Early South Indian Palaeography c8.s2.35

c8.s2.35

Amidst the best instances of pictograph are the drawings and paintings of the palaeolithic cave drockers of Central Europe. "Contemporaneous with Arctic and Semi Arctic animals long since extinct" they could still have such artistic excellence that nothing can compare with "the rare fidelity to nature of the drawings to which these rude men cut with flints or painted with coloured earths or vegetable dyes upon the rocky walls of their caves, or carved upon their crude stone implements or with better skill etched with delightful naivette upon the bones of now extinct animals, ages before metals were used or ever known".⁵⁰ Their numerous drawings portray the mammoth (see Fig. 6), bison, ox, reindeer, hyena, cave bear and the horse, "which with its erect mane and zebra-like characteristics gives further evidence, were it needed, of the vast prehistoric antiquity of their art".⁵¹ The incomparable drawing of the reindeer, reproduced here, is carving on a piece of reindeer antler found in a cave near Thayngen, Switzerland. (See Fig. 7). All these drawings are "replete with realism and for spirit and dash are well nigh unexcelled".²⁵ Dr. Arthur J. Evans straightaway calls them picture-writing looking upon them as records of events, primarily of the chase, their principal occupation.⁵⁸