Page:Early Man in Britain and His Place in the Tertiary Period.djvu/248

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EARLY MAN IN BRITAIN.
[CHAP. VII.

been handed down to us on a canine tooth of a bear (Fig. 84) in the refuse-heap in the Duruthy cave.

The Art of the Cave-men—Engraving.

The Cave-men have left behind, as we have seen in the last pages, more vivid pictures of their life and times than those founded upon implements and weapons and the associated animal remains. Fortunately for us they employed the intervals of leisure from the chase in engraving upon bone, antler, and more rarely on ivory and stone, the hunting scenes which most vividly impressed themselves upon their memory. In the caves at Cresswell the figure of a horse (Fig. 53), delicately incised on a fragment of rib, is the first trace of the art of design in this country, proving that the faculty of representing animals, so wonderfully developed among the Cave-men of France, was shared also by those of Britain. The horse, it will be observed, has an upright or hog mane, and a large coarse head. The animal is frequently represented in a similar manner on bone and antler in the caves of France. In La Madelaine, for example,

Fig. 85.—Horses incised on Antler, La Madelaine, 1/1.

two horses (Fig. 85) are seen, with hog-manes and large heads, and with tails rough and tangled. Sometimes their heads are small and the necks long, as in those found in the Kesslerloch cavern. A hunting scene, in