Here we have the evidence of a gradual advance from simpler to more elaborate forms. On the other hand, the _converse process_, the gradual degeneration of more pictorial forms into their shorthand, linearized equivalents, can often be traced in the series of these representations. The Abbé Breuil, for instance, has recently published a series of tables showing the progressive degeneration and stylization of the heads of horses, goats, deer and oxen.[2] Without subscribing to his views in all their details, it is evident that this derivative series, as a whole, can be clearly made out. The abbreviation of the oxheads in Fig. 2 is fairly clear up to No. 12, though whether the further procession is to be traced in the spiraliform signs that follow may be more open to doubt. It is worth noting that a curious parallel to these very ancient examples of the degeneration of the ox’s head is to be found among the Cretan and Cypriote signs of the Minoan and Mycenaean Age.
But the course followed by evolution of figured representations during the ‘Reindeer Period’ leads to another result, which also has parallels in the history of later art, but which does not seem to be so generally recognized. The degeneration, illustrated by Fig. 2, of more or less complete figures into mere linear reminiscences, is very familiar to us. It is well illustrated, for instance, in the relation of the demotic and hieratic Egyptian signs to the hieroglyphic. But what is sometimes forgotten is that the simple linear forms are sometimes the older, and that, even as, I think, can be shown in the case of some of the Egyptian hieroglyphs, the linearization of the pictorial form was merely a going back to what had really been the original form of the figure. I have also been struck with the same phenomenon in tracing the genesis of some of the hieroglyphic characters of Minoan Crete. We have only to look at the rude attempts of children to depict objects to see that simple linear forms of what may perhaps be called the ‘slate pencil’ style precedes the more elaborate stage of drawing. Art begins with skeletons, and it is only a gradual proficiency that clothes them with flesh and blood.
So it seems to have been with the Reindeer men. It has already been noticed that the stratigraphy of the paintings and engravings on the Cairoan walls, as investigated by the Abbé Breuil, shows that those of the earliest phase were line sketches of the simplest kind.[3] They are just such as a child might draw. They seem often to have been left incomplete from mere laziness, just so much of the figure being given as to enable its identification. No. 9, for instance, in the table given in Fig. 3, is a mere outline of the front of a mammoth’s head, even the tusks and eye being omitted. No. 2 shows only a little more of a bison’s head. The eye at the beginning of the table seems to be human, and may be the ideograph of the individual who drew it. Besides these recognizable sketches there are other linear representations of the slightest kind, but which, there can be little doubt, conveyed a definite meaning to those who drew them. Of these a certain number, moreover, are purely alphabetiform in character. There is an X, an L, a T upside down, and they have learned to dot their _i_’s.