In either case, why should this performance have been limited to children? The answer is fairly obvious. At an appropriate age each child was admitted to tribal membership, just as today the Church observes a rite of confirmation. Deep inside Le Tuc d’Audoubert these novitiates danced around a male and female bison, dancing from childhood toward the mysteries of adult life.
Not far away, in the cave known as Les Trois Frères, an entire wall is covered with snowy owls, rabbits, fish, muskoxen, mammoths, and so on—with arrows flying toward them from every direction. This complicated mural may very well illustrate something of profound mystic significance. The numinous spirit of life, for instance. But probably what it represents is more immediate and understandable: Hunger. Meat for the table.
Sex and the stomach, remarks one anthropologist, such are the dominant themes of most philosophy.
Still, in this same cave, cut into the rock twelve feet above the ground with a stone knife, we find a very different philosopher—a prancing round-eyed antlered Wizard who gazes emptily down upon today. Something about the position of his hands is strangely terrible and important, but what does the gesture signify? What is he telling us? If only we knew. All we can be sure of is that he has dominated this wall for thousands of years, dressed in a stag’s pelt with the tail of a horse.
Less enigmatic and threatening than the Wizard of Les Frères is the ivory Venus of Lespugue, who now holds court not in her original cave but in a glass cabinet at the Musée de l’Homme in Paris, just a step from the Trocadéro métro. She is flanked by mirrors so that after pressing the minuterie button you have sixty seconds to contemplate her prodigious feminine melons, north and south. Unspeakably poised, tranquil as a water lily, this stained and fractured Aurignacian princess waits, more beguiling than your favorite movie actress. Modern sculpture seldom says as much.
Further evidence of man’s complex artistic roots turned up at La Genière, near Serrières-sur-Ain. Excavators came across a limestone plaque tucked into a layer of the Middle Stone Age, and on this limestone scrap had been engraved that popular subject the bison—engraved decisively, powerfully. Most unusual, however, was the fact that this one resembled a polychrome bison on a wall painting at Font-de-Gaume some 300 kilometers distant. So close indeed was the resemblance between these animals that the famous abbé-archaeologist Henri Breuil wrote: “. . . one is forced to consider the possibility that both are by the same hand. Who knows whether that small limestone plaque from Serrières could not have been a sketch for the wall painting. Or was the drawing of La Genière, on the other hand, just a souvenir of a pilgrimage.”
Did the artist who painted the wall at Font-de-Gaume carry his preliminary sketch all the way to La Genière? Or did a prehistoric tourist so greatly admire the mural that he, or she, bought or stole the sketch in order to take it home?
Both thoughts are surprising. Who could have imagined such artistic concern during the Stone Age?
Alas, regardless of ancient aesthetics, we are here confronted by a fake. Professor Viret of Lyon observed suspiciously: “On ne saurait pas manquer d’être frappé de la profondeur et de la régularité du sillon de la gravure.” In other words, authentic Stone Age engravings almost always are drawn softly, delicately, whereas the beast at La Genière had been delineated with deep regular strokes.
Professor Viret, troubled by this discrepancy, submitted the limestone bison for laboratory analysis, and beneath ultraviolet light one could see that the fluorescence of the line sharply differed from the fluorescence of the surface. This meant the engraving must be recent. Quite recent. And here, too, just as in the case of Charles Dawson, although the faker cannot be positively identified, circumstantial evidence does point to somebody: one of the workmen at La Genière. It’s been learned that he was familiar with the Font-de-Gaume wall painting, and he is known to have made an engraving of a deer in the same style. The deer is not as good, probably because he didn’t have a model. Forgers are better at copying than at creating.
So, regrettably, the limestone plaque cannot persuade us that our ancestors would travel 300 kilometers to view the latest chef d’oeuvre.
However, when sifting evidence one must be careful. Consider the engravings of mammoths discovered at Les Eyzies. In 1885 these were denounced as fakes. Modern investigators, though, have doubts about the nineteenth-century doubts. For example, certain anatomical peculiarities of a mammoth—which are clearly represented at Les Eyzies—were unknown even to scientists in 1885.
And the Altamira paintings were ridiculed for a long time, mostly because nineteenth-century scholars were able to perceive a “slightly mediocre air of modernity.”
All of which should remind us that one can be not only too gullible, but too skeptical.
Besides, as the twentieth-century scholar Luis Pericot-Garcia has remarked: “Without aesthetic ability, the experience gained by apprenticeship in a school, and the background of a tradition, no artist would spontaneously paint a bison such as those at Altamira.”
Herbert Kühn, who examined the work at Lascaux, discovered that the figures had been outlined with knives before they were painted, and these outlines first had been delineated with a brush—perhaps made from the plume of a snipe—because such fragile drawing could not be rendered any other way. Parenthetically it may be noted that in German the snipe’s plume is die Malerfeder, the artist’s feather, and when equipped with a bone handle it becomes a perfectly adequate little brush. The Lascaux artwork, however, does not seem to have been brushed on; almost certainly the paint was squirted, very much as we spray-paint automobiles. The surface was prepared with oil and fat, then powdered colors were blown onto the sticky background through bone tubes. Now this is quite a sophisticated technique, which clearly supports Pericot-Garcia’s theory. There must indeed have been schools.
Ice Age pigments are genuine oil colors, not much different from those used by artists today, says Kühn. “The ochres would have been pounded fine in mortars, and in many caves ochre-crayons have been found. . . .”
On a rock bench at Altamira lay a supply of crayons, sharpened and neatly arranged, resembling women’s lipstick displayed on a cosmetics counter, just as the artist left them 12,000 years ago. Or perhaps long before that. Say 15,000. The mere existence of these crayons seems astonishing, yet still more so is the arrangement—the fact that it was not a disorderly collection but a coherent spectrum from which the artist could select whatever he thought appropriate. It is this evidence of planning which truly surprises us because we assume that those spear-carrying fur-clad hunters did not shrewdly organize their thoughts, did not quite bring their minds into focus. Not unless it concerned survival. Organizing for a mammoth hunt, yes. But one man, a cave muralist, reflectively choosing his palette?
And if you still think Ice Age artists lacked sophistication, it might be observed that a grasshopper incised on a bone at Les Trois Frères was portrayed with such fidelity that the insect’s species has been determined.
They seem to have been modern enough in other ways. One engraved bone depicts a man who is either watching or following a voluptuous nude woman—a picture that bluntly points out, with little equivocation, how you and I happen to be here.
Professor Magín Berenguer suggests that man entered the world of art by way of these adipose Venuses, where the entire expressive force is concentrated on fecundity. Then, through his art, man established the immense distance which separates him from all other created things.
So be it.
Lungfish to shrew to ape to man. For better or worse that was the sequence; at least it’s a sequence acceptable to many anthropologists. As always, however, there are creepers of dissent pushing in every direction.
According to Richard Leakey, who has continued the work started by his father: “Early man was a hunter, but I think the concept of aggressiveness—the killer-ape syndrome—is wrong. I am quite sure that the willingness of modern aggressive man to kill his own kind is a very recent cul
tural development. . . .”
Says George Schaller: “Man is a primate by inheritance but a carnivore by profession. . . .”
David Pilbeam: “I have grown increasingly skeptical of the view that hominids differentiated as weapon-wielding savanna bipeds. I am as inclined to think that changes in a predominantly vegetarian diet provided the initial impetus. Also I believe that too little emphasis has been placed on the role of language and communication. . . .”
F. Clark Howell: “We still do not know the source of the hominids, but it is possible that their origin may lie between seven and fifteen million years ago, and perhaps not only in Africa. . . .”
Von Koenigswald: “I definitely believe man’s earliest ancestors came from Asia. . . .”
Or you may choose to go along with paleontologist Bjurn Kurten, who thinks man did not evolve from the ape but vice versa. He considers it possible to draw a direct line of ancestry from ourselves to a small-jawed animal called Propliopithecus that lived thirty or forty million years ago.
If none of this sounds appealing you can always return to the comfortable certitude of Archbishop Ussher.
The ultimate question, though, toward which all inquiries bend, and which carries a hint of menace, is not where or when or why we came to be as we are, but how the future will unfold.
2
Eca Suthi . . .
I N 1828 A PEASANT WHO WAS plowing on the Italian estate of Lucien Bonaparte, Napoleon’s brother, crashed through the roof of an Etruscan burial vault. A bailiff was ordered to investigate, and what he saw underground promptly caused Lucien to start raking the countryside for more tombs. Hundreds were found and looted, yielding thousands of painted dishes, statuettes, jewels, rings, bracelets, and so on. The Vulci necropolis, from which Bonaparte recovered most of this treasure, is thought to have given up more valuables than any other ancient site with the exception of Pompeii.
News of the Vulci bonanza whistled through Italy and across Europe while Lucien Bonaparte’s neighbors began to contemplate their own fields with deep interest. As a result, more tombs were ripped open and stripped of marketable merchandise, and Prosper Mérimée felt inspired to write The Etruscan Vase. The vase that excited him was not Etruscan, it happened to be Greek, either imported or manufactured in a south Italian Greek pottery shop; but Mérimée did not know this, for which we may be mildly grateful. Le Vase Étrusque is not classified as a masterpiece but we need all the literature we can get, even if it’s written under a misapprehension.
One by one the sites and the important relics were catalogued, scholarly papers rustled, and archaeologists took to quarreling over the debris. They still quarrel, mostly because the language cannot quite be understood and because nobody has proved beyond doubt where the Etruscans came from.
At present we have two legitimate theories concerning their homeland, and a third theory which once was greeted with respect but now is not. Wherever they originated, these people dominated the central Mediterranean for several centuries. We are told by Livy that Etruria’s renown “filled the lands and the waters from one end of Italy to the other, from the Alps to the Straits of Messina.”
Herodotus thought they emigrated from Asia Minor:
“During the reign of Atys, son of Manes, there was famine throughout Lydia. For a while the Lydians persisted in living as they always had, but when the famine lengthened they looked for a way to alleviate their misery—some suggesting one thing, some another. At this time they invented dice games, knucklebone games, handball games, and other games—except draughts, which they did not invent. They would play all day for two days in order to distract themselves and on the third day they would eat. For eighteen years they lived like this. . . .”
At last, continues Herodotus, the king divided his subjects into two groups and chose by lot which would remain in Lydia and which must go in search of a new home. The king himself remained, while those who were to leave he put in charge of his son Tyrsenos. Then all those who were departing went down to Smyrna where they built ships, and after loading the ships with their possessions they sailed away and “passed by many nations in turn” until they reached the land of the Umbrians.
Summarizing the exodus in this manner makes it sound like a ten-day cruise. The reality—if we are discussing reality—must have been quite different. Assuming a degree of truth in the legend, it seems unlikely that there could have been one vast embarkation; more probably there would be numerous small embarkations over a period of years, just as bands of Crusaders straggled toward the Holy Land for 200 years, in contrast to the popular view of seven Christian armies one after another clanking through Syria. And Herodotus’ remark about passing many nations in turn could mean that the emigrants settled here and there, then some of their descendants drifted along, and theirs wandered farther, until at last—centuries after Tyrsenos left home—people with Lydian blood and Lydian traditions reached Italy.
That there was famine in Asia Minor during the thirteenth century B.C. cannot be doubted. Pharaoh Merneptah shipped grain to “Kheta,” land of the Hittites, and a communiqué from one Hittite ruler alludes to starvation. There is also the account of a provincial king with an unpronounceable name who led his famished subjects to the court of the Hittite emperor.
Egyptian hieroglyphs speak of an attempted invasion by “Peoples of the Sea” during the reign of Pharaohs Merneptah and Ramses III, between 1230 and 1170 B.C., and it’s possible that among these half-identified sea people were some Lydians. Whether or not this is so, the course of the emigrants is reasonably clear: they sailed past Malta and Sicily, at which point a few might have continued west to the famous city of Tartessus in Spain. A majority, however, must have turned north to the Italian mainland where they settled along the coast between the Tiber and the Arno, north of the marsh that eventually would become Rome. Here, in Tuscany, among a Bronze Age people called Villanovans, they built those cities we dimly remember from school—Cerveteri, Tarquinia, Populonium, and the others—and here they became known to the Greeks as Tyrsenoi, to the Latins as Etrusci.
The evidence for such a theory is persuasive. In the first place, Herodotus was not the only historian to describe an ancient Lydian migration. Secondly, it is a fact, with little disagreement among archaeologists, that during the eighth and ninth centuries B.C. a noticeable change occurred in the Tuscan way of life. This commonly is called the “Orientalizing” period. It included the substitution of burial for cremation and the appearance of chambered tombs beneath a dromo, or mound, very similar to the earliest tombs in Asia Minor. Religion, too, assumed a different form, apparently related to the eastern Mediterranean. Even the Tuscan devils evolved into first cousins of Assyrian and Chaldean devils. And the livers of sacrificed animals were examined for signs, a Babylonian practice.
Furthermore, the social organization began to display Eastern characteristics, particularly the attitude toward women. The Greeks, in fact, were shocked to learn that Etruscan men treated women as equals. To the Greeks, and later to the Romans, this seemed degenerate.
The style of dress became Eastern. Fashionable ladies wore the round or pointed cap that had been popular with Hittite women. Men wore a belted jerkin with a cloak thrown across one shoulder—which developed into the Roman toga. Men and women both wore pointed shoes with turned-up toes, very much like Hittite shoes.
Then there are linguistic arguments for supposing that these people came from Asia Minor, because Etruscan is not one of the Indo-European languages. Its alphabet is Greek, but the words and sentence construction are not. Nobody has been able to relate Etruscan to any other language, though just about everything has been tried: Sanskrit, Albanian, Hebrew, Basque, Hungarian, and various Anatolian languages. That it should still be indecipherable is not just curious but rather outrageous, because Etruscan was spoken in Tuscany right up to the opening of the Christian era and was used by Etruscan priests as late as the fifth century A.D. This being so, how could it absolutely disappear? We have no ex
planation, although there are reasons for thinking that the Christian Church obliterated it, just as the Church attempted to silence Aztec, Mayan, and other such ungodly tongues.
However, remnants of a lost civilization tend to be as durable as pottery shards. The archbishop’s staff, for instance, developed from the coiled wand of an Etruscan soothsayer. And the mallet used by Charun to smash the skulls of Etruscan dead is employed whenever a pope dies. Not long ago, you may remember, the Vatican secretary of state, Cardinal Villot, tapped John Paul’s forehead three times with a silver hammer, calling him by his given name: “Albino, Albino, Albino. Are you dead?” People everywhere, including many who are not Catholic, must have prayed that the elfish little pontiff would smile and sit up. Alas, there was no response; the September pope was gone. Cardinal Villot grasped John Paul’s hand, withdrew the gold ring of the fisherman, and smashed it.
And occasionally we speak or write an Etruscan word: tavern, cistern, letter, person, ceremony, lantern. But except for these, only about 100 Etruscan words have been deciphered, mostly funeral announcements which occur again and again so that their meaning is not much in doubt. Eca suthi , let us say, followed by a name.
One of the strongest linguistic pillars supporting the Eastern theory is a stela from the seventh century B.C. which was uncovered in 1885 on the island of Lemnos in the Aegean. It depicts a warrior holding a lance and it bears two inscriptions using the Greek alphabet. The language, though, is not Greek; it is Etruscoid. Other fragments of this language have since been found on Lemnos, which does away with the idea that the stela might have been imported. What all of this suggests is that Etruscan-speaking Lydians might have settled there.
Take a narrow look at the statues, pots, tripods, jewelry, sword hilts, murals. So much hints at Oriental ancestry.
If you study the Cerveteri sarcophagus which is now in Rome’s Villa Giulia it becomes very difficult to think of these people as primitive Italians: the husband’s tilted eyes and stiff Turkish beard, the wife’s little cap and pointed slippers, the languorous sensuality surging like a wave between them.
Aztec Treasure House Page 5
