Harrisburg telegraph. [volume] (Harrisburg, Pa.) 1879-1948, 1919-06-10
AN ART GALLERY 10000
YEARS OLD
BY Garrett p. Seryiss

by Garrett Il. SeFviSS
4 As far as has yet been found out
the most advanced inhabitants of the
earth in prehistoric ages lived
around the Pyrenees and the Canta-
brian mountains, in France and
] Spain. and had natural caverns for
I homes
They were men of artistic ability,
j painters and sculptors, exhibiting a
good deal of taste. considering their
| lack of advantages. showing a sense
l of humor as well as an appreciation
OF dramatic effect, and manifeSting
| a very keen interest in the remark
able animals that were their con-
temporaries. They have left us on
the walls and in the recesses of their
abandoned caves a representation of
the living world of their time more
vivid than words could produce.
! They lived, and made their pic
lures, at least four times as far back
of the traditional time of Adam and
Eve as that time is back of ours.
A moderate estimate of the date
when the cavern men fiourished is
| $4,000 years ago. In $4,000 years
the pole of the nocturnal sky would
make complete revolution around
the pole of the ecliptic and be we'll
| advanced on a second turn, with all
the vast changes of temperature and
climate in the northern hemisphere
which this professional motion of
| the earth's axis implies.
And yet those men of so remote
an antiquity, while they lacked our
knowledge of mechanics, of metal
urgy, of chemistry, and our skill in
| the technique of art nevertheless
| possessed as clear and definite in
| tellectual perceptions of the world
around them as we do. They looked
at things with human eyes, having
a comprehending brain behind
| them, and not at all in the manner
| of brute animals.
To be able to make a picture of
n reindeer, a bison, a horse, an ele-
| phant, a rhinoceros. n man or a
woman, as they were able to do.
/ shows that in fundamentals they
were not measurably nearer the
apes than we are. They possessed
every power necessary to the ulti-
mate development of everything
! All that they needed was expert
ence and education. The unknown
savage" who drew in primitive
colors, and by artificial light, in the
/ depths of a Pyrenean cavern a
! faithful portraiture of a prehistoric
! bison. was a true ancestor of Mich
ael Angelo. The history of the in
| dividual repeats the history of the
race. but Michael Angelo, as a
child, would have made a picture
much more crude than the product
of the full-grown artist of the
Stone Age.
The latter did not, then, repre-
sent the early childhood of man
kind; he was later, he stood,
rather, for its youth, or even its
young manhood. How far back
would we have to go to find the
earliest glimmerings of the intel
| ligence that finally could paint a
| picture on a cavern wall? Twice
! 10000 years, or four times 10000
years? Considering the wonderful
appreciation of form, shade and
color which some of these cave
paintings display, one is tempted
to say that a million years would
| hardly suffice to evolve such
ability if it had to be developed step
| by step.
| From some of the pictures there
seems to radiate an intellectual
| light so strong. bright and steady,
| so matchable to the radiance of
| the human mind to-day. that we
can hardly distinguish any essen
| tial inferiority. and we wonder
whether this intelligence was not
| Just as far above the brute level
then as it is now.
Recurring to the principle that
the individual, in his development,
repeats the course of the develop
ment of the race, where, in the
/ evolution of humanity, are we
going to put our finger upon the
place at which the first spark of
| conscious intelligence appeared in
| the human stock as 1t appears IN
! the human child.
You never know just when that
occurs with your child. You cam
not fix with certainty the day, or
! the week, or hardly the month,
when your child passes the line
and begins to see things with the
/ eve of reason. It is evident that the
I ancient Pyrenean artists were very
! far on the hither side of that line.
! Recently a new cavern has been
! found. or a new group of prehistoric
paintings in an already known cav
| ern, at Montesqui-Avantes in Ariege,
France. The discoverers are Count
| Begouen and his sons, long recog-
nized as leaders in this work, and
some of the pictures are described
as astonishing, including, for the
| first time, if am not mistaken, birds
such as swans. ducks, and others,
and a very remarkable figure of a
man whose form suggests an an
thropoidal rather than a truly hu-
imam shape.
Every precaution seems to. have
been taken against imposition, and
| it is we'll that there should be
caution, considering the conscience
! less frauds that have been practiced
in connection with other archaeo-
| logical remains.