned, In a rigorous
northern climate, with the struggle for ex
istence, in which the qualities of endur
ance, tribal loyalty and the rudiments of
family life were , being cultivated. Rude
huts took the place of caverns and shel
ters, which were now mostly abandoned.
These conquerors were tall men, with
iigh. narrow skulls, related to the existing
Nordic race, more powerful In build than
the people of the Swiss Lake Dwellings.
Skulls .and skeletons representative of this
: hardy northern type are abundantly known
In Scandinavia, but. have not found their
way to the American Museum collections
as yet.
. The Hair of the Age of Man Is planned
to contain four chief collections, of the
mammals of the world during man's ex
istence. In Europe prehistoric man hunted the
reindeer, the wild horses and cattle and
the mammoth. He used the hide of the
reindeer for clothing, the flesh and marrew
for food. He carved the ivory tusks of the
Prehistoric Artists Dec
orating; Their Cavern
Home, from Painting by;
Charles R.. Knight
Under the Direction of
'Henry- Fairfield? Osborn,
Just Completed for the
American Museum of
Natural History.
Copyright, 1920.
it"
if-i-
i4.V
An Artist of the Cave Dwelling
Days, as Reconstructed and Mod
eled by Modern Scientists. j
mammoth. The mammoth, the northern,
hairy type of elephanti known to early ex
plorers of fossil remains, was foremost
among the great mammals hunted by man.
The whole history of this animal family is
shown in the Hall of the Age of Man. j
The evolution of the elephantine animals
or proboscideans culminates in the masto
dons and mammoths. This Is one of the
romances of evolution quite equal in inter
est to the evolution of the horse. This col
lection is by far the most complete in ex
istence; it contains as much in the way of
complete skeletons as those in all the other
museums of the world combined. The early,
stages in the evolution of the proboscid
eans, beginning with the Palaeomastodon
discovered in the Fayum region of northern
Africa, carry us back into times far ante
cedent to the Age of Man, namely, into an
early period of the Age of Mammals, the
Oligocene.
Four great murals just completed on the
north walls show life In
the Glacial epoch in the
Northern Hemisphere.
They represent the final
glacial stage, the period
of the maximum advance
of the glaciers over the
entire Northern Heml
ephere, of the most in
tense cold, and of the far
thest southward exten
sion of the. northern typeg
of mammals. This is the
time of the Cro-Magnon
race, and our knowledge
of the mammoths, rein
deer and rhinoceroses is
derived from the actual
Cro-Magnon painting and
etchings, chiefly those
found within the caverns.
Representing a
The woolly rhinoceros, like the woolly
mammoth, was heavily enwrapped in hair,
beneath which was a .thick coat of fine
wooL With this protection tho animal was
quite Indifferent to the wintry-blasts which
swept over the steppe-like country of
northern 'France. This golden-brown wool
Is actually, preserved on the side of the
face of one specimen discovered, which is
now in the Museum of Petrograd. The
head of the rhinoceros was long and nar
row, like .that of the white rhinoceros ot
Africa, but the jaws were narrower and
the upper Hps were more pointed. It is an
animal quite distinct from the great black
rhinoceros stilt extant id Africa, which is
a grazer with broad lips. i
One mural painting represents two herds,
reindeer and mammoth, migrating along
the banks of the river Somme, tiot far
from one of the great encampments of men
of the Cro-Magnon race. These reindeer
and mammoths are, Infact, depicted very
precisely in the paintings and engravings
left by-the Cro-Magnon artists especially
in the cavern of Font-de-Gaume. It Is a
striking fact that In the case of the mam-
moth every painting, drawing, etching and
model which the Cro-Maenon man ha
given us exhibits exactly, the same char
acters the long, hairy covering, the very
high hump above the- forehead, the notch
between the hump and the neck, the very
high shoulders, the short back, the rapid
slope of the back over the hind quarters,
ihe short taiL " "
s .... '