All this has to be kept in view, in any attempt to gauge the intellectual development, or determine the degree of civilisation, of the palæolithic draughtsmen and carvers of the Garonne. One of the scenes introduced by M. Figuier, in the fanciful illustrations of his _L’Homme primitif_, represents a group of artists, such as, except for their costume, might have been sketched from the students of the École des Beaux Arts. Their mode of work was probably much more akin to the intermittent labours of the Indian, whose elaborately sculptured pipe is laid aside, and resumed again—often after prolonged intervals,—before it receives the finishing touch. But though the drawings and the carvings of those primitive artists alike manifest remarkable skill and observant imitation, the former are the objects of special interest. Their carvings appear to have been executed, with rare exceptions, for the decoration of favourite implements and weapons, in accordance with a practice common to many diverse races and conditions of society. But the drawings have no such motive. They more nearly correspond to the sketch or drawing from nature of the modern artist; and furnish evidence of peculiar attributes, strikingly distinguishing the race of that remote age from most others that have succeeded them.
Certain it is that, so far as present evidence goes, the greatly prolonged Neolithic period was characterised by no such artistic feeling or imitative skill. Specimens of the ingenious handiwork of the artificers of Europe’s later Stone age abound. We have numerous relics from the kitchen middens of Denmark, the pile villages of Switzerland, the crannoges of Scotland and Ireland, as well as the varied contents of cromlechs, cists, cairns, and barrows, diligently explored throughout Europe. But no such examples of carvings, or graven representations of animals or other natural objects, have been found. The “clay in the hands of the potter” is a familiar symbol of plastic response to the will of the designer. It is, indeed, easier for the practised modeller to fashion the clay into any desired form, than to draw it, subject to rules of perspective, on a flat surface. Linear devices and the representation of objects in intaglio, or in low relief, are also accomplished with great facility on the soft clay. Hence the art of diverse races, periods, and stages of progress, finds its aptest illustration in fictile ware; and the imitative faculty of widely different American races may be studied in their pottery. In Mexico, apparently, we have to look for the northern school of ceramic art. There, the aggressive races of the North first came in contact with the civilisation of Central America; and the native aptitude for imitative representation received a fresh impulse. The Indian modeller learned to work skilfully in clay; and the variety of design, combined with the quaint humour of the caricaturist, displayed in many of the Mexican terra-cottas, serves to indicate this class of work as specially significant in relation to the present inquiry. The inventive fancy and skill of the Peruvian potter illustrates in ampler variety the progress achieved by the races of the southern continent. But this will more fitly come under review along with other examples of modern native art. For no analogous traces of contemporary modelling in clay furnish material for comparison with the art of the Palæolithic era; though the skill of its bone and ivory carvers was in no degree inferior to that of the Mexican or Peruvian modeller. But the æsthetic aptitude of that old race of Europe’s intellectual dawn is in some respects unique. In so far as their ingenious arts furnish any evidence of true racial characteristics, the men of the Neolithic era inherited none of their æsthetic feelings; nor did the imitative faculty manifest itself with exceptional power until the advent of the Aryan races brought with it the potentialities of Hellenic inspiration.