The chief source of the change which swept over western Europe lay in the brain power of the Crô-Magnons, as seen not only in the large size of the brain as a whole but principally in the almost modern forehead and forebrain. It was a race which had evolved in Asia and which was in no way connected by any ancestral links with the Neanderthals; a race with a brain capable of ideas, of reasoning, of imagination, and more highly endowed with artistic sense and ability than any uncivilized race which has ever been discovered. No trace of artistic instinct whatever has been found among the Neanderthals; we have seen developing among them only a sense of symmetry and proportion in the fashioning of their implements. After prolonged study of the works of the Crô-Magnons one cannot avoid the conclusions that their capacity was nearly if not quite as high as our own; that they were capable of advanced education; that they had a strongly developed æsthetic as well as a religious sense; that their society was quite highly differentiated along the lines of talent for work of different kinds. One derives this impression especially from the conditions surrounding the development of their art, which are still mysterious and an interpretation of which we shall attempt to give in the following chapter.

Cultural, Racial, and Climatic Divisions

The Upper Palæolithic covers the greater part of the 'Reindeer Epoch' as it was conceived by Lartet and Christy, who began their systematic study and exploration of the caves of Dordogne in 1863. They were soon joined by Massénat and the Marquis de Vibraye, while Dupont took up the work in Belgium and Piette made the artistic development, especially in the Pyrenees, his chosen field.

Lartet was the first to perceive that the culture of the grotto of Aurignac was quite distinct from that of the Lower Palæolithic in northern France; he also recognized in the shelter of Laugerie Haute, in Dordogne, that there was still another culture, which is now known as the Solutrean; also that in the shelter of Laugerie Basse, in Dordogne, there was yet another industry, that which we now know as Magdalenian. M. de Mortillet was the first to recognize the superiority of the Solutrean industry in stone, which in this period reached its height, and its succession by the Magdalenian period, in which the industry in bone and horn reached a climax; but he failed to recognize the very important preceding position of the Aurignacian, and it was not until 1906 that the clear presentation by Breuil of the entire distinctness of the Aurignacian industry led to the adoption by the Archæological Congress at Geneva of three cultural divisions of the Upper Palæolithic. In the meantime Piette had discovered that in the Mas d'Azil there was a distinct cultural phase, the Azilian, following the Magdalenian, and thus a fourfold division of the Upper Palæolithic (Breuil,(7) Obermaier(8)) was established, as follows:

The successive phases of development of Upper Palæolithic industry and art have been traced with extraordinary precision in Dordogne, in the Pyrenees, in northern Spain, and along the Danube and upper Rhine by a host of able workers—Cartailhac, Capitan, Peyrony, Bouyssonnie, Lalanne, and others. Breuil has made himself master especially of the Aurignacian and has succeeded Piette as the great historian of Upper Palæolithic art. Obermaier's chief service has been the comparison of the Upper Palæolithic of the Danubian region with that of the Dordogne and northern Spain both in regard to the geologic age and the archæologic and racial succession. The labors of Schmidt along the upper Rhine and Danube have not only brought this region into definite prehistoric relation with the Dordogne and the Pyrenees but have given us by far the clearest evidence of the relation between the human and the industrial development and the succession of climatic phases in northern Europe. Finally, the explorations of Commont along the River Somme have proved that this region, too, was frequented throughout all Upper Palæolithic times, during which it exhibits an industrial development hardly less important than that of the Lower Palæolithic.

There are two very distinct lines of thought among these archæologists: the first is shown in the tendency to regard the industries as mainly autochthonous, or as following local lines of development; the exponents of this theory dwell most strongly on the transitions between the Mousterian, the Aurignacian, and the Solutrean industries. For example, the chief object of Schuchhardt's tour(9) through the Palæolithic stations of Dordogne was to observe the transitions from one period to another and the evidence afforded of successive changes of climate. This writer is impressed with the transitions; he notes that the typical curved knives of the Abri Audit furnish a transition from the Mousterian scrapers to the Aurignacian 'points' of La Gravette and La Font Robert; that the Solutrean takes up all the fine threads of the Aurignacian culture and spins them further into Magdalenian times. Thus we get an Aurignacian-Solutrean-Magdalenian industrial cycle which is comparable to the Chellean-Acheulean-Mousterian cycle.

Breuil, on the other hand, from the archæologist's standpoint—because he is not especially interested in the matter of racial development—is a strong exponent of the idea of successive invasions of cultures, either from the south or Mediterranean region or from the central region of Europe, which he calls the 'Atlantic'; and he distinguishes sharply between these two great areas of Upper Palæolithic evolution, namely, the southern and the central European, pointing out that it was only after the establishment of more genial climatic conditions, like those of modern times, that there was an added element of northern or Baltic invasion. Certainly the archæologic testimony strongly supports this culture-invasion hypothesis and it appears to be strengthened in a measure by the study of the human types, although this study has not progressed beyond the stage of hypothesis. When the Upper Palæolithic races have been studied with as close attention as those of the Lower Palæolithic we may be able to establish positively the relation between these human types and the advance of certain cultures and industries.

Distribution of Upper Palæolithic Human Fossils

Our present view, as drawn from a consideration of the facts before us, is that western Europe in Upper Palæolithic times was entered by four or five distinct races, all belonging to Homo sapiens, only three of which became established:

The presence of these five races, and perhaps of a sixth if the 'Aurignacian man' of Klaatsch proves to be distinct from the Crô-Magnon, is firmly established by anatomy. It is most important constantly to keep before our minds certain great principles of racial evolution: (1) that the development of a racial type, whether long-headed or broad-headed, narrow-faced or broad-faced, of tall or of short stature, must necessarily be very slow; (2) that this development of the races which invaded western Europe took place for the most part to the eastward in the vast continent of Asia and eastern Europe; (3) that, once established through a long process of isolation and separate evolution, these racial types are extremely stable and persistent; their head form, their bodily characters, and especially their psychic characters and tendencies are not readily modified or altered; nor are they in any marked degree blended by crossing. Crosses do not produce merely blends; they chiefly produce a mosaic of distinct characters derived from one race or the other.

We must therefore imagine western Europe in Upper Palæolithic times again as a terminal region; a great peninsula toward which the human migrants from the east and from the south came to mingle and superpose their cultures. These races took the great migration routes which had been followed by other waves of animal life before them; they were pressed upon from behind by the increasing populations of the east; they were attracted to western Europe as a fresh and wonderful game country, where food in the forests, in the meadows, and in the streams abounded in unparalleled profusion. The Crô-Magnons especially were a nomadic hunting people, perfectly fitted by their physical structure for the chase and developing an extraordinary appreciation of the beauty and majesty of the varied forms of animal life which existed in no other part of the world at the time. Between the retreating Alpine and Scandinavian glaciers Europe was freely open toward the eastern plains of the Danube, extending to central and southern Asia; on the north, however, along the Baltic, the climate was still too inclement for a wave of human migration, and there is no trace of man along these northern shores until the close of the Upper Palæolithic, nor of any residence of man in the Scandinavian peninsula until the great wave of Neolithic migration established itself in that region.

The climatic and cultural relations of Upper Palæolithic times may be correlated[AL] in descending order as follows:

BEGINNING OF THE UPPER PALÆOLITHIC

The Aurignacian Industry

We now glance at western Europe as it was between 25,000 and 30,000 years ago, at the opening of the Upper Palæolithic.

During Aurignacian times France was still broadly connected with Great Britain.(11) The British Islands were not only united with each other but with the continent, while the elevation of the Scandinavian peninsula converted the Baltic Sea into a great fresh-water lake, the old shores of which are readily traced. Geikie also maintains that the rise of land in Scotland after the fourth glaciation was accompanied by an amelioration of climate and the advent of more genial conditions; a strong forest growth covered the lowlands, hence this is termed the Lower Forestian stage of the physiographic history of northern Britain; it corresponds to the temporary period of the retreat of the glaciers in the Alpine region, which Penck has named the Achenschwänkung. The latter author is not inclined to connect any marked rise of temperature in the Alpine region with this interval of time; to our knowledge no fossil plant beds have been preserved which would give us such indications, and the animal life, as we shall see, certainly affords only a very slight indication of a rise in temperature in the retreat of certain of the snow-loving tundra and northern steppe lemmings to the north; the greater number of tundra forms remained. The continental elevation of the northern coast-line of Europe would explain the advent of a dry continental climate and the renewal of high prevailing winds, at least during the warmer and drier summer seasons, for it is certain that atmospheric conditions such as produced the great dust-storms and deposition of 'loess' after the second and third glaciations prevailed again in western Europe after the fourth glaciation. This gave rise to deposits of what is known among geologists as the 'newer loess,' and we find these sheets of 'newer loess' spreading immediately above the Mousterian culture at a number of different points in western Europe.

When the Crô-Magnon race entered this part of Europe the climate was becoming more dry and stimulating; the summers were warm or temperate, the winters very severe. Great ice-caps still spread over the Scandinavian peninsula and also over the Alps, but the borders of the ice-fields no longer reached the plains; in a sense, the Glacial Epoch had not yet closed, for during the whole period of Postglacial time the glaciers of the Alps, beginning in early Magdalenian times, developed three renewed advances, each somewhat less vigorous than the preceding one, with intervening stages of a drier climate.

The greater number of the Aurignacian stations, like those of Mousterian times, were under the shelters or within the entrances of the grottos and caverns; all the stations in southwestern France are of this character. There was, however, a great open camp at Solutré, which was a most famous hunting station for the wild horse in Aurignacian times. In northern France there are several open stations, such as those of Montières and St. Acheul, along the River Somme, and to the east, along the middle Rhine, there are several open 'loess' stations, such as those of Achenheim, Völklinshofen, Rhens, and Metternich. It may very well be that these open stations were visited only during the mild summer season. The continued choice of sites which naturally afforded the greatest protection from the weather, in France, Britain, Belgium, and all along the Danube, as well as in the genial region of the Riviera, is a sure indication of a prevailing severe climate. It is hardly possible, however, that the closed or protected stations were the only residences of these people; they merely indicate the points where the flint industry was continuously carried on and also the vast foyers and gathering places; but there is little doubt from the evidence afforded by the signs on the walls of the caverns, known as 'tectiforms,' that huts and large shelters built of logs and covered with hides were grouped around most of these stations and scattered through the country at points favorable for hunting and fishing. These would be the only dwelling-places possible in such vast open camps, for example, as Solutré.

Climate and Life of Aurignacian Times

The arrival of the Crô-Magnon race and the beginning of the Aurignacian industry took place during the period of retreat of the ice-fields of the fourth glaciation. As we pass from the levels of the early Aurignacian industry into those of the middle and upper Aurignacian, we find that the mammal life of Mousterian times continued in its prime all over western Europe, with the addition, one by one, of some new forms from the tundras, such as the musk-ox, and the successive arrival from the mountains and steppes of western Asia of such characteristic forms as the argali sheep and the wild ass, or kiang.

The extremely cold and moist climate of the fourth glaciation had passed, and a somewhat drier but still extremely cold climatic condition prevailed throughout western Europe. During the early Aurignacian the two northern types of lemming, the banded lemming (Myodes torquatus) and the Obi lemming (Myodes obensis), were still found along the upper Danube, as in the grottos of Sirgenstein, Ofnet, and Bockstein. From middle Aurignacian on through Solutrean times these denizens of the extreme north disappear from this region of Europe. Further evidence of a dry, cold climate is found in the recurrence of dust-storms and in the great deposits of 'newer loess' beginning in certain parts of Europe at the very close of the Mousterian industry and extending through both middle and late Aurignacian and Solutrean times in all the region of the upper Rhine, along both shores of the Danube, and westward in the valley of the Somme, in northern France. This period is therefore believed to correspond with the Achen retreat of the great glaciers still covering the Alpine region.

Another striking proof of the amelioration of climate is the return of the flint workers to many of the open stations, old and new, in various parts of western Europe, the climate being more endurable because less humid. In Mousterian times the open stations were very rare and were perhaps visited during the summer season only; in Aurignacian times they were more abundant, there being twelve open stations out of a total of about sixty stations thus far discovered; in Aurignacian and Solutrean times the type station of Solutré was much frequented, and many other open camps are found in various parts of western Europe.

This is still the Reindeer Period; in fact, it is the typical 'Reindeer Epoch' of Lartet, and the predominant forms of life are the woolly mammoth and the woolly rhinoceros; but for a time the reindeer seems to have been less abundant, and Aurignacian times are marked apparently by a very greatly increased number of horses. The animal life throughout retains its northern or arctic character; the tundra species predominate, the hardy forms of the forests and meadows of Eurasia are next in number, and then are found a few of the steppe forms, with here and there forms characteristic of the Alps. The entire fauna of the Aurignacian may be summed up as follows:

The wild ass, or kiang, of the Asiatic deserts appears in late Aurignacian times in the region of the upper Rhine and upper Danube, as seen in the deposits of Wildscheuer, Thaingen, Kesslerloch, and Schweizersbild, and also there probably arrived in Europe at this time the Elasmothere (E. sibericum), a gigantic rhinoceros, distinguished from all others that we have been considering by the entire absence of the anterior horn and by the possession of an enormous single horn situated on the forehead above the eyes, also by the elaborate foldings of the dental enamel, to which the name 'Elasmothere' refers; its teeth were especially adapted to a grassy diet; it apparently wandered into Europe from the arid grassy plains of central and western Asia, and its appearance is connected with the extensive deforestation accompanying the tundra and steppe periods of mammalian life.

These periodic arrivals from central Asia suggest the existence of migration routes which may also have been followed by tribes of Palæolithic hunters.

There is no evidence at this time of the presence of the more characteristic animals of the steppes, such as the saiga antelope, the jerboa, and the steppe hamster, which enter Europe during the later period of Magdalenian culture. As an indication, perhaps, of the dryness of the climate we observe that the moose (Alces) is no longer recorded, although it reappears in western Europe in later Magdalenian times. The giant deer (Megaceros) appears in southern Germany with the early Aurignacian culture, but this would seem to be the time of its extinction, because it does not occur in association with any of the later industries. For a time the bison in Dordogne, in southern Germany, and in Austria appears to be far more abundant than the wild cattle; the latter animals are not recorded either by Schmidt or Déchelette in association with the Aurignacian culture, but they reappear in the moister period of Magdalenian times.

The remains of similar late Pleistocene mammals lie scattered over a large area in Britain, and we must conclude from their presence, observes Dawkins,(12) that Britain was still broadly connected with the mainland of Europe. This is proved by the occurrence of the mammoth fauna in various places now covered by the sea, as in Holyhead Harbor, off the coasts of Devonshire and of Sussex, and in the North Sea. On the Dogger Bank the accumulation of bones, teeth, and antlers is so great that the fishermen of Yarmouth have collected in their nets and dredges more than three hundred specimens. They belong to the bear, wolf, cave-hyæna, giant deer, Irish elk, reindeer, stag, bison, urus, horse, woolly rhinoceros, mammoth, and beaver, and are to be viewed as the remains of animals deposited by river currents, as in the case of similar accumulations on land. Had they been deposited by the sea they would have been sifted by the action of the waves, the smaller being heaped together in one place and the larger in another. The carcasses had evidently been collected in the eddies of a river that helped to form the Dogger Bank, which now rises to within eight fathoms of the sea-level.

One of the animals of the Aurignacian period which is best known is the 'horse of Solutré.' Around the great Aurignacian camp at Solutré there accumulated the remains of a vast number of horses, which are estimated at not less than 100,000; the bones are distributed in a wide circle around the ancient camp, consisting of broken or entire skeletons compacted into a veritable magma, with which occur also remains of the reindeer, the urus, and the mammoth interbedded with all the types of Aurignacian implements. The majority of these horses belong to the stout-headed, short-limbed forest or northern type, measuring 54 inches (13.2 hands) at the withers, and about the size of the existing pony.(13) The joints and hoofs were especially large, and the long teeth and powerful jaws were adapted to feeding on coarse grasses; the greater part of the remains are those of horses from five to seven years of age. There is no evidence that the men of Aurignacian times either bred or reared these animals; they pursued them only for food. The discovery that the horse might be used as an animal of transport appears to have been made in the far East, and not in western Europe.

The animal and plant life of the Aurignacian station near Krems, on the Danube, above Vienna,(14) includes a strong element of the tundra forms—the arctic fox, wolverene, mammoth, rhinoceros, musk-ox, reindeer, hare, and ptarmigan. The steppe fauna, on the other hand, is rare, including only the suslik, but not the saiga antelope or any of the other characteristic steppe types. The principal objects of the chase were not only the mammoth, which was extraordinarily abundant, but also the reindeer and wild horses; the ibex is rare.

Obermaier observes that the chart of the geographic distribution of the Aurignacian shows this culture to belong essentially to the provinces surrounding the entire Mediterranean, from Syria (the grottos of Lebanon) through north Africa (Algiers) to Spain. It also has a strong development throughout France, entering middle and southern Germany and passing along the Danube to Austria, Poland, and southern Russia (Mezine) north of Kiev. There is no doubt that the mammoth hunters of Krems belonged in this wide-spread distribution; the shells used for ornaments, which unmistakably recall those of the Riviera, are only in part local from the neighborhood of Vienna; the larger part is from the Mediterranean. We may imagine that these shells passed through several hands among this race of nomadic hunters, and this is not surprising in view of the girdle which the Aurignacian stretched around the entire Mediterranean Sea.

Discovery of the Crô-magnon Race

The earliest discovery of a member of this race was that by Buckland, in the cave of Paviland, which opens on the face of a steep limestone cliff, about a mile east of Rhossilly, on the coast of Gower, Wales.(15) As described by Sollas, a painted skeleton, long known as the 'Red Lady,' was found in the kitchen midden which forms the floor of this cave; recent investigation has proved that this skeleton belongs to a man of the Crô-Magnon race; the associated implements are of Aurignacian type. Paviland cave is thus the first Aurignacian station discovered in Britain and marks the most westerly outpost of the Crô-Magnon race.

In 1852 the sepulchral grotto of Aurignac, on the nearest spur of the Pyrenees, in Haute-Garonne, was accidentally discovered by a laborer. It was almost filled with bones, among which were two entire skulls and many fragments, numbering altogether no less than seventeen skeletons of both sexes and of all ages. The mayor of Aurignac ordered all the bones to be taken out and re-interred in the parish cemetery. Thus, in 1860, when Lartet visited this grotto and determined it as the type station of a distinct industry, all the human remains had been lost beyond recovery, and with them all possibility of learning to what race, culture, and geologic age they belonged. On a sloping terrace in front of the grotto was the hearth containing one hundred flint implements, mingled with the remains of a typical reindeer fauna.

In 1868 Lartet explored a grotto in the little hamlet of Crô-Magnon, near Les Eyzies, on the Vézère, where he found five skeletons, which have become the type of the great Crô-Magnon race of Upper Palæolithic times. The grotto was accidentally discovered by workmen building a road in the Vézère valley. Here Lartet found the skeleton of an old man, now known as the 'old man of Crô-Magnon'; then that of a woman, whose forehead bore the mark of a wound from some heavy blow; close to her lay the fragments of a child's skeleton and near by those of two young men. Flint implements and perforated shells were found with these skeletons.

In May, 1868, the material was first described by Broca,(16) his excellent account being later reprinted and amplified in the Reliquiæ Aquitanicæ of Lartet and Christy.(17) Broca referred to these skeletons as incontestable proofs of the contemporaneous existence of man and the mammoth. The associated mammalian life was that of the reindeer and the industry is now known to be of the Aurignacian stage. In his classic original description of this type Broca remarks upon the high stature, the face very broad in relation to its height, with very long and very narrow orbits; the large and markedly dolichocephalic skull, with an unusually large brain capacity, noting that the brain capacity of the Crô-Magnon woman surpasses that of the average male of to-day; the forehead correspondingly broad, vertical, convex on the median line; the bones of the limbs robust, and the shin-bones flattened transversely; altogether a very high racial type of skeleton belonging to the species Homo sapiens.

Verneau,(18) in his description of the Crô-Magnon type, emphasizes the disharmonic form of the head, for the dolichocephalic form of the skull is combined with a face very broad for its height, and this, in fact, is the unique and most distinctive feature of the Crô-Magnon race. The cheek-bones are both broad and high. It is curious that in this face, so broad across the cheek-bones and cheek arches, the space between the eyes is small, the nose is narrow and aquiline, and the upper jaw is noticeably narrow; it is no less remarkable that this upper jaw projects forward, while the upper part of the face is almost vertical, as in the highest types of Homo sapiens. The eye sockets, which are remarkably broad, are rather shallow, and their angles are but slightly rounded off, so that the form suggests a very long rectangle; the mandible is thick and strong, and the chin massive, triangular, and very prominent; the marks of muscular attachment denote great muscular development around the thick, strong jaws, in which the parts for the attachment of the vertical muscles are unusually large. I would add, says Verneau, to these essential characteristics the surprising capacity of the cranium, which Broca estimated as at least 1,590 c.cm. The majority of these features are found in almost all of the skulls of the Crô-Magnon race in the Grottes de Grimaldi. The top view of the skull is unusual on account of the extreme prominence of the eminences of the parietals, which give the skull a pentagonal effect when seen from above. The eyebrow ridges show decided prominences above the orbits but disappear completely in the median line and at the sides and thus differ totally from those in the Neanderthal head.

DISCOVERIES CHIEFLY OF THE CRÔ-MAGNON AND GRIMALDI RACES[AM]

Referred to Aurignacian Times

Of the numerous skeletons found in the Grottes de Grimaldi, or Baoussé-Roussé, near Mentone, the one first discovered is most widely known as the 'man of Mentone,' which was found in the Grotte de Cavillon, in 1872, by Rivière; hence this is sometimes spoken of as the Mentone race; but, as Verneau shows, while the measurements of the skulls of Baoussé-Roussé show some variety, they do not exceed what might be expected in individual variation, and we conclude that all the men of tall stature found in the Grottes de Grimaldi belong to the Crô-Magnon race, which is not to be confused with the very distinct dwarf Grimaldi race discovered in the Grottes de Grimaldi by Verneau, in 1906, in a lower level than any of the skeletons of the Crô-Magnon type.

In Aurignacian times, lofty stature seems to have been a general characteristic of this race, but there appears to have been a gradual decrease in height, so that in later industrial times the race in general is somewhat smaller in stature. The heights are as follows:

The woman had not reached complete development. As there is a variation of 6 inches in the height of the various male skeletons, it is evident that we cannot reach a trustworthy conclusion from a single subject; but there would seem to be quite a disparity in height between the sexes.