But North America has its own ancient artistic race, which, though claiming no such antiquity as that of Aquitaine, is, in the primary sense of the term, essentially prehistoric. Among the æsthetic productions of older races of the continent, the carvings and sculptures of the ancient Mound-Builders of Ohio not only admit of comparison with those of Europe’s primitive workers in bone and ivory, but even, in one respect, surpass them. For it is curious to observe that the palæolithic artists, whose carvings and drawings manifest such a capacity for appreciating the grace of animal form, and for reproducing with such truthfulness objects and scenes familiar to them in the chase, seem to have invariably failed, or at least shown a surprising lack of skill, in their attempts to delineate the human face and figure. Professor de Quatrefages notes of one such carving: “M. Massénat has brought from Laugerie Basse a fragment of reindeer’s horn, on which is graven a male aurochs fleeing before a man armed with a lance or javelin. The animal is magnificent; the man, on the contrary, is detestable, devoid alike of proportion and true portraiture.”[93] Some beautiful Mexican terra-cotta human masks have been preserved; and, amid the endless varieties of quaint and whimsical device in Peruvian pottery, singularly graceful portrait-vases occur. But, as a rule, even among the civilised Mexicans, imitations of the human face and figure seldom passed beyond the grotesque; and although the sculptors of Central America and Yucatan manifested an artistic power which accords with the civilisation of a lettered people, yet, in the majority of their statues and reliefs, the human form and features are subordinated to the symbolism of their mythology, or to mere decorative requirements. In the carvings of the old Mound-Builders, as in those of the vastly more ancient artists of palæolithic Europe, we have to deal with miniature works of art; but both include productions meriting the designation. The variety and expressiveness of many of the mound sculptures, their careful execution, and the evidence of imitative skill which they furnish, all combine to render them objects of interest. But foremost in every trait of value are the human heads. In view of the accuracy of many of the miniature sculptures of animals, it has been reasonably assumed that they perpetuate no less trustworthy representations of the workmen by whom they were carved. Equally well-executed examples of contemporary portraiture, recovered from palæolithic caves of Europe, would be prized above all other relics of its Mammoth or Reindeer period. Nevertheless, striking as is the character of the art of the Aligéwi, it differs only in degree of merit from that of many modern Indian races; and in some of the Algonkin stone-pipes the human figure is carved with well-proportioned symmetry. In such carvings, moreover, even when expended on the decoration of the pipe,—which was employed among so many native tribes in their most important ceremonial and religious observances,—there is rarely anything to suggest a higher aim of the artist than mere decoration. The same may be assumed of the ancient carvers, in such work as they expended on the hafts of the daggers found at Montastrue or Laugerie Basse. But when a carefully executed linear drawing occurs on a rough slab of schist, with its fractured edges left untrimmed, as is the case in examples from the caves of Les Eysies and Massat, the artist manifestly had some other purpose in view; and this I conceive to have been the earliest stage of ideography or picture-writing. He was communicating facts in detail by means of his pencil which his best attempts at verbal description would have failed to convey.